And We Are Live

It has been almost a year since I started working on Cashout Bingo and Lines64. I did launch the site and the newsletter in 2023 but decided to shut it all down a couple of months later, as I wasn’t fully satisfied with how things were going.

And to be honest, I am still NOT completely happy with it!

The main site is live but not yet fully functional. Many reviews are still in draft form, but at least I’ve figured out the general direction I want to take this newsletter, and hopefully most of you will enjoy it.

The newsletter will not run weekly, as first intended, as I really don’t want to just put a couple of links in every edition and call it a day during a week when almost nothing happened. I mean, yes, if there are multiple big news events or changes in the betting industry, you can expect multiple posts per week, but I will not put up fluff during slow weeks.

Since this is my "first" official post, I want to take the opportunity to go over some of the recent, as well as not-so-recent, changes in the sports betting and prediction market ecosystem.

What we’ll cover in this newsletter

In this edition, we’ll be diving into the latest (as well as not-so-latest) developments in the sports betting industry and prediction markets, including:

• Manifold.Markets launching sweepstakes markets
• Sportmarket offering SingBet accounts
• Kalshi launches the first legal election market in the USA
• Kalshi will pay you 4.05% interest on your cash AND open positions
• WinnerOdds discontinuing monitoring of Pinnacle
• Polymarket gets bombed on Trustpilot, again
• Trademate expanding into in-play value betting alerts
• and Lines64 news

Now, let’s get into it!

Manifold launches Sweepstakes Markets

Back on the 17th of September (yes, this post was in the draft for quite a while) , Manifold.markets launched sweepstakes markets. Right now the sweepstakes markets are only available US (except some states), but I guess international expansion is also on their radar.

And now the stuff I am not so excited about - the price of mana. The mana is just too expensive for my taste - 110 USD per Plus question is a lot.

But I do somewhat get why they feel the need to make it so expensive - to keep low-quality markets off the site.

At least those were my initial thoughts.

But then they removed the fees, added unique trader bonuses, and I think you actually get more mana back on Basic question with less traders than before the sweepstakes update, especially if you have a multiple-choice market with more than five independent questions.

So, in the end, I don’t really have any problems with the way site works now - play for free with mana or play for money with sweepstakes.

Sportmarket starts offering Singbet accounts

Sportmarket, one of the better betting brokers, recently added the option to open a SingBet account. I am not really sure when this happened, but I still have it in my mind, so it might be recent.

Now, SingBet doesn't have the best reputation with sports bettors, mainly because they tend to void bets left and right – especially the winning ones.

They’re known to void bets if any suspicious activity is detected, but there have been reports of them voiding Premier League matches, so who really knows what's going on? It seems like if they take a big loss, they just void everything.

There used to be brokers that offered SingBet accounts without the risk of having your bets voided, but I can't find those kinds of offers anymore.

The real question is why should you use a separate account? You can just enable SingBet on most of the other broker platforms and you have their odds + many more, all in one place.

Honestly, I don’t know. Are there more markets on the site, less void bets, higher limits? As far as I know, no. Plus, the minimum deposit is pretty steep – 1,000 EUR.

However, the 0.25% rebate promotion is quite enticing.

If you can deal with the voiding and you know your lower league football, the rebate alone might make it worth giving it a try.

But then again, if you beat their traders, you winning bets will be voided and you will be in the red.

One thing to note is that Sportmarket doesn't offer Singbet on their Pro platform. So, if you're only using Sportmarket, the only way to access Singbet odds is through a separate account.

I do intend to write a full article on SingBet and how you could potentially use them (and other sharp bookmakers) in the next couple of months, so make sure to stay tuned if you are interested in content like that.

And now something more recent.

Kalshi launches the first legal election market in the USA

As you probably know, Kalshi recently made history by launching the first legal election markets (in the US) in over 100 years. Kalshi currently offers more than 30 markets for presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial races.

