I've taken a hiatus after recent betting events, brought on not only by the sheer exhaustion of the season, but also because some of recent results have made me questioning what I do as a professional gambler, as well of the fundamentals of the events I am betting on, and how profoundly predictable vs random these events are.
I started betting on mass events and tv shows around 11 years ago and, since then, my professional gambling career had been going without a hitch.
I saw profits from 22 events consecutively until the Ukrainian war and have been able to build profitability through the years in a stable and continuous manner, avoiding remarkable losses and resulting in many 5/6-figure wins, making me naively believe that a continuing progress in both profitability and analysis is a logical outcome and, gaining more experience with each step, I may be able to reduce the errors in my judgement somewhere close to zero.
However, rather than another success, these past few months have brought me three of the most unsuccessful events of my over-a-decade long career, at the same time being transparently vocal about my predictions.
Although the monetary losses are minimal for me, the thing that I find problematic is that some of these results have made me start to question my own fundamental understanding of these events, something I thought I profoundly, and analytically understood for so long.
While one can never reach the level of all-knowing, all-predicting judgement, I have believed there are things one can be close to certain of - when there’s enough information which qualifies as signal - with strong conviction that yield very low risk.
And even when you’re wrong, then at least the outcomes have usually made sense and felt logical on hindsight.
After all - although being influenced by ongoing cultural trends - human nature and perception follow fundamentally timeless laws and hence the mass behavior has been rather predictable in times where the culture isn’t dominated by volatility.
Even in mistakes, there’s a lesson usually. In the end, we are natural pattern-recognition machines.
We break down what makes sense, what one can learn, what’s important. This helps make a better, smarter gamblers, which leads to better outcomes in the future.
Although history isn’t the best predictor for the future because real life is always in the flux, there are still lessons to learn and takeaways to take to be better-prepared and understand the parts of the system better.
I have been less able to shed clarity on some of the recent events and my performance during them as in the past, so I will try to analyze it here first from my perspective and provide some speculative ideas about the overall cultural standings as it stands currently.
If you're not interested in my personal segue regarding to recent events, you can skip the next part and move on to general speculation in the last part.
A loss almost doubling in amount to the loss of my biggest one prior, which was a mid 4-figure sum in Sanremo 2019 market. The result here wasn't really that surprising, so I won’t stop here for long. My main reason for backing Anna Bergendhal to Q was that I considered Angelino to Q sentiment to be false and more of something which reflected the perception of a smaller bubble. Instead of laying Angelino, I decided to back Bergendhal for the following reasons:
Firstly, because I didn't see serious threat in this heat – which turned out to be a major blindspot for me considering that Medina finished 3rd in the Final afterwards – which resulted only by my own personal negative bias towards the music they represent.
Secondly, because though I thought the effort was weaker on a mainstream level. I personally preferred "Higher Ground" to "Kingdom Come", which shows the paradox of how dangerous it can be to bet on artistic events when you have strong artistic opinions. In that sense, the type of events that don’t involve personal opinion or bias feel safer to bet on, since one can more easily avoid biased blind spots and gain a sense of higher objectivity. Considering my great run prior, I sat on a comfortable profit garnered from the start of the year, but the two setbacks I will cover below have seemed to turn the end of my season into unprofitable territory.
Considering that I was one of the most generous investors to the UK this season (in multiple markets, as well as putting a lot of pressure for odds to stay as low as they did throughout the season), backing it continuously from the end of February all the way to the Final, I was expecting this season to bring me more success than it did. I was also investing into Spain in top markets before Eurojury which turned out to be a clearly profitable investment, but the biggest problem for me was this season that I had the most early positions on outright ever on a worst possible season to have them.
I was backing Ukraine already big before the war when Pash was still in the game, so I had built a pretty decent position on them before the war and before her withdrawal and started laying it off when the war started and even kept aggressively shorting Ukraine when I had get rid off my position already.
It didn't really seem as a bad idea, considering that Ukraine seemed to be not too far off of withdrawal already before the war and considering the Betfair market rules: in the case of withdrawal, all the Ukraine lays would turn into 100% ROI.
Also, in case they overcome all the obstacles of participating and even being able to have a live presence in Turin, I hoped for Eurojury as a backup savior for the odds to drift.
Although I expected juries to have a rather high motivation to vote for Ukraine in the contest live setting where they have to publicly announce the points, I didn't expect the motivation to be so high already in Eurojury context, also considering that the sample of musicians who reacted to Ukraine pre-Eurojury, seemed to be not very excited and rather prefered Go_A over Kalush Orchestra.
