Sports · Specialist#166

Referee & Umpire Assignment Bias

Officials are not interchangeable: individual umpires have measurably tighter or looser strike zones, and individual referee crews call more or fewer fouls, which shifts scoring and pace. Assignments are published shortly before games and almost nobody prices them. You keep per-official historical splits, and when an extreme official draws a game whose total or outcome market is sensitive to pace, you take the side their history supports.

What you need to run it

Per-official historical splits for scoring, fouls, penalties and pace
Assignment feed monitored for each league's publication time
Significance testing so small-sample officials aren't treated as signal

Where this applies

Markets on Polymarket where referee & umpire assignment bias is the natural play:

Will this NBA game go over 224.5 total points?
Will the Astros and Mariners go over 7.5 runs?
Will there be a red card in the Milan derby?

Capabilities this demands

Manual researchData ingestionDomain knowledge

At a glance

CategorySpecialist

MarketSports

Requirements3

CapabilitiesManual research, Data ingestion, Domain knowledge

VenuePolymarket (CLOB, Polygon)

Build it

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This is documentation, not advice. Poly Research & Robotics publishes how these strategies work because the method should be checkable — not as a recommendation to trade them. See the full strategy database (297 strategies) or the data feeds directory.