First American pope elected and will be known as Pope Leo XIV

As a record of how likely people considered this outcome:

Prevost was hovering around 1% on Polymarket, and was <0.5% between white smoke and announcement.

Among the most unlikely papabile I would have preferred someone like Tolentino.

Sounds like an amazing opportunity for insider trading

Isn't the max profit limited by counterparty liquidity? Polymarket won't pay out anything extra.

I wouldn't be shocked if that's one of the reasons why they sequester

Yes, but how much liquidity was available?

The sequestering goes back centuries, but it's certainly a reason to keep doing it beyond just removing outside influence once the process begins.

Well, seems that conclaves really are notoriously unpredictable

There was a horrendous problem with gambling on the election at one point. I believe the most recent episode of "Tasting History with Max Miller" covers this.

"people" "Polymarket"

How many non-technical people are on polymarket? That seems like a poor sample size.

One of two things must be true: Either Polymarket's more accurate than you are, or you can make free money.

It’s not free money, it’s high risk with a net positive expected return. Any significant profit would carry an irresponsible level of risk. Significant profit without significant risk would take many bets, which means sustaining the accuracy advantage over broader subject matter, which means lots of time spent, which means it’s time for money, which is just a job.

At least for recently, it's almost always someone on the short list, but often not near the top of that list.

There was also an interesting article here a month ago about the history of betting on conclaves. https://nodumbideas.com/p/betting-on-the-pope-was-the-origin... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43290892

Suppose I gave Provost 5% chance of winning the papal election. Then I would have been more accurate than Polymarket. But I wouldn't call betting on what I perceive as 5% chance of winning "making free money"; from my perspective it would still be a wild risk to bet any significant money on that outcome.

I'm sure insider gambling also goes back centuries, probably even since before Christ