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?
