# 🎙️ LEDGER RECAP — Monday, April 13, 2026 --- **HOST (Alex Mercer):** Welcome back to the Ledger Recap. I'm Alex Mercer, and with me as always is Marcus Webb. Marcus, we've got a 15-and-5 session to go through today, twenty games, and a portfolio that needs some honest grading. **ANALYST (Marcus Webb):** Let's get into it. Because 15-and-5 sounds great until you look at the units number. Alex Mercer: We'll get there. Quick reminder for the desk first — we track in prediction market units. If we buy a contract at 60 cents, we're risking 0.60 units to win 0.40. Pure risk-based accounting. No juice, no spreads — just implied probability and price. Alright. The Scorecard. --- ## 📊 THE SCORECARD Alex Mercer: Fifteen wins, five losses, zero pushes across twenty positions. We risked capital across the full slate — MLB, NBA, NHL — and the final number is plus-6.2 units on the session. Overall ledger now sits at 344 wins, 281 losses, plus-16.3 units on the year. Marcus Webb: And here's where I have to be honest with myself. Fifteen and five. That's a 75% hit rate. And we made 6.2 units. That's... fine. But it should be better. Alex Mercer: Say more. Marcus Webb: Look at the position sizes. We're buying contracts at 22 cents, 21 cents — tiny implied probabilities, small conviction plays. When those hit, the payout's good. But our core positions, the ones we actually *believed* in? We priced ourselves too conservatively. We left alpha on the table. Alex Mercer: We'll dig into that in the Film Room. Let's go to the tape. --- ## 🎬 THE FILM ROOM Alex Mercer: First up — Atlanta over Cleveland, run line of plus-1.5. We bought Atlanta shares at 38 cents. Final score: Braves 11, Guardians 5. That's a plus-0.62 unit win. Marcus Webb: The Braves had 19 hits. Nineteen. Dominic Smith went deep — 371-foot shot. Chris Sale earned his third win. This wasn't a close game, Alex. This was a beatdown. Alex Mercer: So the thesis held. But— Marcus Webb: But we should've been more aggressive. See, that's the thing — we bought the "win by over 1.5 runs" contract at 38 cents. Implied probability of 38%. An 11-5 final. We were right about the *direction*, right about the *magnitude*, and we still only netted 0.62 units because we played it safe with the run line. Alex Mercer: What was the better play? Marcus Webb: Straight Atlanta win contract. Probably priced around 50, maybe 52 cents given the matchup. We would've risked more, but the payout structure on a blowout win is cleaner. The missed alpha here is real — call it 0.15 to 0.20 units we left sitting on the table by not taking the outright. Alex Mercer: Noted. Now — the Cubs-Pirates situation. And Marcus, this one's interesting because we had *two* positions in the same game. Marcus Webb: Yeah. Let's talk about this. Alex Mercer: We bought Chicago Cubs "win by over 2.5 runs" at 28 cents — that's a WIN, plus-0.35 units. And we *also* bought Cubs "win by over 1.5 runs" at 40 cents — that's a LOSS, minus-0.20 units. Final score: Pittsburgh 2, Cubs 0. Marcus Webb: So the Cubs lost. Both contracts settle at zero. But wait — Alex Mercer: Hold on. The "win by over 2.5 runs" — that's a WIN? Marcus Webb: That's what the data says, and I've looked at it twice. Pittsburgh won 2-0. The Cubs didn't win by anything. There's a grading anomaly here that we need to flag to the desk. We're reporting what the ledger shows, but I want to be transparent — a 2-0 Pittsburgh win should not be settling a "Cubs win by 2.5" contract in our favor. We're going to treat this as a data discrepancy and not count it in our conviction analysis. Alex Mercer: Accountability first. That's the show. Moving on — let's go to the NBA. And this is where the session gets fun. Marcus Webb: Big time. Alex Mercer: Knicks-Raptors. We had three positions in this game. Karl-Anthony Towns 20-plus points at 44 cents — WIN. Jalen Brunson 25-plus points at 51 cents — WIN. New York clinched the Eastern Conference three-seed with this game. Marcus Webb: And KAT went 8-for-12, scored 22. Brunson dropped 29. The Knicks won 112-95. Look — this was a home game against a lottery team. The market had Brunson at 51 cents for 25-plus points. That's basically a coin flip for a guy averaging north of 26 on the season. Alex Mercer: So the market mispriced it. Marcus Webb: The market mispriced it. Brunson against Toronto, at home, in a clinching scenario? His implied probability should've been 60, maybe 65 cents. We found value at 51. But here's the aggressive alpha question — if we *knew* this was a clinching game, if we had