Bitcoin gambling site Freebitco.in is taking bets on which Game of Thrones character will win the Iron Throne by the end of the current, eighth and final season.
The site is currently taking bets on eleven different characters. The most popular choice so far is Jon Snow, in the lead by some distance with 45 percent of all votes cast. Also near the top are Daenarys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister, with eight and five percent respectively.
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To bet, you pay into a betting pool. If your favored character ends up ruling the Seven Kingdoms, you win a share of the pool. Those who place bets earlier win larger shares than those who delay their judgement. The pool stands at 1.613 bitcoin.
A few ambiguities are catered for, too: If no one wins the throne, or if a chosen character is not on Freebitco.in’s list, then ‘Unknown’ wins. This is the second most popular option as things stand, with 20 percent.
Jon Snow is getting a lot more votes than his chances of glory justify, if SkyBet has it right.
In other words, ‘Unknown’ counts as a bet for a whole group of characters, including Little Finger and Samwell Tarly. On SkyBet’s conventional gambling site, they are sitting on odds of 12/1 and 16/1 each, so their collective chances together with all the other minor characters do start to stack up.
But Jon Snow is getting a lot more votes than his chances of glory justify, if SkyBet has it right. The site only gives him odds of 11/2 of ending up on the Iron Throne. By comparison, Bran Stark and Sansa Stark are joint favorites, facing odds of 2/1 each. They’ve only got seven percent of Freebitco.in votes between them at the moment.