So, although the jury voting section gave some trading opportunities to lower the damage, my Eurovision would have ended up in profits - which it did not - without laying Ukraine heavily at the beginning of the season. My outright losses canceled out my top markets wins.
This is another example - which was also my most tremendous fear during the season - of rational thinking not going very far when there’s strong collective force behind something.
As well, many of the arguments against Ukraine were based on historical patterns, a logical fallacy which is one of the most common reasons for speculators to go bust (e.g Taleb talks about it in his Incerto series).
Another early season mistake for me was to back Italy on the outright.
Italy's total failure is something which still puzzles me, because there seemed to be plenty of people who saw it coming.
Although I grew more skeptical during rehearsals after seeing the staging concept, their jury final performance felt decent, and there was a lot of previous proof of their fundamental strength.
As well, I personally saw it as an emotionally impactful contemporary song, performed by charismatic singers with a chemistry, and by artists who have a strong momentum and fanbase across the Europe. An act which I thought will have a wider demographical appeal than “Soldi” had.
I had previously seen many times how strong fundamentals acts are still doing very well in the end, although feeling rather irrelevant and being discounted by the rehearsals bubble.
In 2019, Duncan’s live performance was far from being impactful and either Mahmood himself didn't come up with a very convincing live package at the same year.
Netta and Gjon’s Tears are few other examples of the fundamentally strong acts to what rehearsals bubble had overreacted to and who ended up with a great result.
I saw a lot of similarities in this situation and I can’t say that I still have a very clear understanding of how the failure ended up being so extreme.
As I understand that I can’t be always correct, I don’t really feel bad about my analysis in hindsight considering all the information I had.
Nonetheless I should have avoided placing early bets on Italy because intuitively it always made sense that it’s dynamically the type of act which will probably drift in odds during rehearsals, while Sam Ryder and Chanel are the type of performers where you could see a big improvement in impression during rehearsals when more people realize the strength they will have as stage acts in a show context.
Although, to be fair, considering the size of my roll compared to the low liquidity of the tv specials markets, I have often faced situations where I have had to place bets with a valuation which I wouldn’t go after for from the perspective of value betting.
Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get in enough money to maintain and grow my profitability and this career and business wouldn’t feel attractive enough to me for putting so much time and dedication in it.
But the premise for this strategy has been that with enough information I should able to see the reality as it is, and I am ready to quickly adjust and/or reverse my positions (as much as possible) if I realize I’ve been wrong and my positions are going against the truth. A mindset which has been implied successfully also by George Soros.
Another puzzle for me is how did France end up feeling so irrelevant and end up with an absolute car crash result 2nd to last.
It did really well with my personal casuals samples (who showed the most preference for Italy, Ukraine and Finland last year) and it also won Reddit poll, which was more indicative for casuals taste last year compared to other pre-polls (Måneskin winning it, Go_A being 4th).
What exactly made it feel so irrelevant to the viewers in the context of the Final show? I didn’t take them purely as a superficial comparison to Go_A, but I sensed from the comments and talking to casuals that the overlap of people who liked “Shum” last year and “Fulenn” this year was significant and they seemed to take it as a cool and trendy “banger”. Nonetheless, considering that most Eurovision gamblers didn't predict success for Alvan & Ahez on the day of Final, I guess that wasn't a very surprising result in general.
Overall, if I analyze the detailed voting results, there seems to be plenty of historical voting patterns broken this year and there are more unexplainable and weird results - at least for me personally - than I've seen in any other Eurovision and which I can’t really explain well without a hindsight bias.
It is also hard to argue with casuals now that the voting isn't political. If you spend several months daily on analyzing Eurovision and you have argued for years with casuals that the politics actually don't matter that much for the end result as they claim, then after this year it will be pretty hard to do that and my overall perception and some of the beliefs regarding Eurovision fundamental dynamics have changed. That’s a mentally stressful event to experience after dedicating so much time through years for its analysis.
While the Eurovision Song Contest results weren’t the most generous for me, Britain’s Got Talent left me even more confused considering my general strategies for interpreting the incoming live stats.
I have no beef with Axel Blake winning in general. I considered him as one of the favorites already before his Semi-Final and I was able to back him at 100/1 odds just two days before his 2nd performance.
