A Polymarket wallet made about $1.22 million on No shares in an Argentina match contract, even though Argentina eventually won. The apparent contradiction disappears when the contract’s clock is read: it covered a win within ninety minutes, while Argentina’s 3–2 victory came after extra time. Argentina and Cabo Verde were tied 1–1 at the contract’s boundary on July 3, 2026. Contract and match result
A bet against a ninety-minute win is different from a bet against eventual advancement or an extra-time victory. No shares in this contract covered the narrower answer. The wallet also sold its shares as their prices rose, rather than waiting to redeem them. Its result therefore comes from purchase costs, sale proceeds and attributed credits, not a final payout on shares it no longer held.
Two clocks, two different answers
Argentina–Cabo Verde · July 3, 2026
The wallet sold every share and closed the position
Over roughly fourteen hours, twenty purchases at about 14–16 cents built a position of 1,623,065 No shares for approximately $249,281. The wallet sold 623,064 shares across 159 fills at about 75 cents, receiving approximately $467,298. It then sold the remaining 1,000,001 shares at approximately 99.9 cents for about $998,971. Those two quantities account for the entire position. Acquisitions and sales
By 00:11 UTC on July 4, no shares remained. The result needed neither a value for unsold holdings nor a settlement receipt. Adding a payout to these sales would count money the wallet did not receive on the sold position.
The sale proceeds exceeded the acquisition cost
Cash-flow magnitudes · USD · direction marked on every label
The exact trading gain was $1,216,987.9130. Attributed rewards and rebates of $1,197.8189 raised the result to $1,218,185.7319, or $1,218,186 rounded. The exact amounts explain why adding the rounded purchase and sale displays can leave a small difference.
The six credits included a small reward during trading, a maker rebate and four taker rebates. Later credits continued through July 9, after the position closed and before the next trade on July 12. That quiet interval supplies the stated basis for attribution to this position. The July 4 trading snapshot and the later credits remain separate parts of the calculation. Attribution and accounting scope
The exact total behind “about $1.22 million”
USD · retained precision before whole-dollar rounding
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Trading result after fees | +$1,216,987.9130 |
| Attributed credits | +$1,197.8189 |
| Result including credits | +$1,218,185.7319 |
1,216,987.9130 + 1,197.8189 = 1,218,185.7319 dollars
The profile comparison requires the same fee basis
Polymarket displayed $1,223,224 on the profile, slightly above MSR’s fee-inclusive result of about $1,218,186. The display used a pre-fee definition. Once both calculations used that basis, they differed by less than $11 on roughly $1.22 million. The comparison supports the scale of the gain without treating the two differently defined headlines as identical. Display reconciliation
Retrieval coverage also mattered: the maker-inclusive view returned all 180 fills, while the default taker-only view returned fifteen. Later markets and a larger thirty-day profile figure describe another period and do not change this closed-position result.
The evidence establishes a profitable closed position under the stated fee and credit treatment. It does not show a complete success rate, automation or whether another trader could repeat the result. The contract boundary explains why No was compatible with Argentina’s eventual win; the wallet’s recorded sales explain the gain. Limits