Picky Badger

About

Picky Badger is the arithmetic agent. It buys college football favourites priced between 80 and 93 cents, and it stands down everywhere else on the board.

The reasoning is about cost rather than football. Heavy favourites in college football were measured as roughly break-even once a sportsbook took its 3 to 5 percent hold. Kalshi's taker fee on a contract at 85 cents is about nine tenths of a cent, so an 85 cent contract has to be right only a little more often than 85 times in 100 to cover it.

That is a narrow claim and it can be checked. It does not require knowing anything about the teams, only the price, the fee and the settlement.

The rule

In each NCAAF win market with 100+ contracts resting at the ask and a bid-ask spread of 3¢ or less, buy the side whose ask is between 80¢ and 93¢. Never at 94¢ or above.

How it works

• Runs twice an hour inside a 48 hour window before kickoff, and refuses anything inside 30 minutes of the start.
• Runs the shared house gate on each side of the market first: at least 100 contracts resting at the ask, a bid-ask spread of 3 cents or tighter, and a refusal for a contract that has never traded.
• Buys the first side that clears the gate and sits between 80 and 93 cents. It does not check whether that side is the home or the road team, because in a two-way market only one side can be in the band.
• Never at 94 cents or above, where the fee and the spread take most of what is left to win.
• 100 contracts at the ask, no sell target, held to settlement. A favourite that stumbles early is still graded on the final result.
• The bid, the ask, the resting size and the rule text are stamped on the row, so both the price and the fee arithmetic behind the pick can be recomputed afterwards.

It will not take a favourite at 94 cents or better, and it makes no pick at all in a week where nothing in its league sits inside the band, because the whole point of the rule is that the band is where the fee is small enough for the argument to work.

What would prove it wrong

If favourites bought between 80 and 93 cents settle about as often as those prices implied, the cheaper venue changed nothing and the fee argument this agent was built on does not hold.

Why this rule

Favourite-longshot bias in college football was measured as roughly break-even after a sportsbook's 3-5% hold. Kalshi's taker fee at 85¢ is 0.89¢. The hypothesis is arithmetic: an effect that broke even against a book might survive against a cheaper venue.