I had a green position on him before the Final show, but what I can’t comprehend well, is what exactly happened during the live show, taking in consideration the big reaction and stats for Tom Ball - who was my most sizable green position on the market before Semis, but whose prediction I lowered after his Semi-Final - which made me back him with a strong volume and high confidence in live play.
Stats can be wrong and they rarely are correct in a very literal sense - interpretation of them has been always important - but even if they are wrong they usually feel more logical and generally my interpretation of them has been profitable.
I expected Tom Ball to be a hidden vote guy based on previous proof and on my fundamental reasoning.
He won his Semi-Final against acts which had shown more strength in stats, and his stats had been mediocre before the Final.
It felt a bit similar situation to Jon Courtenay: lukewarm reaction in Semi-Final and then an explosive reaction in the Final.
Tom Ball live stats were not only signaling landslide win against the field in this year's final, but his Twitter Live seemed very impressive even based on historical standards. I also received text messages from casuals during the show signaling a very strong reaction to him, which combined with the stats made me confident of his incoming win.
As well in general, singers have often had more hidden vote, while comedians have been overperforming in stats.
What exactly turned the tables around this time?
Why did a black comedian from cosmopolitan London have a significantly stronger hidden vote than a singer who represented very relatable character and story for target groups who usually generate hidden vote the most?
How did Blake differentiate dynamically so much compared to Kojo and Nabil in previous years? Also, compared to Eurovision, BGT live stats shouldn't be very polluted in geographical sense and have been usually more reliable than this year (if we look Semi-Finals actual voting figures vs online platforms data, then there are more oddities coming up).
Are the changes based more on demographics or cultural changes?
Also numerous aspects in Eurovision detailed results hint to some demographical changes in voting audience, including Serbia's high points from countries where you wouldn't really have expected that.
In hindsight, I have considered that my fundamental understanding of British culture is shallow and I may have conveyed my American perception - a country where I have lived for a considerable period of time - automatically to UK and hence my expectations and categorizations were wrong. These societies are dynamically different and in UK the perception is probably more class-based compared to US where the race plays a bigger role.
In the following paragraph I try to offer some speculative ideas of what has been recently happening in the culture and I am doing it with the full awareness that these theories are likely influenced by hindsight bias, have a small and potentially misleading sample, and I am trying to generalize and force patterns into where there’s more correlation element with not necessarily causation included.
Nonetheless, I am trying to make more sense of the recent results - which partly feel too odd to me to fully explain without a hindsight bias influenced narration - and hence I give it a shot to think things clearer for myself as well, even if I am fooled by randomness.
In general most of these trends aren’t very recent (and not necessarily consciously evident), they have been around and developing for years, but I would guess the war situation could make then even more present.
Culture has always been in the flux of change.
The recent decades have offered the Western world a very peaceful phase in history, and our personal perception has been guided mostly by our pleasure and personal dreams-driven hopes and expectations. We’ve lived in a fluid society where we have endless amount of opportunities - mixed with a peer-pressured cultural zeitgeist - and which has been changing in a very fast-paced way after the spread of internet - and especially since the wider availability of streaming services, smartphones etc - and the pace of change has been only scaling up. I can recall that 10 years ago Eurovision felt more easily predictable because the cultural trends weren't really changing that fast, the culture was more stable, and you could base your predictions more on timeless fundamentals.
People didn't crave for new variations and for something fresh in as fast-paced and intense way as now, neither was culture as fragmented as it is now. In regard to happenings since 24th of February, it would make sense that if our minds are influenced or focused more on a danger and compassion, we aren’t behaving anymore in as stable ways as in a peaceful and stable cultural phase where we can allow our focus to concentrate more on lower key "first world" values in life.
Hence, our behavior and perception can turn into more chaotic and less predictable state.
I think it was *eurovicious* who once coined in his article in Sofabet a term "timeless dream state” (one of the supposedly “secret receipts” for success) in his Eurovision fundamental analysis.
He suggested that successful Eurovision acts share a commonality: they absorb us into a timeless dream condition where we forget all the real life worries and the experience transcends us in a spiritual way.
I would expect impactful acts in this category to do well still, but should they do as well as in the past while our attention span is getting only shorter and when the cultural zeitgeist has put us in a mentally high alert situation influenced by the global happenings.
Wouldn’t it make sense that in a current situation it would feel harder for people to go obliviously into a timeless dream state as in a more positively tuned safer phase? Could even the ways we want to escape from the reality be different now: based on more realistic pure laugh & joy, not on abstract and more illusional way many more traditional music acts transcend us (and are based more on the hopes and feelings of the ego not on collective joy).
