Paper bets

Bets suggested by the daily slate builder (value singles + a fun parlay + a longshot).

Knockout football is cagey (legs tighten when losing means going home): under 2.5 goals when the sim agrees (any positive edge). Hypothesis-tagged.

In-play fade-the-goal: when a goal goes in, back the CONCEDING side at the real live price if the conditioned posterior still shows >=10% edge. The bayes replay's best surviving policy (+11.7% ROI over 1,324 bets on the own-goal-corrected sample, 6/10 winning seasons vs +1.1% control). Placed by the watcher, max 2 per contest, savepoint-safe. The definitive grade is this live sample at real odds.

Promoted from the matrix tournament (won ALL 4 backtest seasons, worst season +$471): when the referee's card average is in the top tercile (>=3.52/game), the match tightens — back the DRAW blind. Model-free context bet; forward trial to survive multiple-comparisons doubt.

Line-movement study (78k selections, 20yr): big steam (4+ prob-pt moves) is the one bucket the close doesn't fully absorb (+2.3pts residual), concentrated in soft leagues (+5.9% EL2) and away sides (+6.4%). Hypothesis-grade (CI spans zero) — this forward trial is the judge. Bets any selection whose consensus implied prob rose 4+ pts across our own daily snapshots.

MLS forward trial: back any 1x2 selection where the fixtures sim beats the best price by 10%. Higher bar than WC — the sim is new to this league and MLS draws are notoriously frequent.

Market-structure play: when bookmakers DISAGREE hard on a price (cross-book spread > 8%), take the best available price on the side with any positive Elo edge — someone is wrong, take the generous one.

Tom's both-teams structure: when EACH side of one match has a qualifying prop_soa_v1 player, parlay the pair ($3). Mildly negatively correlated legs (one side dominating starves the other) — the trial measures whether the price makes up for it.

In-play double-down: when a pending pre-match 1x2 single is TRAILING at a poll and the conditioned model posterior still shows >=8% edge at the real live price, add one $10 bet on the same side. The one in-play behavior that beat its control in the 3,454-match bayes replay (+8.1% vs +2.5%, exp #206). Placed by the inplay watcher, not the executor; graded against REAL live odds.

Mean-reversion creative: fade sides whose Elo momentum is scorching (opponent momentum in top band) — the market overprices streaks. Expected to be humbled; that is the point of testing it.

Anytime-scorer v2.1: involvement-first gates (forwards gi>=0.40/90, attacking mids gi>=0.50/90 — position-only banned Bellingham-class players the involvement rate wants; defenders stay out at 0/9), confirmed XI, price <= 4.5, full scorer model, edge >= 10%. Retested on the real graded window: rejects all five of v1's losers, admits nothing that lost. A/B twin of v1.

The fun one: a $2 three-leg parlay of the day's highest-edge independent legs across all live strategies' candidates. Margin math says it should bleed; it exists to make the math visible.

Who's on the mound matters most in baseball. Bet an MLB moneyline side when its probable starter's season ERA is at least 1.00 better than the opponent's (mlb.starter_era_gap, signed to the bet side) AND our Elo sees any positive edge at the best live price. First strategy to use contest-scoped context metrics.

Score-or-assist singles with the context gates baked in from day one (graded WC window: naked SoA -60%, elite lane -51%, price 5+ 0-for-13 -> tails banned): goal involvement >= 0.40/90 over last 12 apps, price 2.0-4.5 only, expected starter, elo not against (within 50), and the keeper gate — only bet INTO a cold opposing keeper (team.keeper_form_v1 below pool median). Kalshi SoA settles via settle-kalshi-props.

The referee signal finally bettable: card-happy ref (top tercile, >=3.52/game) -> back total cards OVER at the main line from the new odds feed. Settles from post-match team stats.

World Cup knockout chaos: longshots priced 4-10 where the sim still sees positive edge. Small stakes, big stories.

World Cup: back any 1x2 selection where the Poisson fixtures-sim beats the best live price by 8%. Caveat honored: the sim runs hot on tournament data, hence the high bar. [2026-07-07: gap-filter gate mandatory — naked longshot gaps went 8W-49L in the cup retro and the gf twin vetoed them all.]

Law-derived (winless-run replicates in 4 sports): bet AGAINST any side whose opponent... no — whose own winless run is 4+ games, when priced under 2.8. Fade the drought.

World Cup accumulator: combines today's two best singles actually placed by the WC strategies (wc_sim_value_v1 / wc_upset_hunter_v1 / wc_form_edge_v1 — every leg already passed its own gates) into one 2-leg parlay. Small stake, tournament-sized price.

The first player-level strategy: a gradient-boosted scorer model (rolling goals/shots per 90, starting rate, team attack vs opponent defence, confirmed lineups when available) prices every Kalshi anytime-goalscorer market and bets where its probability beats the fee-adjusted ask by 10%+. Settles from Kalshi's own results.

World Cup: back any 1x2 pick where the fixtures-sim beats the best live price by 5%+ AND the bookmakers disagree with each other by 4%+ on that price — tournament markets get confused, and confusion is where a model edge is most believable. The lower edge bar than wc_sim_value_v1 is paid for by the confusion gate.

Simple 2-leg parlay of the day's PROVEN-class bets only (ko unders, ref-gated cards over, style-gated corners over — the classes that are 11-for-13 live). Two +EV legs compound edge multiplicatively; small flat stake because variance compounds too. Legs come from bets the proven strategies actually placed today.

Half-cover dutch: back the sim's 1x2 pick (edge >= 5%) AND the draw, draw stake sized to refund HALF the outlay on a draw. The 21-season backtest (exp #203) found full cover overpays for insurance (median $898) while half-cover beats straight outright: median $1,060 vs $995, worst season $87 vs $17.

Layer 3, the bet-maker: builds the best BASKET across everything priced (ballast/value/longshot buckets, one bet per contest, quarter-Kelly, model blended 50/50 with the market) and Monte Carlos each slate before betting. Historical replay verdict: with the current football model's edge it would have gone bust over 21 seasons ($1000 -> $0.76) — this forward trial tests whether the newer, humbler probabilities change that.

Straight Elo value on MLB moneylines: bet either side when Elo win probability beats the best price by 4%.

Staking A/B twin of wc_sim_value_v1: identical signal (Poisson sim beats best price by 8%) but sized by kelly_of_ruin — half-Kelly scaled by the posterior probability this bankroll's edge is real, from its own settled record. Measures the staking policy, not the signal. [2026-07-07: gap-filter gate mandatory — naked longshot gaps went 8W-49L in the cup retro and the gf twin vetoed them all.]

Baseball is the highest-variance major sport (rating->win only +0.12) yet the public loves favorites. Back MLB underdogs priced 2.2-3.5 when our Elo edge is at worst -3%.

Mad-game mode, live: the whole $1000 game budget committed to ONE match. Plan: spray_and_pray — equal-revenue dutch with a +10% return target, the one-game-format champion of the 12-plan mad-game replay (exp #225: median $1,100, 75.6% hit rate, 0.4% bust vs tranche_ladder's $758/10.7%). By 12' the watcher covers the largest outcome set whose dutch return clears the target at real live prices, stakes ~1/price (small on longshots, big on favourites), and holds the unstaked remainder as the designed loss buffer. tranche_ladder remains available via bet_rule.plan. One contest per day.