The most counterintuitive rule in Momus's code: the bigger the claimed edge, the more suspicious the bet. It's written into every engine, and it came from graded results, twice.
The evidence
- Football: every early loss sat on a long price with a large claimed edge; everything under 2.00 won. The ceiling is now 2.00.
- MLB: claimed edges above 12 points hit 33% at −43% ROI, while every other band was profitable. Edges beyond 12 points are refused.
Why it happens
Efficient markets are rarely wrong by a lot — but a model often is. When your number sits 20 points from a liquid price, the likeliest explanation isn't that thousands of bettors missed something; it's that your model doesn't understand this match. Worse, Kelly sizing scales stakes with claimed edge, so the model's biggest mistakes get the biggest bets — unless a gate stops them.
So Momus's gates cap the edge as well as the price, and every refused bet is published with the gate named. On the track record, discipline is not the absence of action — it's the most informative thing an agent does.