Wisdom of a Few = PicksPal
September 19, 2006
PicksPal is a virtual sports betting market. Users bet each week on sporting events for bragging rights (no cash is involved). The founders of the free site realized that a small number of users picked winners more often than the statistics said they should.
According to Mike Arrington the company will begin grouping picks from this small group of users and sell that data to users for $10. Calling the them “Genius Picks” PicksPal will give you the results from the top 30 users for the past five weeks and five predictions for upcoming games.
Tom Jessiman, the founder, indicated that his “Geniuses” went 5-0 against the spread last weekend. The company is funded by Canaan and Bay to the tune of $6MM and plans to leverage their “technology” to enter new futures markets.
Most interesting to me was the concept that the Wisdom of Crowds can explain how the line is picked, but it can’t explain why there seems to be a Wisdom of a Few created by Tom’s Geniuses. How can a group of 30 beat the odds week after week?
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5 Responses to “Wisdom of a Few = PicksPal”
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I think this is a very cool idea. I like the thought of buying picks from folks who have proved their track record. That’s what seems kind of cool about pickspal.com. That they are trying to find the smart folks instead of the guys you hear on the radio on Saturday mornings.
I agree Alex, the whole “Genius Picks” sounds fishy to me. There are a lot of sites that offer guaranteed locks through picks by the experts. This seems no different. Is past past success for a small group a predictor of future successes? The small group of geniuses seems to me to be the group that beats the market much like financial markets etc. But as we know, performance changes over time, so by removing the “wisdom of crowds” component, you’re simply paying for so called expert picks. I’d be interested to watch the performance of this group over time, not just one weekend of football picks.
The question is: do those 30 users get paid for their picks?
I was wondering the same thing…
Interesting site, but I don’t se why I have to pay to get the information. I found a site try2bet.com (also a sports betting site where there is no real money involved besides the prizes) where you actually can see what the top betters do and learn.