One of the biggest bettors on Polymarket, an online prediction market, doesn’t consider himself a gambler, even though he’s wagered more than $400 million on the platform.
“Domer,” a name the Polymarket bettor uses online, used to be a professional poker player until he gave it up for prediction markets. He said it is more exciting than poker. He said last year he made nearly $3 million from wagers on Polymarket.
“I don’t think of myself as a gambler,” Domer said. “I’m taking very, very well-researched views on things… I feel it’s much more akin to investing.”
What Domer makes wagers on
Customers on Polymarket bet on all kinds of questions: Who will win the election? Who will win the Super Bowl? Will Taylor Swift get married this year? When will there be a ceasefire in Ukraine?
There were wagers earlier this year on the papal conclave, where decisions are made in a sealed environment by cardinals holed up inside the Vatican — where news, presumably, doesn’t leak. Odds were 250:1 for American Cardinal Robert Prevost to be chosen as the new pope. Domer said he researched interviews and talks done by cardinals, then made an educated guess.
“Connections are super important within the papal conclave and also kind of their views on things. Because there’s a lot of controversial things within the Catholic church, so you can kind of eliminate people who have controversial views or maybe, you know, the other direction or something like that,” he said. “So there’s a lot of ways to kind of eliminate people, and then by process of elimination, you can kind of circulate on some names that could be really good bets.”
After doing research, Domer wagered on what was seen as a long shot and won $100,000 when Prevost was named Pope Leo XIV.
Every day, within seconds of waking up, his phone is in his hand to see what’s happened in the world overnight.
“Every day I’m kind of going into battle,” he said.
60 Minutes
He said he bet that President Trump would pick Vice President JD Vance as his running mate, five months before the selection happened. At the time, Polymarket gave Vance a 2% chance.
He says it is important to bet early “because you can get better odds… People haven’t really figured it out, right? Maybe Trump hasn’t even figured it out yet. So you’re trying to get to a spot that Trump isn’t even to yet.”
Domer made his bet after researching Mr. Trump’s choice of a running mate in 2016.
“Buried in one of the articles for why he picked Mike Pence is that Mike Pence had a one-syllable name, and Trump has a one-syllable name, and Trump is very into marketing,” Domer said. “Trump Pence…. That’s a great bumper sticker.”
He looked into the names that were just one syllable and zeroed in on Vance.
“Not only is Vance one syllable, he’s only two letters off of Pence, So I was like ‘This works from a marketing perspective.'” Domer said.
Domer bet about $4,000 on Vance. The payoff?
“I won around $250,000,” he said.
