¢ (cents) · price — Kalshi prices every contract between 1¢ and 99¢. The number is also the market’s own odds: 40¢ means the market thinks there’s a 40% chance. A winning contract pays $1; buy at 40¢ and you keep 60¢ if it hits, lose your 40¢ if it misses.

contract — One unit of a market. $10 at 40¢ buys 25 contracts, each paying $1 if you’re right.

YES · NO — Every market has two sides. YES = the thing happens. NO = it doesn’t. Buy either side; the right one pays $1 a contract.

ask · “buy at” · price now — The cheapest offer to buy right now. Whenever this site says a price you’d pay, it means the ask.

bid · “market pays now” — The best offer if you sold your contract right now. Always a little under the ask.

gap (spread) — The distance between ask and bid. A 2¢ gap means buying and immediately selling costs you about 2¢ a contract. We only trade markets with a gap of 2¢ or less.

listed · market open · not listed — “Not listed” means Kalshi hasn’t opened trading on that line yet. “No market yet” means the same thing one level down: the line exists on the board but carries no quotes.

slate — All the games on the schedule for a stretch of days.

simulation · “ran this game 10,000 times” — We replay each game 10,000 times from our projected player usage. Every probability on a game page is how many of those replays beat the line — not a hunch, a count.

middle guess — The middle (median) of the 1,500 outcomes. Half the simulations land under it.

safe floor · “safest line we’d take” — The deepest line that beats it in about 9 of our 10 simulations. Lines deeper than our floor we don’t bet at any price — a cheap price can’t rescue a line the model says won’t clear. This is a number of yards/receptions, not a price.

9 in 10 (badge) — The posted line sits below our safe floor: our simulations cover it 9 or more times out of 10, on a market that actually trades. Our data files and the API still call this grade “certain” and you may see the older words “certified” or “sure thing” in saved pages; they all mean exactly this.

strong — The line beats it in about 3 of 4 simulations — or it’s a 9-in-10 line on a stat our model trusts less, which we cap at strong on purpose.

marginal — Roughly a coin flip by our count. We watch these and never stake on them.

model only — We have a projection but Kalshi hasn’t listed the line. When the market opens, we look.

close calls · reject — Lines past our middle guess. Listed on game pages so you can see the whole board; never bet.

edge — Our percentage minus the buy price, in points: an outcome we think is 60% likely, bought at 52¢, is an 8-point edge.

buy rule · “waiting on price” — A plan fires when all of it holds: grade of 9-in-10 or strong, the ask leaves at least an 8-point edge, the gap is 2¢ or less, and the market has traded at least 20 contracts — that last floor is also what decides whether a line gets graded at all. The plan rows now name whatever is actually blocking: waiting on price, gap too wide, line deeper than we’d take — or, if nothing is, buyable now.

calibration — The honesty check: did our 9-in-10 lines actually hit about 9 in 10, and our strong ones about 3 in 4? The dashboard compares every settled grade against what it claimed.

who picked it — model = the desk’s automatic projection put the ticket down. Anything else is a logged human call. Everything on the site runs from the same ledger.

tape · print — The exchange’s record of trades as they happen. One completed trade is a print.

traded (volume) — Contracts this market has turned over. “In last 24h” counts only the past day.

open (open interest) — Contracts people still hold, both sides. Open that towers over daily traded means positions are being held, not day-traded.

thin book — Fewer than 400 contracts traded in a day. A $20 order can move the price; keep the ticket small.

block — Kalshi’s own flag on trades negotiated as a package.

net of latest trades — Contracts bought minus contracts sold across the newest batch of trades the exchange hands us — up to the most recent ~100 per market series, so busier markets get deeper windows. Positive means YES got net bought. That is size and direction — not proof anyone is sharp.

big-money lines — Single trades of 250+ contracts (1,500+ on game markets, where fills run bigger), or trades Kalshi flags as blocks.

ML · moneyline (+130 · −175) — American odds. +130: $100 wins you $130. −175: risk $175 to win $100.

spread (−3) — The handicap a side must cover, not just win.

total (52.5) — The combined score line — over or under.

margin · vig · juice — The book’s built-in cut. Both sides of a true coin flip get priced to imply about 52%, so the two add to ~104.5% instead of 100%. The extra 4.5 points is the book’s.

true chance · “margin stripped” — What the line implies once the margin is divided out. Useful context — and a price you can never actually buy.

cost against cost — The only fair comparison: our ask in cents against what the book’s moneyline costs you, margins and all.

ticket — One of the desk’s own bets in the ledger. Paper money, logged exactly like real money — every number on this site comes from that one ledger.

stake — One ticket’s dollars at risk. The paper plan sizes at $30 on a 9-in-10 line, $20 on strong, $2 to feel out a line the moment it first lists. Real fills run deliberately smaller — a micro ladder of 2 contracts, capped at $7 a fill — until the close-vs-paid record earns bigger sizing.

cap · exposure — The most we’ll ever have at risk: $75 riding on one player, $150 on one game. The dashboard shows how full each game’s bucket is.

worth per $1 bet — What your ticket could fetch sold right now, divided by what you paid. 1.30 means sell now returns $1.30 per $1 risked.

open profit — What you’d make or lose selling every open ticket at the bid. Not real money until you sell or the game ends.

“last seen at” — The most recent price we archived before the game — we snapshot prices several times a day. It’s our best witness of where the market was, not the official close.

settled · won · lost · push — The graded result. Push = tie, stake back.

sold early — Closed a ticket while the game was still going. The profit or loss is real and counts in the history.