# My Bet Log

I occasionally make bets about future events. I think I probably should do that more often than I currently do. Given that, I think it's good practice to have a public record of the bets I've made and their outcomes, when available.

I'll try to keep this updated going forward, if I continue to make bets. (But only on my original blog, I won't copy the edits over to LW.) Currently I'm down £72.46 with one win and one loss.

(This has nothing to do with the [matched betting](http://reasonableapproximation.net/2018/06/02/matched-betting.html) that I previously wrote about. There I was earning money from sign-up bonuses. Here I'm trying to earn money by being better at predicting the future than other people.)

In order of date I made the bet:

### Undecided: NO on Trump leaving before the end of his first term.

I placed this bet on 20-Oct-2019, on [Betfair](https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.129133401), after a friend said on Facebook that the odds seemed very favorable to him. The odds at the time were 1.3, giving an implied probability of ((1.3 - 1) / 1.3 = 30%) that he'd leave. I bet £50 against this, giving me £15 profit if he doesn't. (Minus commission, so £14.25.) As of 19-Mar-2020 the odds are 1.12, for an implied probability of 11% that he'll leave. (I could cash out now, taking my £50 back immediately and £7.56 minus commission when the market closes[^1]. I'm not inclined to do that.)

### I lost: NO on a large increase in working from home.

LessWrong user Liron [said](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/7XTnz7S77hRzLbpDA/programmers-should-plan-for-lower-pay#comment-SuFjevs6QmcDHQaWN):

> I also bet more than 50% chance that within 3 years at least one of {Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon} will give more than 50% of their software engineers the ability to work from home for at least 80% of their workdays.

I took him up on this for $100 each. We confirmed on 02-Jan-2020. I don't think I'd heard the term "coronavirus" at the time.

This cost me $100 (£92.69 over Paypal, which I think included £2.99 transaction fee). But I got a bunch of LW karma for it. Swings and roundabouts.

### Undecided: YES on someone contracting Covid-19.

In a Telegram group chat I'm in, I bet another member €30 each that at least one person in the chat would contract Covid-19 by 28-Feb-2021. (We made the bet on 28-Feb-2020.)

I wasn't confident of winning at the time, and I'm still not. Confirmed infection rates are lower than I'd anticipated - for example, Hubei has had just over 0.1% of its population confirmed as having had the disease at one point, and Italy just over 0.05%.

I think an ambiguous result is more likely than I used to, because people who get mild cases of the disease often aren't tested.

### I won: DECLINE in Trump's odds of being re-elected.

On 04-Mar-2020, I noticed that the betting markets' odds on Trump's re-election had gone up since Covid-19 became a thing. (According to [Election Betting Odds](https://electionbettingodds.com/President2020.html), rising from about 40% mid-november to about 56% at the time.) At the time, the number of officially diagnosed cases in the US was very small. I predicted that as the official number rose, and as it became more widely known that the CDC and FDA had [basically fucked up](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/02/coronavirus-links-speculation-open-thread/), the odds would drop again.

The obvious objection was: "if you can predict that happening, so can anyone. Why haven't the odds changed already?" I didn't have an answer for that, but the stock markets had seemed to react slowly to the news[^2] so maybe it would happen here too. (And the next obvious objection was: "oh, so you're expecting the same thing to work _twice in a row_?" I didn't have an answer for that either.)

Less obvious objections that I realized/someone pointed out after I'd made the bet:

*   Bush's popularity rose after 9/11.
*   Covid-19 seems to play very nicely into Trump's anti-immigrant, anti-globalist narrative.

In any case, I went ahead. Again on [Betfair](https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.128151441), I bet £100 against Trump at odds of 1.76. The odds started to drop pretty soon after that. Two weeks later, on 18-Mar-2020, I cashed out (by betting £110.26 for Trump at odds of 2.1, but actually by pressing the "cash out" button). I've claimed my initial £100 back, and no matter who wins I'll earn £21.29. (£20.23 after commission, but nothing if the market is voided.)

[^1]:  I can't take any profit now, because if he gets assassinated the market is void.
    
[^2]:  This didn't do me any good. I hadn't sold any stocks at the time, and I still haven't.