Top 140 Polymarket whale leans on leverage to boost NFL bets

A Polymarket trader called maz26 arrived on the platform in June during the soccer World Cup. He started by betting on teams to win outright. Several of his large wagers lost, and by June 24 his portfolio showed a $2.6 million loss.

Then he found an edge hidden in how World Cup knockout matches on Polymarket are settled. In these games, where the loser gets eliminated, a tied match after 90 minutes goes into extra time. But on Polymarket, a bet on a team to win counts only 90 minutes. If the score is the same at that point, neither team has won for betting purposes, even if one team scores later and wins the match.

So, maz26 changed his approach for the knockout stage. Instead of picking winners, he started betting that teams would not win within the 90-minute window. Nine of his knockout matches ended in draws after regulation time, and those nine bets flipped his entire portfolio from deep losses to strong gains.

For example, let’s look at one of his bets, the Argentina versus Cabo Verde match on July 3. Polymarket gave Argentina an 86% chance to win inside 90 minutes. maz26 bet $122,717 that they would not. The game finished 1-1 after 90 minutes. Although Argentina won in extra time, his bet still paid out $876,550 because the 90-minute result was a draw. The same thing happened in several other knockout matches, and without them, he would be down $1.19 million instead of up $1.4 million.

After the World Cup ended, maz26 shifted to American football. But NFL betting works differently. A bet on a team to win means picking the game winner, with no separate clock for regulation time. 

Currently, his NFL record shows $206,288 in profit across 21 games. However, only one bet carried almost all of that weight. The 49ers' win over Miami on September 20 earned him $268,763 on its own. Without that single victory, he would be losing money on football.

He has also started using borrowed money to boost his stakes. The weekend before a recent Thursday game, he borrowed $1 million to fund his wagers. He repaid it that Sunday night using money withdrawn from Polymarket. Then again, on Thursday, 48 minutes before the Atlanta Falcons played the Green Bay Packers, his crypto wallet borrowed $500,000 from Aave, a lending app, using Bitcoin as collateral. Atlanta won 35-14, and his bets on the game earned him $105,747.

His turnaround proves that understanding settlement rules matters as much as picking winners. The question now is whether he can find another hidden advantage, or if his NFL profits will depend on luck and leverage.