Tips for Tikay

[tikay]

Obama looking like hitting 332 votes as soon as Florida comes in.  Currently he's up by 0.5%.  Hopefully no legal stuff kicks off and they declare soon.

No danger of him getting over 349?

None.  Only Florida left to declare.

So the bet is a winner? (We needed 330-349)

[hector62]

Our “Obama for President” bet has already been settled, but we still have “Obama to win 330-349 Electoral  College Votes”, whatever that means (£30 @ 6.6). Presumably that will settle today, but I don’t have a clue how we are looking.

I bet it was that pesky young Gascoigne that stole his price.

Think it hinges on this where O appears to be ahead

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-elections-2012/results/florida


Fred too almost all the available stake on the Obama side, but I did find a few crumbs available on almost the same bet of Romney electoral college votes (including £2 at 29, iirc)

 

There was a side story to that.

The liquidity must have been very thin indeed, as AndrewT tipped us the bet, I placed it (immediately I assume) & then Andrew found he could not get on!

Self-sacrifice for the cause, can't beat it.

[TommyD]

Obama looking like hitting 332 votes as soon as Florida comes in.  Currently he's up by 0.5%.  Hopefully no legal stuff kicks off and they declare soon.

No danger of him getting over 349?

None.  Only Florida left to declare.

So the bet is a winner? (We needed 330-349)

Should be but I'm hesitant to say 100% yes because Florida isn't all in yet and that state has crazy history.  It's always close, you had that cluster for Bush v Gore there which carried on for months.  However with the election not decided in Florida this time round the Republicans are unlikely to pursue any legal action to lead to a recount or voiding some county's ballots etc.  They might have to do an automatic recount if it's very close but I'm unsure of their state laws for this

Barry O up by 50k votes last check.

[hector62]

Ok Mr T here is my cunning plan. It starts with a story.

There once was a man who had to run a competition at a fair to raise money. He borrowed a large bull from a farmer and secretly weighed it. On the day of the fair he sold tickets to guess the weight of the bull and the winner got $500. He got over 2,000 entries and the winning ticket guessed the correct weight to within 1lb. As, like me, he was a bit of a sad arse when he got home he still had all the entries and  he decided to look at them in more detail. He totalled them all up and then calculated the average weight. He found that the average weight was just 2oz off the actual weight of the bull.

Gist of the story is the collective decision is far stronger than the individual. My plan is to chose an event that is a close call and put up a poll. Mr T will back what the collective decision is. My first thought is over, or under 2 1/2 goals in the Chelsea / Liverpool game this weekend. As it is a collective decision we may risk £50.

Will give it a bit before attempting the poll creation to see feedback. If it proves popular then we can do one a week.

[david3103]

Ok Mr T here is my cunning plan. It starts with a story.

There once was a man who had to run a competition at a fair to raise money. He borrowed a large bull from a farmer and secretly weighed it. On the day of the fair he sold tickets to guess the weight of the bull and the winner got $500. He got over 2,000 entries and the winning ticket guessed the correct weight to within 1lb. As, like me, he was a bit of a sad arse when he got home he still had all the entries and  he decided to look at them in more detail. He totalled them all up and then calculated the average weight. He found that the average weight was just 2oz off the actual weight of the bull.

Gist of the story is the collective decision is far stronger than the individual. My plan is to chose an event that is a close call and put up a poll. Mr T will back what the collective decision is. My first thought is over, or under 2 1/2 goals in the Chelsea / Liverpool game this weekend. As it is a collective decision we may risk £50.

Will give it a bit before attempting the poll creation to see feedback. If it proves popular then we can do one a week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

All true stuff, but wouldn't we be better where we're looking for a result that is less binary?

[millidonk]

Ok Mr T here is my cunning plan. It starts with a story.

There once was a man who had to run a competition at a fair to raise money. He borrowed a large bull from a farmer and secretly weighed it. On the day of the fair he sold tickets to guess the weight of the bull and the winner got $500. He got over 2,000 entries and the winning ticket guessed the correct weight to within 1lb. As, like me, he was a bit of a sad arse when he got home he still had all the entries and  he decided to look at them in more detail. He totalled them all up and then calculated the average weight. He found that the average weight was just 2oz off the actual weight of the bull.

Gist of the story is the collective decision is far stronger than the individual. My plan is to chose an event that is a close call and put up a poll. Mr T will back what the collective decision is. My first thought is over, or under 2 1/2 goals in the Chelsea / Liverpool game this weekend. As it is a collective decision we may risk £50.

Will give it a bit before attempting the poll creation to see feedback. If it proves popular then we can do one a week.

Overs and this thread idea sounds familiar. http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=59309.0

[Tonji]

The wisdom of Fred, a cunning plan indeed!

[hector62]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

All true stuff, but wouldn't we be better where we're looking for a result that is less binary?
[/quote]

In an ideal world yes. However I do not think we will have sufficient numbers to do a non binary thing and win. Also it would be incumbent on  someone to work out the average. For it to be able to run for a time voters want a simple decision to make and the instant gratification of seeing a result straight after they have voted. If not people would stop doing it very quickly.

[scotty2hatty]

Ok Mr T here is my cunning plan. It starts with a story.

