Will Michael Bloomberg be Obama's Vice Presidential nominee?

Something I have never understood on hubdub:

Why create an interesting question, and then slant it 85% against the possibility of occurring? Considering the lousy odds of betting on NO, who is going to bet on this question - unless they are trying to game it in some way? The outcome is likely to be skewed incorrectly, because no one wants to take lousy bets to correct the odds. Most -- if not all -- yes/no markets should start at 50/50 to allow predictions to rise to their own levels. What is the point of having the author control the outcome?

The markets odds are accurate, and although the market is interesting if I were to give this market a 50/50 split it could be easily gamed. This is because at most there is a 20%, maybe, maybe 25% that Obama will choose Bloomberg. Bloomberg doesn't give Obama much as a VP candidate, seeing as NY will vote blue either way.

I do understand the point though that markets like these with accurate but not "fun" odds don't really make a big dent. Possibly posting up a getsatisfaction post about this and gaging the response from users? If anyone else has any thoughts please pile on, the only way Hubdub improves is if the users get involved.

Regards,

Ryan
Hubdub US Politics Content Editor

Thanks for your very prompt reply. I realize that there will be pro and con on this and maybe a good point for group discussion.

I have a few points on this for thought: setting the odds at 85/15 SLANTS the news from the start. Somehow I would think we are trying to avoid slanting the news. The unattractive odds means that few people are likely to make a prediction, which defeats the purpose of having the prediction market. Presuming that people agree with the 85/15 odds (because they didn't vote on it) would be incorrect.

If its really felt that slanting is necessary for some reason, how about putting a LIMIT on the slant: i.e. 40/60 either direction or 30/70 which I still feel is fairly drastic and fairly slanted. 85/15 really comes into the "why bother" department.

As an experiment, why not set up a question with 85/15 odds on a question that REALLY should be 50/50, and see if anyone votes on it? It would be an interesting experiment.

Well I will speak up here and say that the reason for the starting odds to reflect the likely outcome is so that questions aren't gamed. If for example the question stated, will Obama choose Jimmy Carter as his running mate, the odds of this actually occurring are probably less than 5%, so if you start it at 50/50, then the people who constantly scan new questions, will be able to put down a $10,000 bet at lets say 60%, then as the market moves to its correct odds, they will cash out at 95%, and make 35%, just because they played the market at the right time, not necessarily because they were able to predict the news.
Starting questions at percentages that reflect probably odds, also prevents the site being overwhelmed with questions in which the outcome is certain, or highly probable.

And to answer your question on if anyone would wager on a question that was truly 50/50 if the odds were 85/15, I would obviously wager on the 15 side and then cash out when it gets close to 50 and make my 30 or 35 points in profit.

Ok destry, I can go along with what you are saying. But what about THIS PARTICULAR QUESTION concerning Obama and Bloomberg?

If the odds are reasonably fair but lousy for betting, and no one in their right mind is going to waste hubdub dollars on it (unless they have nothing else to do with their cash), what is the point of this prediction question?

At best the hubdub "top ten" could be parking extra cash here for a safe low risk low yield bet, and almost no one else is going to touch it. There is no prediction "vote" here. The only possible vote that is taking place is that the "big guns" are stating that they are absolutely certain that this is correct enough to be parking big cash at low risk low yield.

Destry, as one of the more entrepreneurial of the "top ten", what do you think? I value your opinion and always read it carefully...

Maybe we have a new phrase for the hubdub limited Oxford:

A "PARKING PLACE" is an 85/15 prediction with low risk low yield, ideal for parking large sums of extra cash.

This comes back to the age old question: are we here to make fake money or are we here to predict the news.

You can do both: put small stakes on news stories you are interested on or have an opinion on and then use your larger stakes for better payout markets. I have like 20 5$ bets in various markets that I'm interested in but don't have big payoffs or close in a long time.