A Polymarket bettor who goes by the handle “Domer” says he profited $100,000 after betting on Robert Francis Prevost to become pope — a long shot that paid off when Prevost was elected and took the name Pope Leo XIV. Domer told CBS News he spotted the opportunity by reading Twitter, news articles and other sources to find mispriced outcomes in prediction markets.
He described his method as systematic but informal: look for conventional wisdom that’s widely accepted and therefore often mispriced, then apply pattern recognition and repeatable strategies where possible. He acknowledged that some events, like a papal conclave, are rare and harder to model, but said there was still a way to gain an edge by eliminating unlikely candidates.
On the conclave, Domer said he placed multiple long‑shot wagers. He watched which cardinals gave interviews or revealed positions that made them easy to rule out, narrowed the field by process of elimination, and circulated bets on names other bettors overlooked. At the time, Prevost’s odds were about 250‑to‑1 — a “super, super, super long shot,” Domer said. He declined to recall his exact stake but confirmed the payout: “I made $100,000 that he would be the pope.”
The episode illustrates how some prediction‑market traders use close reading of media, behavioral patterns and selective bets to find outsized returns. Rare outcomes can command steep prices until new information or a surprising result forces markets to reprice probabilities.