How it works
The full walkthrough: tournament rules, scoring, prize math, and bots.
From sign-up to payout
- Create a free account. No deposit needed — freerolls are free to enter. Deposits ($10.00–$1,000.00 per transaction) are only needed for paid buy-ins.
- Enter a tournament while its lobby is open. Paid entries move the fee from your wallet into a segregated account; the prize itself is a fixed amount, already funded in escrow before the lobby opened.
- Trade when it starts. Every entry receives the same starting stack of Arena Credits and trades YES/NO contracts on the tournament's market universe — manually, or via a bot.
- Watch the leaderboard. Standings update continuously from live mark-to-market equity.
- Settlement. At the end time, the concentration-adjusted score (see Scoring) fixes the ranks and the tournament's posted prizes are paid to winners' wallets in USD.
Tournament rules in brief
Lifecycle
SCHEDULED → OPEN (entries accepted) → RUNNING (trading live) → SETTLED (prizes paid). A cancelled tournament refunds all entry fees in full.
Level playing field
Identical starting credits for every entry. Orders fill against timestamped order-book snapshots with slippage — no lookahead, no house inventory, and the same prices for everyone at the same time.
Entry limits
One account per person. Entrant caps are shown on each lobby. Paid entries require identity verification (KYC) and a permitted location; free play does not.
Fair play
Collusion, multi-accounting, and coordinated trading across entries are monitored and lead to disqualification and forfeiture. Full policy in the contest rules.
Ranked on concentration-adjusted equity
Your entry always shows its true equity: unspent Arena Credits plus the mark-to-market value of every open position at the tournament end time, marked at the mid price of the latest order-book snapshot. That is the number on your stack.
Your rank, though, is set by a concentration-adjusted score. When we tally your gains, any single market can contribute at most 50% of your total gross gains toward your standing — so one lucky longshot can't carry an entry to the top on variance alone. Spread your skill across several markets and you keep essentially all of it; go all-in on one and only half of that market's profit counts for ranking. Losses always count in full, and the adjusted score is never higher than your true equity — concentration can only ever cost you, never inflate you.
The result rewards repeatable skill over a single big gamble. Standings during the tournament use the same calculation, updated on every server tick.
Fixed prizes, posted before you pay
Take the Weekly Arena — a $15.00 buy-in with a guaranteed $1,000.00 paid to the top 5. Those prizes are fixed and funded into escrow before the lobby opens, so the payout never depends on how many people show up:
| Finish | Prize |
|---|---|
| 1st | $400.00 |
| 2nd | $250.00 |
| 3rd | $175.00 |
| 4th | $100.00 |
| 5th | $75.00 |
The prize is locked the moment the lobby opens. If more than 67 people enter, the extra entry fees are the platform's margin. If fewer do, we cover the shortfall out of our own pocket — the top five still collect the full $400.00 / $250.00 / $175.00 / $100.00 / $75.00. You always know the exact prize before you pay, because it never depends on turnout. Prize tables vary by tournament and are shown on every lobby before you enter.
Build a bot: your strategy, running itself
A bot is a configurable multi-agent pipeline that trades your tournament entry on server ticks. You choose the pieces; the platform runs them 24/7:
- Six analyst types — momentum, mean reversion, order-book imbalance, time decay, contrarian, and an optional LLM analyst with a hard daily budget cap.
- Frozen at entry. The exact version of your bot's config is snapshotted when it enters a tournament. Edits create a new version for next time — running entries are never affected.
- Full decision traces. Every tick logs each analyst's signal, the aggregate vote, the risk gate's ruling, and the resulting order (or the reason it held).
- Public if you want. Keep your bot private, or publish its results to the bot leaderboard.
Frequently asked questions
Is this gambling?
We structure PreMartX as a contest of skill, not a wager. You never bet against the house; you compete against other players. Results come from many decisions across many markets over a multi-day window, prizes are fixed and announced up front (funded before entries open, not carved out of a pot), and every entrant starts from an identical position — the same structure used by fantasy-sports contests.
Being honest with you: the legal classification of skill contests varies by state, and our formal counsel review is still in progress. Until it completes, paid tournaments are feature-gated, blocked in restricted states, and our contest rules are published as drafts. Free play is unaffected.
How are prizes decided?
Every prize is fixed and pre-announced. The full prize table — every finishing place and the exact dollar amount — is posted on the lobby before entries open, and the money is funded into escrow up front. It never floats with the number of entrants, so the figure you see when you join is the figure that gets paid.
On a paid tournament the platform keeps whatever entry fees remain after those posted prizes are covered. If the field is small and fees fall short, the platform funds the difference itself (an overlay) rather than shrinking the prize. There is no pooled percentage and no rake carved out of your entry.
When do I get paid?
When a tournament ends, settlement runs: entries are ranked by their concentration-adjusted score (see Scoring) and the tournament's fixed prizes are credited to winners' wallets in USD, usually within minutes of the end time. From your wallet you can request a withdrawal (minimum $20.00).
Withdrawals are reviewed and approved by a human before funds are sent — a deliberate fraud-prevention step, not a stall tactic. US winners with $600.00+ in cumulative annual prizes must complete a W-9 before payment and will receive a 1099.
Why am I ranked below someone with fewer credits?
Because rank is set by the concentration-adjusted score, not raw credits. Any single market can contribute at most 50% of your total gross gains toward your standing. If most of your equity came from one big longshot, the portion above that cap doesn't count for ranking — so a player who earned a similar amount across several markets can outrank you even with a smaller stack.
Your true equity is always shown; only the ranking is adjusted. The score is never higher than your real balance — the cap can cost concentrated books rank, but it can never inflate anyone. Losses always count in full. It exists to reward consistent skill over one lucky bet.
What are Arena Credits?
Arena Credits are the simulated balance you trade with inside a tournament. They have no cash value, can't be bought, sold, or withdrawn, and reset with every entry. Your real money never touches a market — deposits only buy tournament entries, and prizes are the fixed amounts posted on each tournament. Credits are the scoreboard; dollars are the prize.
Can bots and humans compete against each other?
Yes. Unless a tournament restricts entry types, bot entries and manual entries play in the same field, on the same prices, for the same prizes. Bot entries are labeled on leaderboards, and a bot's configuration is frozen at entry so nobody can tweak a running strategy mid-tournament.
Where do the market prices come from?
Prices mirror real-time order books from public prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket (with a synthetic feed in development environments). Your simulated orders fill against snapshots of those books, including realistic slippage — but no real order is ever routed to any venue.
Which US states are restricted?
Paid contests are currently unavailable in: Washington (WA), Idaho (ID), Montana (MT), Nevada (NV), Arizona (AZ), Louisiana (LA), Hawaii (HI).
This list is conservative and pending counsel review — it may change. Free tournaments are available everywhere.
Try it with zero risk
Freerolls cost nothing to enter and pay real prizes. See for yourself before a dollar ever leaves your pocket.