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Casey Montgomery, Betting desk
Betting desk

Casey Montgomery

Covers the betting market as a market: participants, information flow, mispricings and a house edge. Asks whether a price is wrong, not whether a team is good.

When he files: Fridays, ahead of the weekend card, plus any day a number moves enough to matter.

The full masthead entry →

0Held up
0Missed
7Still open

Nothing resolved yet. The open calls carry their own due dates below, and they get graded whatever happens.

Every call, graded

OpenJul 31, 2026

Across the eight Friday MLB cards from 2026-08-07 through 2026-09-25, in games where DraftKings' published splits show one moneyline side holding a handle percentage at least 25 points above its own ticket percentage, the consensus closing moneyline on that side finishes SHORTER than the price printed beside that split in at least 60 percent of cases. Method, fixed in advance: the split and the paired price both come from DraftKings Network's dated game-splits post for that Friday, read the same morning; the close is VegasInsider's consensus moneyline for that game; a price that finishes identical counts as FALSE; every qualifying game on those eight cards is in the sample and the count is printed when this scores. Fewer than 25 qualifying games and the call is VOID rather than graded.

Resolves by Oct 5, 2026

The piece that made itSixty-Two Percent Of The Tickets, Ten Percent Of The Money
OpenAug 7, 2026

On 2026-09-10, DraftKings' average overround across the eight NFL division-winner books still exceeds Kalshi's average overround across the same eight books by at least 5.0 percentage points. Method, fixed in advance: for each division, convert every team's price to an implied probability, sum the four, subtract 100; average those eight figures per venue; take DraftKings minus Kalshi. Kalshi prices are bid/ask midpoints on series KXNFL* pulled the same day.

Was due Sep 10, 2026. Still ungraded.

The piece that made itThe +305 On Your Screen Is Not The Price
OpenAug 14, 2026

Across the six Friday MLB cards from 2026-08-21 through 2026-09-25, in games where DraftKings' published splits at the morning read show one moneyline side holding a handle percentage at least 25 points above its own ticket percentage, TWO tests are scored on that same side and they disagree. Test A, the de-vigged test: the side's implied win probability at the consensus close, after removing the margin proportionally from both sides of the pair, is HIGHER than its de-vigged probability at the morning read. Test B, the posted-price test: the side's consensus closing American price is SHORTER than the price printed beside its split at the morning read. The claim is that Test A scores at least 60 percent while Test B scores under 50 percent. Method fixed in advance: the split, its paired price and the game count come from DraftKings' splits page read the same morning and captured to file, both sides of each pair recorded so the margin can be removed; the close is VegasInsider's consensus moneyline for that game; an exactly equal price or probability counts as FALSE on its own test; every qualifying game on the six cards is in the sample and the count is printed when this scores. Fewer than 20 qualifying games and the call is VOID rather than graded.

Resolves by Oct 5, 2026

The piece that made itA Price Can Move Six Cents Without Anybody Changing Their Mind
OpenAug 21, 2026

BYU finishes the 2026 regular season ranked HIGHER than Penn State in the College Football Playoff selection committee's final rankings, released the weekend of December 6, 2026. Method fixed in advance: the committee's own final published rankings, not the AP or coaches polls. If exactly one of the two appears in that final ranking, the ranked team finishes higher. If NEITHER appears, the call is VOID rather than graded.

Resolves by Dec 8, 2026

The piece that made itA Penny Is The Smallest Opinion This Market Can Have
OpenAug 21, 2026

At least TWO of these eight teams are among the twelve selected for the College Football Playoff field announced Sunday, December 6, 2026: BYU, Washington, SMU, Utah, Iowa, Houston, Louisville, Missouri. Those eight are exactly the teams that were BOTH in the AP preseason top 25 released 2026-08-17 AND quoted at 0 bid, 1 cent ask in Kalshi's KXNCAAF national title book when it was read on 2026-08-21 at 10:36 a.m. Pacific. The list is fixed here and does not change. Method: the CFP's own announced field.

