Kalshi Bet the Under on my Final Exam Scores

By: Salmon Lucky 

Like any other person nowadays, I like to wind down each day with my favorite pastime, online gambling. But after putting all my student loans on Dillon Gabriel’s quarterback rating, my girlfriend and my accountant finally convinced me to give up sports betting. Now I don’t gamble, I only make prediction contracts on marketplaces like Kalshi and Polymarket. 

   You might be thinking that sports gambling and prediction contracts are all the same thing, but they’re not. Unlike sports books, prediction markets don’t rely on bookmakers to set the odds. Instead, prediction markets are the buying and selling of shares in an outcome, similar to trading financial securities like stocks and bonds. 

   I was scrolling through the Culture market predictions on Kalshi the other night thinking I’d put a few dollars on the Michael Jackson movie grossing $1 billion its opening weekend or GTA 6 being delayed another year. I was shocked when I scrolled to the very bottom of the page and found a prediction that said, “Will Salmon Lucky pass his Secured Transactions final?” I couldn’t believe that Kalshi only had ‘Yes’ at a 35% chance. 

   What’s worse is that there were already $6,700 of bets made on the market already. Who are all these people betting on me to fail? Seeing that got me so hotheaded that I put my entire remaining bank balance on ‘Yes.’ Maybe I’m not an ‘A’ student all the time, but I did do the readings the first two weeks of class. That’s gotta count for something, right? Once I calmed down, I realized that I have to actually pass my final now. It shouldn’t be too hard though; I’ll start studying for it next week. 

   Maybe I should be thankful for this! Everybody says you should bet on yourself. Now I can do just that to start recouping the money I lost on the Browns last year.