Also, one could claim that the RO of the shows has had less impact than usual in recent events, which may suggest that we don’t look the shows in as absorbed and oblivious ways as in more stable periods.
From the general cultural perspective - since we have proactive social media platforms (e.g Instagram) which give us an opportunity to be “movie stars” ourselves, the whole aura around celebrity cult doesn’t feel as enigmatic as before, the line between the real life and the screen life has narrowed, which means there’s less magic and mystery about it.
This is combined with the factor that our general intelligence and self-assurance have grown after the information is widely available, which makes us also more opinionated and proactive actors in society.
(And more sarcastic. If I open my feed or online conversations window, I can’t help but notice how much is laughing emoji being used and how much is the tone of our perception influenced by sarcasm recently. Our society has gained awareness of how naive our previous Hollywood- and Disney-dominated narratives were in our culture, and prefers realness over illusions.)
In Britain's Got Talent all three outstandingly talented singers with a classical Cinderella story underperformed in the end, especially considering the running order.
Some people argued that the main reason for that was the vote split between them, but considering how outstanding and likeable Maxwell and Ball would have felt in a more distant past, it feels to me that people may be getting exhausted of these recycled ideas which have been pushed to public conspicuously through the years.
You could see the same pattern in Eurovision where the acts which had less to do with music in traditional sense, did better in televote than the more traditional acts.
Ukraine's and Serbia's success had considerably to do with "issue voting" motivation (or more elaborately, with making a statement or voicing an opinion) and not overly by music itself. While Moldova was mostly selling pure joy to the audience and Spain was more focused on the dance performance.
This and also the previous takeaway would give at least some explanation of why Italy, Sweden and UK rather underperformed in televote considering the other positive things going on them (strong musical quality, overall emotional impactfulness, good RO for the latter two, etc).
They were more focused on music in traditional sense - especially the former two - and also narratively more recycled ideas.
*phase coined in this context by Krzysztof Gondek
While I - as well Miikka Anttonen - noted out after last year's Eurovision that it was a living proof of the authenticity trend in culture (which has been showing up in many fields in life in recent years), this year's contest proved it even more.
Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania..- they all overperformed compared to their more generic or “plastic” competitors who didn't perform an act representive of their culture.
Also Spain, UK and Italy were using their cultural stereotype very well, sang in native language, and felt authentic from cultural standpoint.
Eight countries of the final TOP11 performed their song - at least partly - in their native tongue and were representative of their culture.
There weren't even many songs in Final which didn't do that. Most of them failed to Q already in Semi-Finals where televoters preferred more authentic and cultural acts over more generic English songs.
In a very globalized world people crave for real cultural outputs which stress their unique cultural and ethnic group identities (which is subconsciously kind of self-preserving reflex in a world where these identities are threatened).
For me, the most embarrassing or frustrating aspect about this season's loss of money with Ukraine was that I've been a big advocate and hobby theorist for hivemindness and collective consciousness theories, which are also popularized in books as "Hivemind" by Sarah Rose Cavanagh, "The Interbrain: How Unconscious Connections Influence Human Behavior and Relationships" by Digby Dantam and "Connected: The Emergence of Global Consciousness" by Roger D. Nelson among others.
If I had skipped the national selections pre-season and entered into Eurovision season with more distant observer perspective, then Ukraine's win would have felt to me more certain than it did.
Partly because I would have made less comparisons with history and it would have made it easier to see the truth from casual viewers and juries perspective, but also because I've always valued the importance of how culture connects us and how we can have an interbrain phenomenon between people (especially after the rise of internet globally after when we are connected most of the time, no matter the physical distance).
As the “Hivemind” book author has suggested, we have a “switch” in our brain which can put us into very collective hive mindset with the other people and what makes the collective consciousness very powerful in these situations.
The impact and importance of the Ukraine war for European collective consciousness is the most immense in many decades and certainly the greatest during my lifetime so far.
A tragic situation like that can trigger very intense oneness feeling among people who are potentially influenced by these events.
And there's no experience more powerful in the world as the oneness feeling with human kind and other groups of fellow people, this makes us feel more connected and less polarized (as well causes an ego death at least to some extent), and makes the inner group feeling widen.
It's a powerful spiritual experience which can override all other potential strong feelings we could feel as human beings.
As Joseph Henrich points out in his book "The Secret Of Our Success. How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution..": the evolution has been driven mostly on cultural and group-based survival rather than solely on individual selfish motivations.