Resolves by Dec 8, 2026

The piece that made itA Penny Is The Smallest Opinion This Market Can Have
OpenAug 28, 2026

Kalshi's daily closing quote on the San Francisco Super Bowl contract KXSB-27-SF will read 4 cents bid and 5 cents ask on EVERY one of the 19 daily closes from 2026-08-28 through 2026-09-15 inclusive. That window contains the NFL cut from 90 players to 53 at 6 p.m. Eastern on August 30, waiver settlement on August 31, and San Francisco's Week 1 game against the Los Angeles Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on September 10. Method fixed in advance: ONE pull of Kalshi's public candlestick record for KXSB-27-SF at period_interval=1440, reading the closing bid and the closing ask of each daily candle in the window. If any daily close in the window prints a bid other than 4 or an ask other than 5, the call is WRONG. If all 19 print 4 bid and 5 ask, the call is RIGHT. If Kalshi's candlestick record does not return the full window when pulled, the call is VOID.

Resolves in 5 days, Sep 16, 2026

The piece that made itThe 49ers' Championship Price Sat Out The Preseason
OpenSep 4, 2026

The Texas Rangers are one of the twelve clubs in the 2026 Major League Baseball postseason field, by winning the American League West or by taking any of the three American League wild cards. RIGHT if Texas is in the twelve-team field that begins postseason play after the regular season ends 2026-09-27. WRONG if Texas is not. Resolves off ONE permanent public document, MLB's final 2026 regular-season standings and the postseason field they determine, and needs no snapshot taken in advance. Priced by me at +180, which implies 35.7 percent.

Resolves in 19 days, Sep 30, 2026

The piece that made itThe Rangers Have Two Ways Into October And The Price Has One

The work, newest first

Two ways in

The Rangers Have Two Ways Into October And The Price Has One

The Rangers can reach the postseason by winning the AL West or by taking a wild card. The Blue Jays, thirteen and a half games back, realistically have one route. The market has the Blue Jays five cents richer anyway, and the reason is a hot month and an easy schedule that are both real and both already spent.

Casey MontgomerySep 4, 20268 min read
The Rangers Have Two Ways Into October And The Price Has One
The ruler

The 49ers' Championship Price Sat Out The Preseason

The 49ers futures number quoted on every odds page cannot express any revision smaller than 11.11 percent of its own value, and nothing the preseason did to San Francisco was that big. Here is the arithmetic, the two cheaper books that registered what the expensive one could not, and why twenty-seven of the thirty-two teams on the board have the same problem.

Casey MontgomeryAug 28, 20268 min read
The 49ers' Championship Price Sat Out The Preseason
The floor

A Penny Is The Smallest Opinion This Market Can Have

Michigan is three cents to win the national title and BYU is one, on an exchange whose own playoff book rates them within two points of each other for reaching the bracket. The penny is not an opinion about BYU. It is the bottom of the price ladder, and it is doing the pricing for a third of the field.

Casey MontgomeryAug 21, 20268 min read
A Penny Is The Smallest Opinion This Market Can Have
The margin

A Price Can Move Six Cents Without Anybody Changing Their Mind

The margin baked into a baseball moneyline collapses from roughly 4.7 percent at the open to under 1.9 percent by late morning, which lengthens underdog prices and cheapens favorites whether or not anybody's opinion changed. Here is the arithmetic on four games, and what it does to a call this desk already filed in public.

Casey MontgomeryAug 14, 20267 min read
A Price Can Move Six Cents Without Anybody Changing Their Mind
The market

The +305 On Your Screen Is Not The Price

Every 49ers futures price quoted this month carries the sportsbook's margin baked into it, and nobody removes it before printing. Here is how to remove it yourself, what it does to the 49ers number, and why the cheaper venue is the one most Bay Area readers have never opened.

Casey MontgomeryAug 7, 20267 min read
The +305 On Your Screen Is Not The Price
How to read a line

Sixty-Two Percent Of The Tickets, Ten Percent Of The Money

The count of bets is the public and the weight of cash is the professionals, and the gap between them is most of what a betting market says out loud. Here is that gap across nine live markets this morning, the one price that moved against its own crowd, and the arithmetic that grades a bet against the close instead of against the result.

Casey MontgomeryJul 31, 20266 min read
HOW TO READ A LINESixty-Two Percent Of TheTickets, Ten Percent Of TheMoneygrabsomepine.comgiants