There once was a man who had to run a competition at a fair to raise money. He borrowed a large bull from a farmer and secretly weighed it. On the day of the fair he sold tickets to guess the weight of the bull and the winner got $500. He got over 2,000 entries and the winning ticket guessed the correct weight to within 1lb. As, like me, he was a bit of a sad arse when he got home he still had all the entries and  he decided to look at them in more detail. He totalled them all up and then calculated the average weight. He found that the average weight was just 2oz off the actual weight of the bull.

Gist of the story is the collective decision is far stronger than the individual. My plan is to chose an event that is a close call and put up a poll. Mr T will back what the collective decision is. My first thought is over, or under 2 1/2 goals in the Chelsea / Liverpool game this weekend. As it is a collective decision we may risk £50.

Will give it a bit before attempting the poll creation to see feedback. If it proves popular then we can do one a week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

All true stuff, but wouldn't we be better where we're looking for a result that is less binary?

Sounds like a good idea but I agree with David, maybe ask how many goals in the game instead?

[doubleup]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

All true stuff, but wouldn't we be better where we're looking for a result that is less binary?

In an ideal world yes. However I do not think we will have sufficient numbers to do a non binary thing and win. Also it would be incumbent on  someone to work out the average. For it to be able to run for a time voters want a simple decision to make and the instant gratification of seeing a result straight after they have voted. If not people would stop doing it very quickly.

Think you would be better asking people the amount of goals that would be scored if the match was played 10 times, then using the average as the rate to work out under/over and only placing the bet if the odds are favourable (I'd guess they won't be)

The wisdom of the crowd is an odd thing.  The jar full of jellybeans is another often quoted example - but if you blindfolded everyone would it work?  I doubt it. 

I think the reason it works and the reason in general that odds offered in sporting events generally reflect the actual odds is that everyone has a "system" of some kind to decide if they want to bet or not.  The eventual odds are a result of the aggregation of all these "systems".  A good example is the going in a horse race - some people will look at a horse's breeding and decide to lay thus pushing the price out a bit.

So it does work in situations where the "guessers" have some knowledge about the subject, but to be profitable the information has to be in a useable format of somekind that can be compared to the odds on offer.

[Doobs]

Ok Mr T here is my cunning plan. It starts with a story.

There once was a man who had to run a competition at a fair to raise money. He borrowed a large bull from a farmer and secretly weighed it. On the day of the fair he sold tickets to guess the weight of the bull and the winner got $500. He got over 2,000 entries and the winning ticket guessed the correct weight to within 1lb. As, like me, he was a bit of a sad arse when he got home he still had all the entries and  he decided to look at them in more detail. He totalled them all up and then calculated the average weight. He found that the average weight was just 2oz off the actual weight of the bull.

Gist of the story is the collective decision is far stronger than the individual. My plan is to chose an event that is a close call and put up a poll. Mr T will back what the collective decision is. My first thought is over, or under 2 1/2 goals in the Chelsea / Liverpool game this weekend. As it is a collective decision we may risk £50.

Will give it a bit before attempting the poll creation to see feedback. If it proves popular then we can do one a week.

Surely we shouldn't be backing anything if it is a close call?

And don't we already have a much better picture of the wisdom of crowds than any well designed poll for all the popular betting sports? It is called Betfair.

[david3103]

Ok Mr T here is my cunning plan. It starts with a story.

There once was a man who had to run a competition at a fair to raise money. He borrowed a large bull from a farmer and secretly weighed it. On the day of the fair he sold tickets to guess the weight of the bull and the winner got $500. He got over 2,000 entries and the winning ticket guessed the correct weight to within 1lb. As, like me, he was a bit of a sad arse when he got home he still had all the entries and  he decided to look at them in more detail. He totalled them all up and then calculated the average weight. He found that the average weight was just 2oz off the actual weight of the bull.

Gist of the story is the collective decision is far stronger than the individual. My plan is to chose an event that is a close call and put up a poll. Mr T will back what the collective decision is. My first thought is over, or under 2 1/2 goals in the Chelsea / Liverpool game this weekend. As it is a collective decision we may risk £50.

Will give it a bit before attempting the poll creation to see feedback. If it proves popular then we can do one a week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

All true stuff, but wouldn't we be better where we're looking for a result that is less binary?

Sounds like a good idea but I agree with David, maybe ask how many goals in the game instead?

better yet - is there a market for 'Total goals scored in all games''?  Maybe all games in a CL/PL/Championship/xxx week, or on a specific match day?


Could a google spreadsheet be created that all could pop into to post their number?

[TommyD]

Ah the old wisdom of crowds.  Derren Brown used that as one of his bluff explanations for the 'predict the lottery' stunt he did a couple of years ago.

Wisdom of crowds works for things without variables such as weight of a cow, how many jelly beans in a giant glass cylinder, height of a building etc etc etc.  It doesn't really work well for things that are no an absolute, such as sports.  When I say well I mean to be confident of accuracy the vast majority of the time.  By all means give it a go though, should be interesting to see what happens.

Back to betting, anyone see anything in the tennis worth going for?

[hector62]

I was going to tip Murray if I could have got 6/4 but no-one is offering that. I will support him myself but I suspect it is at the right price, but I can't watch a tennis match without an interest in it.

[hector62]

The poll is now up and is proving popular. To show my support for the idea I will follow the result and back it regardless of my vote. I really do believe.

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