March Madness First Round - Thursday/Friday Games Thread

1. Kalshi has a market cap of $11 billion, so they probably could get financing for a $1 bil liability.

2. The odds of a perfect bracket (random picks only) is 1 in 9.2 quintillion and (using strategy) is 1 in 120 billion.

3. The odds of a perfect bracket up to the Final Four (using strategy) would be 1 in 15 billion.

I think there are much, much greater risks to life and limb than the perfect bracket. You can start with bets on when we bomb Iran.
These sorts of things are usually insured. Basically just like hole in one contests.

Berkshire Hathaway has an employee perfect bracket contest which Buffett has never paid.
 
Worth noting that one of SMU’s starters is out for this game. Still though they don’t look particularly good at all.

I actually didn’t get to watch any of our game against SMU for some reason so not really sure how they handled us so easily.
 
Our defense that game was horrible and let Boopie do whatever he wanted. Regardless we are far more talented and should have won that game.
There is a bit of a Boopie and egg situation there. Was Boopie so good because our defense was so bad, or was our defense so bad because Boopie was so good?

Boopie has missed a bunch of wide open shots this game and hit a bunch of contested (and open) shots against us. SMU is a bit of a bad-Boopie/good-Boopie team. A bit like the good-Caleb Love/bad-Caleb Love teams. Miami of Ohio got bad Boopie and we got good Boopie.

But, yeah, we should have won.
 
1. Kalshi has a market cap of $11 billion, so they probably could get financing for a $1 bil liability.

2. The odds of a perfect bracket (random picks only) is 1 in 9.2 quintillion and (using strategy) is 1 in 120 billion.

3. The odds of a perfect bracket up to the Final Four (using strategy) would be 1 in 15 billion.

I think there are much, much greater risks to life and limb than the perfect bracket. You can start with bets on when we bomb Iran.
1. I very much doubt they could get that financing. It's not public; it's not profitable; and it recently raised $1B in a round valuing it at $11B. Meaning it has never come close to having that kind of cash. VCs don't invest in billion dollar liabilities.

2. Yes, I'm aware my concerns are longshots, and yes also Kalshi does other stuff potentially worse.

Corporate finance is essentially a contest between equity and fixed claims. One of the best things equity can do for itself is a) raise a lot of debt financing and then b) bet it all on a longshot. Debt takes the loss; equity takes the gain. Here, there's only downside for Kalshi, assuming that the upside is just advertising. But the point is the moral hazard.

One can imagine a similar contest except not with such long odds. Like predict the EPL table or the European Championship bracket or whatever.
 
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