ABSOLUTE CINEMA: Polymarket trader loses $5M betting on Manchester City to win
Potential payout was: $8.2 million
2 days ago he won $5.1M and today he lost it all… left with a balance of $15k
once again proving that sports markets are completely unpredictable
I've been copytrading Polymarket for the past 5 or so months - it's pretty much the only thing I have done on Prediction Markets, which is also the reason I started this subreddit
I had some success in the beginning, mostly because the market wasn't as flooded with copytraders
I still make a profit here and there, but it has slowed down when compared to what I was making a few months ago
>And yeah, it's pretty much obvious right now about all of these whales, winning wallets everyones tracking and copying:
- they are either front-running you,
- using 5 different wallets to hedge their own positions,
- or they are just rich gamblers who can afford to take a $50K drawdown before hitting a lucky macro bet that fixes their PNL.
I realized that while it’s hard to predict who will win consistently, and not absolutely farm you, it is pretty easy to find people who lose consistently.
Since poly leaderboards don't exactly work for losing traders, you need to find the losing ones that are still making volume with outside tools
If we are going to be using my strategy to size bets always the same, and only bet on the win rate of the account, their actual PnL hardly matters
I tracked down 5 specific wallets with absolute bottom-tier win rates (sub-30%) that were still pushing high volume.
If the wallet loses 75% of its trades, and I take the exact opposite side with a fixed bet size,
I win 75% of the time. My risk is detached from his sizing due to the fixed size and the settings I use to automate my counter trades
I didn't want to sit at my desk manually fading them, so I used a copytrade app just for the execution
This has been my personal go-to for a while, just cause of the speed: synthesis copytrade
The countertrading settings I went with:
→ mode: counter
→ buy sizing: fixed ($25). Whether he bets $10 or $1,000, I only ever risk $25
>a 20% win rate is fake if the guy only buys 2¢ shitters. You also need to look at his markets before selecting the wallet, for this next setting to work
→ price range: 30¢ to 70¢. Only counter 50/50ish markets
→ max slippage: 1¢
→ take profit: 20% (dump as soon as you're making some significant profit)
→ exposure limit: max $75 per market, so I don't over-index if he averages down on a losing bet
__
30d results:
I funded this with $500
In 30 days, doing nothing but finding active wallets that match my parameters, managing the other wallets I was copytrading, and reviewing their risk, win rate changes, etc. I am now at +$415
Someone bet on 46 out of 48 teams to win the 2026 FIFA World Cup
This Polymarket trader is backing every single nation except France and Belgium - probably cause their odds are too high for him?
Max payout is $4.37M
Right now, he's up $450K on these positions
Was down $89K just this morning
IDK what kind of play it is, but it is working lmao.
He just found that the yes values were undervalued for some teams, I guess?
Like England at 1.9c is for sure very undervalued, and he already made 480% profit from that trade alone (48k!!!)
Look for yourself: https://synthesis.trade/discover?profile=0xBDDF61Af533fF524D27154e589d2D7A81510C684&ref=illintent
This guy turned $1.83 into $633 and continues to do so in the weather markets
Does he just beat the people who don't check the forecast?
Narrow price ranges at 3¢ are a godsend for those who have mastered market analysis. And this guy surely knows something we don't
He is consistently betting and winning on extremely low price ranges, like Yes at $3-15c
Idk, maybe he just checks the forecast or something, times his bets when the other traders haven't caught up with the news or something
I mean, a lot of traders just gamble without checking ofc so that might just be his edge lmao
Biggest wins:
> Paris: $1.83 → $633.09 (+34,539%)
> London: $177.75 → $3,826.94 (+2,052%)
> Chicago: $107.54 → $1,681.76 (+1,463%)
1,052 transactions in a row. The same system.
The market rewards those who do their homework, I guess
__
Going to try copytrading him with fixed amount settings, I'll let you know how it goes
Only doing this with Synthesis
His profile is here. Let me know if you'll try to copy him as well: https://polymarket.com/@fridius2
Prosecutors allege Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of the unprecedented military action in the early hours of January 3, when US soldiers extracted Maduro and his wife from the presidential palace in Caracas under heavy fire.
Authorities allege Van Dyke used his knowledge of the classified operation to place bets on Polymarket in the days and hours leading up to the operation. Van Dyke allegedly placed $32,000 in bets on US involvement in Venezuela, including that Maduro would be “out” of Venezuela by the end of January. After the successful raid, Van Dyke’s bet paid off. He made over $400,000 in profits.
Van Dyke allegedly transferred the windfall to a foreign cryptocurrency vault before moving them into a newly created online brokerage account. After news reports flagged the wildly successful bet, the indictment alleges, Van Dyke asked Polymarket to delete his account.
He was photographed just after the operation on “what appears to be the deck of a ship at sea, at sunrise wearing U.S. military fatigues, and carrying a rifle, standing alongside three other individuals wearing U.S. military fatigues,” according to the indictment.
Van Dyke was arrested Thursday night and charged with unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction. Friday, Van Dyke made his first appearance in federal court in North Carolina and was released on $250,000 bond.
The Maduro bet is one of several suspicious trades that have attracted attention. Lawmakers and media reports have highlighted several huge trades in the oil futures market that preceded announcement of key developments in the US-Iran conflict.
-CNN
