Polymarket Cheat Sheet

Price → Payout multiple

$0.0520x

$0.1010x

$0.254x

$0.333x

$0.502x

$0.601.67x

$0.701.43x

$0.801.25x

$0.901.11x

$0.951.05x

Above $0.90 = reward crushed. One surprise = 10x the loss vs gain.

Below $0.10 = lottery. Price swings violent. Only with real domain edge.

Scalping — exits at $0.90 (no tail risk)

Buy $0.20 → sell $0.90+350%

Buy $0.30 → sell $0.90+200%

Buy $0.40 → sell $0.90+125%

Buy $0.50 → sell $0.90+80%

Buy $0.60 → sell $0.90+50%

Buy $0.70 → sell $0.90+29%

Buy $0.80 → sell $0.90+13%

Key point: you don't need resolution to profit. Selling at $0.90 locks in gains and avoids resolution risk. Holding $0.70 → $1.00 earns +43% but risks full loss on a surprise. Selling at $0.90 earns +29% with zero tail risk.

Smaller exit targets (sell below $0.90)

Buy $0.30 → sell $0.50+67%

Buy $0.40 → sell $0.60+50%

Buy $0.50 → sell $0.70+40%

Buy $0.60 → sell $0.80+33%

Buy $0.70 → sell $0.85+21%

Buy $0.50 → sell $0.55+10%

Exiting earlier = faster capital turnover, lower % per trade. Good when a market stalls or when you need to free up bankroll.

Scalping — longshots (0.01 → 0.20)

Buy $0.02 → sell $0.05+150%

Buy $0.03 → sell $0.08+167%

Buy $0.05 → sell $0.10+100%

Buy $0.05 → sell $0.15+200%

Buy $0.08 → sell $0.20+150%

Buy $0.10 → sell $0.15+50%

Buy $0.10 → sell $0.20+100%

Buy $0.15 → sell $0.25+67%

Longshot scalping — pros & cons

Pros

Huge % gains on small absolute moves — a 3¢ move can double your money
Limited downside per position (you only lose what you bet)
News catalysts move longshots more than favorites (asymmetric response)
Fees near the extremes are tiny — the fee formula collapses to near-zero below $0.10

Cons

Bid-ask spreads are wide — market might show $0.08 but you buy at $0.10 and sell at $0.06. Spread alone can kill the trade.
Thin liquidity — large orders move the price against you. Hard to exit at any size.
Most longshots resolve to zero. Win rate will be low even with edge.
Mental trap: seeing 20 bets at 5¢ feels cheap, but 20 × $50 = $1000 all going to zero is real
Requires repeated edge across many bets, not one "feels like a steal" pick

Rule of thumb

Use limit orders only (taker spreads destroy EV at these prices)
Size down — each longshot bet ≤1% of bankroll
Set exit targets before entering (e.g. "sell half at 3x, rest at 5x")

What not to do

Rule 1:Don't bet what you can't lose. Entertainment money only. If a loss ruins your week, your size is wrong.

Rule 2:Never ignore Rule 1.

Other traps to avoid

✕Don't chase losses. Doubling down on the next market to "make it back" is the most expensive sentence in betting.
✕Don't ignore resolution wording. "Will X happen by Y?" — does it mean announced, confirmed, or completed? Read carefully before clicking buy.
✕Don't stack correlated bets. Three bets that all pay if same candidate wins = one big bet. You're not diversified, you're concentrated.
✕Don't hold losers hoping. If your thesis breaks, exit. "Maybe it comes back" is how $100 becomes $5.
✕Don't ignore volume and liquidity. This is the single most underrated factor.
- Size relative to book: if you want to bet $500 and the ask side only has $300 at the shown price, you'll walk up the book and pay worse prices. That's slippage.
- Exit matters more than entry: getting in is easy. Getting out when thesis breaks — or when you want to take profit — requires someone on the other side.
- Low volume ≠ always bad: it can signal an inefficient market (the good kind, for patient bettors). But tread small — size in proportion to the depth you see.
- Rule: your bet size < ~10% of shown book depth on both sides. Otherwise you're the market, not a participant in it.
✕Don't treat thin markets like liquid ones. A $50k volume market may be a pricing error waiting to be corrected — or a trap with no exit. Small positions let you test without getting stuck.

Polymarket fees (2026)

Geopolitics0%Free

Sports0.75%$0.75

Politics / Tech / Finance1.00%$1.00

Culture / Weather1.25%$1.25

Economics1.50%$1.50

Crypto1.80%$1.80

Casual better — should I even care about fees?

Short answer: mostly no. If you're betting $5–$20 for fun, fees are genuinely small in absolute terms.

Bet $10 on politics at $0.50:
Fee (1% max rate):$0.10
If you win:payout $19.90
Fee as % of winnings:0.5%

The cost of fun: a $10 bet costs you roughly a dime in fees. That's less than a coffee tip. When fees DO matter for casuals:

Scalping in-and-out — 5 quick trades of $10 = $0.50 in fees. Now fees are 10%+ of a small gain.
Near-certain bets — paying $0.10 fee on a bet that only pays +11% is a bigger bite
Building positions over time — 20 small bets × $0.10 each = $2 gone to fees you never noticed

TL;DR: one-off $10 bet for fun = don't worry. Making 10 trades a week = start noticing. Using limit orders (maker) costs zero either way.

How Polymarket hides the fee from you

Polymarket doesn't show a fee line in the order confirmation. The fee is baked into the price — you see "Buy 100 shares at $0.60" and $60 leaves your wallet. But you actually receive slightly fewer shares than 100. The missing shares are the fee.

You wire:$60.00
Price per share:$0.60
Shares you'd expect (naive):100.00
Shares actually received (1%, taker):99.04
Hidden fee:$0.58

What to check: after every trade, compare shares received to stake ÷ price. Gap = your fee. Use limit orders to pay zero.

10-second checklist

1
Resolution wording clear? Read criteria. If vague, ambiguous, or "at discretion of..." → skip immediately. Oracle disputes eat winners.
2
Volume + liquidity real? <$100k volume or thin order book = rando opinion, not signal. Check depth at your size.
3
My estimate vs market? Say probability out loud before seeing price. Edge = gap ≥5%.
4
Resolution date? Long locks kill returns. Annualize before comparing to T-bills (~4%).
5
Exit liquidity? Can I sell mid-market if thesis breaks? Thin books = trapped.

Should I take this bet? — calculator

Market price ($)

My estimate (%)

Bet size ($)

Days to resolve

My Polymarket history

Full bet history, P&L and per-market breakdown. Address is saved only in your browser, sent only to Polymarket's own API. Polymarket users trade from a proxy wallet (not their MetaMask) — find yours at polymarket.com/profile/0x....

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