eppsilon / manifootball

Automate creating football game markets on Manifold

Manifootball

Manifold lets anyone create prediction markets using play money. This tool uses the Manifold API and data from College Football Data to automatically create a market for each game in a given week.

Usage

This tool is not well-written or well-tested and should be used with care. Your mana may disappear mysteriously. Don't gamble with mana you can't afford to lose!

Clone this repository. Install Node 20.5+ and Yarn 1.x if necessary, then run yarn in the repo folder. Create a file called config.ts with these constants:

export const CFB_API_KEY = 'ABCXYZ'; // get a key here: https://collegefootballdata.com/key
export const MF_API_KEY = 'big-honkin-guid'; // find your key by editing your Manifold user profile
export const CFB_WEEK = 42; // set to week number 1-14 (ish) to create games for

Find the matching-games.json file and delete it. This is a mapping between CFB Data game IDs and Manifold market IDs, and a new one will be created after you use the tool the first time.

Now run the script with Bun:

bun index.ts

The tool will show the teams/time of each game and ask whether you want to create a market for it:

2023-10-26 at 4:30 PM ET: Syracuse (1451) @ Virginia Tech (1466)
Create market? [Y/N/Q] (N) y
Create market {
  "question": "🏈 2023 NCAAF: Will Syracuse beat Virginia Tech?",
  "outcomeType": "BINARY",
  "description": "2023-10-26 at 7:30 PM ET",
  "closeTime": 1698363000000,
  "initialProb": 50
}? [Y/N/Q] (N) y
Market created { … }

Features

• Fetches the schedule for a week of games and creates a market for each.
• Puts the start time in the description and sets the close time to start time + 4 hrs.
• Looks up each team's AP ranking and adds it to the question text.
• Searches for markets you've already created and lets you match them up with games (so as to not create duplicates).
• Sets topics (groups) on each market, including those for the conferences of the teams involved.
• Checks descriptions and close times and suggests corrections.

Limitations

• Cannot update question, description, or close time via API (no Manifold API route exists).
• Can only create binary questions with an initial probability of 50%, but this could be modified easily.

To Do

• Support updating markets once API support arrives.
• Support posting a comment on every game's market.
• Support monitoring game progress and extending close times.
• Support placing an initial bet on every market after creating it.
• Use yargs or similar library for ARGV parsing and subcommands.
• Use debug or similar for configurable log levels.
• Maybe: create NPM package to allow installing as a global or running with npx.