Don't copy Polymarket's smart money anymore: their real win rate is only 50%, similar to flipping a coin I have to admit one thing first. At first, I was really tempted. You open the Polymarket leaderboard, The top few have a winning rate of 70% or 80%, Account names are becoming more and more like a quantitative model, The comment section is all about: Smart money has already entered the market This is a probability dividend This is information arbitrage, not gambling At that moment, it was hard not to have a thought: Can ordinary people finally get it right this time? So familiar fantasies began to emerge: documentary follow-up arbitrage Yes+No Risk Free Treat probability as an ATM But when you really pull out these top ranked accounts and their long-term trading behavior, Instead of just looking at the final outcome, The art style will instantly cool down. After I dismantled it, there was only one sentence left in my mind: The so-called 'smart money', Most of them are just ordinary people who have not been eliminated yet. The first knife: The winning rate you see is not clean in itself The "win rate" displayed on Polymarket, Essentially, it only answers one question: How many of the settled orders did you win? It won't tell you another thing: How much have you lost and haven't been settled yet? In the top ranked accounts, a recurring behavior is: The profitable order will be settled quickly An order that is almost impossible to reverse and has been hanging for a long time The result is—— There are a large number of economically failed positions piled up in the account, But statistically speaking, they do not currently exist. When you include these long-term vacant positions, Those seemingly 'exceptionally good' winning rates, Will quickly move towards a familiar range: Approaching 50%. The winning rate is similar to your coin toss Second Knife: Hedging is not a moat, but an execution of hell Almost all beginners, The first time I come into contact with the prediction market, I will be brainwashed by one sentence: Yes+No<1=guaranteed profit But in reality, hedging is far more cruel than this. True hedging often means: Multiple related positions under the same event Position height asymmetry Transaction depends on liquidity and timing Once the market becomes slightly crowded, The 'structural advantage' that you think exists, It will be swallowed up by slippage, queuing, and failed transactions. What's even more heart wrenching is—— Many seemingly 'logically perfect' arbitrage combinations, After taking into account the execution cost, From the moment of placing the order, it was a negative expectation. Do you think you're hedging risks, Actually, you are: Using incomplete storage space, Undertake complete fluctuations. The third knife: Those who truly survive never pursue high winning rates If you don't focus on 'who wins more', But rather staring at 'who hasn't disappeared yet', You will see a counterintuitive fact: Accounts that can stay on the list for a long time have a low winning rate. They are highly concentrated in a range: Hit rate: ≈ 50% Profit loss ratio: significantly biased towards positive (3 times, 5 times, or even higher) They don't rely on 'often being right', But relying on one thing: Don't die when you're wrong. And those accounts that later disappeared, The question is almost the same: Small probability event heavy warehouse Overconfidence in 'structurally correct' Treat hedging as psychological comfort Leave risk management to luck This is not a matter of predicting the market, This is a mistake that human nature makes in any speculative system. The Fourth Knife: What you think is' smart 'is actually just a cognitive impairment Many people come to this conclusion: Can I make money as long as I am smart enough and work hard enough to research? The answer is: extremely limited. The small group of people who make the most stable money, There is hardly any strategy that you can replicate completely. They often: Not following hot topics Not frequently changing tracks Long term focus only on the small piece that you are most familiar with Some people use probability as a price band, Someone is deeply involved in a certain league, Someone has been tracking a certain type of event for a long time. What they earn is not a formula, But rather a long-term accumulated judgment advantage. However, even so, there is still a ceiling to these profits. The fifth knife (and also the cruelest knife): Those who truly make big money do not rely on probability at all Speaking of which, one must speak clearly. In markets like Polymarket, An account that can truly make 'non-linear big money', Almost all have one thing in common: They have access to information that you do not have. For example, the recently widely discussed case—— Pre emptively stockpiled accounts related to the 'Maduro Arrest' incident. This type of order is not derived from models, It's not built on winning rates either, But rather typical: The incident has not been made public yet, but the outcome has been known in advance by a few people. This type of transaction has a winning rate of not 50%, But rather approaching certainty. And they often have three characteristics: Single position extremely heavy Very few attempts made The income shows a significant 'leapfrog growth' It is precisely in these events that, Predicting the market truly reveals its essence: It is not an 'intellectually fair' market, But rather a market that is extremely asymmetric and friendly to information. The final blow: Who are you really competing with? If you don't have any insider information, There is no information source close to the core of the event, What are you facing? Approaching the winning rate of flipping a coin Arbitrage space constantly eroded by execution costs And a field that could be crushed by "information players" at any time At this point, let's talk about 'smart money for following orders', Actually, I'm already deceiving myself a bit. The final conclusion Polymarket does not have a 'lying profit formula'. The ranking list is not an ability list, but a survival list. A high winning rate is not proof of strength, Just traces that haven't been cleared yet. Those who can truly make big money, Not someone who can be considered more accurate, But rather—— Before the event occurred, People who already know the answer. The remaining participants, Including you and me, More just: In this dark forest of probability, Try not to die too early.