So if you are from the US, you can now arb the presidential election markets on offshore sites, Manifold, Polymarket (only if you say you are not from the US😉), PredictIt (yes, no?) and now Kalshi.

Kalshi will pay you 4.05% interest on your cash AND open positions

There are two ways to look at this, either you get better odds on a winning bet or cashback on a losing bet.

For example; you place a $100 bet on Trump at +100 to make an X post and the bet is expected to finalise in 400 days.

So, you leave the money you get on the account monthly, and in the end, if you bet wins, after 400 days, you have actually placed a bet at +109 odds. Which doesn't sound a lot, but in the world of betting, getting the best price is usually what separate winners from losers.

You also get paid monthly, but the APY is really low at 4% and the 400-day period is just not enough time for the compounding effect to significantly magnify the odds.

But at the same time, if you place a $1,000 bet at +100 odds, and the bet ends in 10 years, with 4.05% APY being compounded monthly, the final odds you would receive would be approximately +198.

Which is an absurd example, as you probably should not place bets that resolve is ten years.

As for the losing part, your original $100 stake is gone, but you still get to keep the interest earned on that $100, which is around $4.50.

WinnerOdds stops monitoring Pinnacle

A couple of weeks ago, WinnerOdds released a statement about their intent to stop monitoring Pinnacle, which did raise my eyebrows a little.

I do know some of the more savvy users of their AI app were using Pinnacle as some sort of benchmark or rough guide to place bets on non-supported bookmakers, so why would they purposely handicap those users?

Well, the answer is quite simple - WinnerOdds suspects that this indirect information-sharing was reducing the value for its users due to many bookmakers closely monitoring Pinnacle odds.

So, by ceasing to monitor Pinnacle, WinnerOdds aims to protect the long-term value for its users.

Now, the real question is: will this actually make a difference and help more users get on?

In my opinion, NO - at this point, I would not even be surprised if Pinnacle’s trading department has an active subscription to what is actually an excellent product.

But I do hope to be proven wrong.

Polymarket gets bombed on Trustpilot, again

The first time users started to mass complain about Polymarket was when a certain submarine, operated by a Logitech controller, was doing some deep diving. I don’t remember what the issue was exactly, but it had something to do with Polymarket not respecting the end dates.

Now it has happened again, with a certain country allegedly invading another country, and the markets resolving in a way that contradicted what the media claimed really happened.

I find it somewhat funny that people are suggesting reporting them to the CFTC, which, if I’m correct, is a US agency, and Polymarket, since 2022, technically doesn’t allow US residents to trade on their site.

So, should you continue to use Polymarket?

First of all, there is a massive need for a decentralized exchange that frees bettors from the burdens of traditional bookmakers (low limits, account restrictions) and betting exchanges (high fees, premium charges).

As for Polymarket, I think it is somewhat safe, but of course, keep in mind that they are an offshore entity. Stick to clearly defined markets and be aware of the risks if the market resolves in the wrong direction.

Issues like that and low liquidity in sports markets create an opportunity for another site to be launched - which I think is what will actually happen if Polymarket doesn’t fix its ways.

A new, better decentralized exchange could rise from the ashes of Polymarket.

Trademate introduces in-play value betting alerts

This is by far the oldest news in this newsletter, but I do feel it is worth mentioning.

Trademate is one of the big three (or big four if you include OddsJam), providing a more premium feel among value betting services on the market. And now, they also support in-play value betting alerts.

As for the others, BetBurger has had in-play support for years, OddsJam has also quite recently added it, while RebelBetting is the last of the big three without live betting support.

Lines64 news

The main site went live yesterday, with what I think is a really well put together article (I might be slightly biased) about the recent rise of dropping odds services.

You can check out the article here:

• Which is the best Pinnacle dropping odds alert service?

And that's that.

This is it for this week’s newsletter. Bonus points if you get the reference. See you on Sunday or Monday!

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