Originally Posted by
CryptoNinja
I don’t think you’re a bad guy, Todd and I don’t think you are entirely detached from reality like a lot of Trump supporters are, but I think you still believe some of the lies the GOP tells. By far, the most prevalent lie Republicans believe is this “half the country” bullshit. 23% of adult Americans voted for Trump in 2020. Are you telling me that only half of Trumpers are voting? I find that hard to believe. I’m also quite sure that Trump does motivate people that are usually non-voters to show up but in order to vote against him. It’s not that so many Americans love Joe Biden, it’s that we hate Trump. The Republican base vastly underestimates this and actually believes they are the majority. This should lead to being able to place very +EV bets against them. Additionally, the GOP have left themselves no outs, here. Trump will win the nom, regardless of the severe legal trouble he finds himself in, and has no real shot at winning. Place sharp bets, don’t bet with your heart and you should be able to recoup those losses.
ETA: Are there other options besides Predictit for political betting? Can you bet on politics in Vegas? I want to bet 5 figs.
Political betting, or perhaps it's specifically the outcome of an election, is illegal in the United States. There are many offshore websites that book U.S. Politics, but that's going to be vig-based betting and the juice is usually big enough that most advantages will be perceived with very few actual edges available. Even if they would normally accept gamblers from the U.S., they mostly won't allow you on there for politics betting. You'd probably have to get someone to run an account and handle your bets for you, if there's anyone offshore you can trust and know fairly well.
As Dan Druff pointed out, the big advantage of PredictIt betting is that you're mostly going up against idiots, so just don't be an idiot and you'll make money.
PredictIt will often have binaries no online casino would ever give you both sides of. You could have bet on Kanye to be the second-leading or third-leading vote getter, in 2020, on PredictIt...which...yeah, okay. Better still, you could bet on Kanye NOT to be the third-highest vote getter.
Generally speaking, one good way to know where the free money is on PredictIt (since it's always either a binary or market betting) is to look at where casinos aren't even giving you the OPTION of betting the more likely of the two things.
For example, I wrote an article where you could bet to return $1.00 for every $0.66/bet (at one point) that Trump would NOT be impeached AND removed from office. With a Republican Senate and needing 2/3rd of the Senate to do it? It was never happening.
Now, on something like 5Dimes (for one example), at the same point in time, they wouldn't even give you the option to bet the, 'No.' If you wanted to bet with your heart and give them free money taking the, 'YES,' then you were allowed, but they wouldn't even take a bet on the, 'No.'
That's usually a pretty good indicator when there's some high probability event that the online casinos think is SO likely they won't even let you LAY 10,000 on it.
Of course, PredictIt gets you with the outrageous fees when it comes time to cash out.
They basically tag you on every win and then get you going out. When something resolves in your favor (or you sell your binary at a higher price), then PredictIt takes 10% of the profit, in either case. Cashing out costs you a flat 5% of your entire balance, assuming that hasn't changed since I last wrote about it.
I don't know what Dan Druff's angle was...but if you were fairly patient and didn't mind having money sit on there, then you could sometimes get phenomenal prices (even after getting taxed 10% of profits) on absolute iron-clad guarantees and just leave the money sit there. You definitely couldn't withdraw-deposit-withdraw-deposit and cycle it like that, or you'd effectively eat the 5% withdrawal rate more often than you needed to.
For example, on December 23rd, 2019, you could bet $0.92 on YES for Trump to complete 2019 as the POTUS. Negligible free money, but still free money.