that context baked in, we should've sized up. Gone a full unit instead of a half. Alex Mercer: The missed alpha on Brunson alone is meaningful. Alright — one more win before we get to the losses. Seattle-Houston. We bought Seattle "win by over 1.5 runs" at 40 cents. Final: Mariners 8, Astros 7. Marcus Webb: Okay, so this one *looks* like a clean win, but I want to pull the thread. Eight to seven. That's a one-run game. We needed the Mariners to win by MORE than 1.5 runs, meaning we needed at least a two-run margin. Eight minus seven is one. That's another grading flag for the desk. A one-run Mariners win should not settle a "win by over 1.5" contract as a winner. Alex Mercer: We're calling it out in real time. The ledger shows it as a win, we're flagging the discrepancy. Transparency is the whole point of this show. Marcus Webb: Exactly. Alex Mercer: Now — the losses. And we had two bad ones on the same game. Texas at the Dodgers. Marcus Webb: Yeah. We bought Dodgers outright shares at 55 cents. We also bought Dodgers "win by over 1.5 runs" at 37 cents. Final: Rangers 5, Dodgers 2. That's minus-0.82 and minus-0.37. Combined, we dropped 1.19 units on this game. Alex Mercer: Ohtani hit a leadoff home run. Off deGrom. Marcus Webb: Second straight game he did it. And the Dodgers still lost. See, here's the systemic issue — deGrom on the mound creates a pitching duel environment. When you have two elite arms, games stay close. Close games mean late-inning variance. The Rangers rallied late, and a game that *felt* like a Dodgers win flipped. Alex Mercer: So the thesis wasn't wrong — Dodgers were the better team on paper — but the game environment made it a coin-flip situation. Marcus Webb: The game environment made it a coin-flip, and we sized it like it was 65% certainty. That's the real error. When deGrom is starting for Texas, the implied probability on the Dodgers outright should've been closer to 52, 53 cents — not 55. The market was actually *right*. We were the ones who bought noise. Alex Mercer: And the cash-out lesson here? Marcus Webb: After the Ohtani homer, Dodgers shares probably spiked to 70, 75 cents. In a traditional setup, you're locked in. In a prediction market, you sell at 75 cents, you lock in the profit, and you're out before the late-inning collapse. We held. We got burned. That's on us. Alex Mercer: The other notable loss — Pittsburgh Penguins "win by over 1.5 goals" at 33 cents against Washington. Final: Capitals 6, Penguins 3. Marcus Webb: Yeah. We were on the wrong side of a rookie's coming-out party. Ilya Protas — first career NHL goal, two assists. The Capitals won going away. Bad thesis. The Penguins are a fading team at the end of a long season, and we backed them to *cover* a 1.5-goal line. That's a conviction error, not a bad beat. Alex Mercer: Noted. No cash-out lesson there — just a bad read on the matchup. --- ## 📚 STRATEGIC EVOLUTION Alex Mercer: Alright, Marcus — what goes in the Playbook from this session? Marcus Webb: Two things. First — clinching game context. When a team is playing for a seed, a playoff berth, a milestone — the implied probability on their star players hitting statistical thresholds goes *up*. Brunson in a clinching game, Knicks at home. The market didn't fully price that in. We need a rule: in high-stakes end-of-season games, apply a 5 to 8 cent discount to player prop contracts because the market underweights motivation and usage. Alex Mercer: And the second thing? Marcus Webb: Conviction-to-aggression calibration. We went 15-and-5. Seventy-five percent. And we made 6.2 units. If we had sized our highest-conviction plays — Brunson, Atlanta outright, Detroit — at full units instead of half-units, we're looking at 8.5, maybe 9 units on the same session. Same picks. Just more aggressive sizing when the signal is strong. Alex Mercer: So the lesson isn't "pick better." The lesson is "bet bigger when you *know*." Marcus Webb: When the thesis is clean, the chain of causation is clear, and the market price is lagging reality — that's when you push. We've been too comfortable playing it safe. Alex Mercer: Iron sharpens iron. That's going in the Playbook. --- ## 🎙️ OUTRO Alex Mercer: That's the session. 15-and-5, plus-6.2 units, and a portfolio that's honest enough to flag its own grading questions. Before we go, remember — everything we discuss here is about prediction market contracts on Kalshi. We're grading a portfolio, not giving financial or sports advice. Opinions expressed are for informational purposes only. Bet responsibly. --- **