Russia’s aggression has put us into a survival mode as a whole European civilization.
This can be potentially a small sample bias and it's a pure speculation, but isn't it strange that since the rise of the internet there have been suddenly numerous instances where European collective mass events results overlap remarkably?
Greece won Euro Cup in 2004 and Eurovision right after in 2005. It's a very low probabilty event for them to win even either of them based on their historical track record.
Portugal won the Euro Cup in 2016 and Eurovision right after in 2017 (again a low probability event even for one trophy).
Italy won the Eurovision and Euro Cup both in 2021.
And now England has broken their long-lasting curse both for major football and music competitions in a row (2nd place in Euro Cup 2021, 2nd place in Eurovision 2022. And as a cherry on top - winning Women’s Euro for the first time ever).
Correlation doesn’t equal with causation, but could be there be any influence of collective consciousness or some hive-minded momentum in play for these type of odd coincidences?
There can be some demographic changes among viewers and among people who actually vote, but it is very hard to speculate about it with as low amount of information as we have now.
But I guess one of the questions would be if Covid has had any influence on the voting demographics?
You could ask if it could have had negative impact for performances which are foremost targeted to older age groups? Although the % of old people passing away compared to overall population in these age groups doesn’t seem to be significant enough to have a considerable impact.
Also, if and how much have the ideological trends changed the viewing experience? Is the viewership also now more progressive and open-minded in their overall world perception and hence the interpretation has changed?
Considering the rise of streaming platforms, has there been any change in tv shows viewership or in the group of proactive viewers demographics? Have some dynamics of the voting itself changed which can impact the outcomes?
And of course, has there been any change in the group of people who are more actively signaling their support in social media platforms?
How much can we even analyze voting demographics in previously established categories and how much have our tribal patterns - based on giving valuable predictive information - changed recently because of the changing culture and changing sense of belonging?
In general, are the results impacted more by the changing demographics, or by the changing culture and its impact to people's perception and preferences?
Or is it mostly a random walk which we try to overanalyze and over-rationalize?
It reminds me that as professional gamblers we have a constant check of reality and no matter how adequate or exquisite some theories or patterns may feel in storytelling element, in real action we will fight for survival and will be reminded that the world is too complex to fully fit it into very straightforward theories and answers, and hence the open-mindedness and flexibility are the keys.
Also, we all have our specific strengths as bettors and analysts, and maybe I’ve just recently encountered uncomfortable settings for my unique set of skills? While there are other gamblers who are thriving in current environment which feels too messy for my liking.
And even if we can trace down ongoing cultural trends, we should already start preparing for upcoming trends.
Trends are called trends because they are temporary, even if they last a longer period of time.
And our perception - as life in general - is greatly based on the need for finding balance. In the sense of culture the balance between what is pushed to you and what is the opposite to it, what could give us an opportunity to escape from daily exhaustion & reality and make us excited.
After we get exhausted by authenticity and realness, what is our next craving to come?
I end the article with a summary from my own professional gambling perspective.
To be honest, after recent events I don’t feel as confident of my pattern-recognition machine sharpness as I did just couple of months ago.
Maybe I need a bit of time to adjust to cultural changes, or maybe these are just random setbacks, but right now it makes it harder to use betting strategies which demand very high conviction.
In the past, I have created and produced many culturally relevant mass events and one of the reasons why I have preferred specials betting over actual creation in recent years, has been that betting on tv shows has always felt to me less risky and in a more controlled setting than actually creating something or a real life business, where you have less control over the variables which decide the outcome: (one-person sample) people's decisions who have high power and impact, weather risks for outdoors events, many interrelated social relationships, etc.
Tv shows have been structurally almost the same every year and no one is forcing you to make any bets before you know all the variables (RO, staging, etc) as in real life business and social creation. And you can usually back off or change your positions if you want.
Now with the most-fast-paced-changing culture ever maybe it proves a point that there's not much point in focusing on pattern-recognition and the best strategy to see the truth should be based more on just sensing the cultural zeitgeist and being part of the herd.
In the end, people make their decisions based on how they actually feel and what do they actually think, and both of these aspects are highly influenced by the current culture. And to sense the culture you gotta stop over-rationalizing and turn the switch in your brain into hive mindset as to be part of the collective consciousness which hides the most valuable information for predicting human behavior and perception.
History may rhyme but you will not find the lyrics from there.
