HOW TO PROFIT FROM A WAR YOU ARE NOT FIGHTING
While Israel and the U.S. were bombing Iran, a few hundred anonymous individuals were making millions of dollars by betting on the exact timing of the attack. They are neither generals nor spies; they are users of the Polymarket online betting platform. And, as you will see below, of all the players in this war, they are the only ones acting rationally.
John von Neumann would have smiled. Or he would have wept.
Reason has already lost the bet to chaos. And, most certainly, the winners are not those who rule the world, but the “players” who bet on it.
Two men wanted to make the world rational! And they failed!
John von Neumann is, perhaps, the most intelligent man of the 20th century, whom we did not honor enough. Not because he wasn’t famous — because, indisputably, he was. But because his fame remained in Einstein’s shadow, even though, technically speaking, von Neumann was in a league of his own. Einstein solved the universe. Von Neumann not only solved the universe, but also simultaneously calculated how much it would cost to “bet” on it.
He memorized phone books at age six, and by thirty, he had invented the game theory. By forty, he had already contributed to the development of the atomic bomb. He died in 1957, at the age of fifty-three, ravaged by cancer, most likely contracted during the nuclear tests he had witnessed.
His central idea, formulated in 1928, was simple and perhaps that is why it was complex: no decision can be made by considering only yourself, your own actions.
What you do also depends on what the other person does, knowing what you will do. And vice versa. Ad infinitum. He called this GAME THEORY, a mathematical framework for any situation of conflict or negotiation between rational actors.
His practical solution is called MINIMAX: don’t play to win the maximum, but play to lose the minimum.
Today, this theory seems to be the difference between a statesman and a politician. Between a general and a fictional hero. Between someone who thinks in scenarios and someone who thinks in speeches.
John Nash (“A Beautiful Mind”) came after von Neumann and usefully complicated things. He asked: all right, but what do you do when the game isn’t zero-sum, when one person’s gain doesn’t necessarily mean the other’s loss? When can we both win, or when can we both lose?
“Nash Equilibrium” is the point at which no one stands to gain by unilaterally changing the strategy. In theory, it’s peace! In practice, it’s the treaty that everyone signs but no one follows. It’s the amicable divorce where both parties pretend they’re fine.
Nash won the Nobel Prize in 1994. He died in a taxi in 2015, on his way back from Stockholm, where he had received another award. Although he described the perfect equilibrium of systems, his own mind never knew peace; he suffered from schizophrenia, endured repeated hospitalizations in psychiatric clinics, and spent decades wandering through Princeton.
Two wars the theory did not predict
On February 28, 2026, Israel and the United States attacked Iran. The stated objectives: regime change, the destruction of the nuclear program, and the annihilation of the Revolutionary Guards.
Ten days later, Khamenei was dead and his son is the new supreme leader. The nuclear program was partially destroyed. The Revolutionary Guards were weakened but still functional. The regime remained intact, and the war is in full swing.
Von Neumann would probably have raised an eyebrow.
He might have told the political leaders that they had entered a game with three simultaneously incompatible objectives.
That they had chosen to maximize gain instead of minimizing risk — the exact opposite of minimax. That they had bet on total victory when the theory told them to secure a partial, verifiable gain.
Iran, for its part, didn’t play by any playbook. It attacked the Gulf states — Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. It struck at bystanders, because it was easier, rather than at its direct adversaries. It’s the Samson logic: if I can’t win anyway, I’ll at least make sure everyone else loses. This strategy doesn’t appear in any game theory textbook. It does, however, appear in the Book of Judges.
Ukraine? Same picture, just a different geography. Russia can’t win, but it can’t lose either. The West has no exit strategy. Ukraine is playing for survival, outside any rational calculation. The Nash equilibrium is absent. Everyone keeps moving. Everyone loses a little. No one stops, no one wins.
And this is no longer a game; it is the very situation where the casino itself is on fire!
Enter the “middlemen”
There are, however, people who have read von Neumann’s book and are now applying it flawlessly. They are not diplomats. They are not generals. They are not geopolitical analysts with ties and dark circles under their eyes — a sign that they read a lot and understand even more.
They are called “Magamyman,” “Planktonbet,” “Dicedicedice,” and “nothingeverhappens911.”
They are users of Polymarket — an American prediction platform where you bet, anonymously and in cryptocurrency, on any future event: elections, sports, geopolitics, weather. It works like a stock exchange: you buy “shares” on an outcome, the price fluctuates based on perceived probability, and in the end, you either win or lose.
Simple, efficient, and, above all, completely unregulated for international users.
On Polymarket, you can bet on who will be Iran’s next supreme leader, how long the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed, or whether U.S. troops will enter Iranian territory. There was also a market on the probability of a nuclear bomb being detonated, which was later withdrawn following a public outcry. While it was active, it saw trading.
71 minutes and $500,000
On February 27, 2026, one day before the attack, user behavior suddenly deviated from the norm. Over 150 accounts placed hundreds of bets of at least $1,000, betting that the U.S. would strike Iran the next day. The official odds indicated there was only a 7–26% chance. That is exactly the kind of bet you make when you know something others don’t.
Magamyman bet $32,000 on the morning of February 28, 71 minutes before news of the attack became public, when the odds indicated a 17% chance. He won over $500,000 in a single day. At least 16 accounts each won over $100,000. Another 109 — over $10,000. A single anonymous wallet: $60,000 invested, nearly $500,000 won.
The accounts were new, opened in February, exclusively for betting on Iran. The transactions were on the public blockchain. The identities are invisible.
Surely someone knew. Or many knew something.
Insider trading? Possibly, and this isn’t a far-fetched hypothesis, given that Donald Trump Jr. is an advisor at Polymarket, and former employees of the competing platform, Kalshi, now work in the Trump administration. But this is a thread I’m deliberately setting aside. Because it’s merely a symptom, not the disease I’m talking about.
When the bookies are more lucid than the diplomats
Game theory has migrated; it has left the military strategy rooms and diplomatic negotiations and arrived at Polymarket.
It has been taken up not by those who rule the world, but by those who bet on it.
Because states now play chaotically, ideologically, emotionally. Irrationally, by definition, from von Neumann’s perspective. No one plays minimax. Everyone plays ego, resentment, electoral messaging, or religious doctrine.
In contrast, the speculators play coldly. They have no geopolitical objectives, no alliances, no ideological adversaries, and no military enemies.
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But they have portfolios and play exactly as von Neumann prescribed: they identify information asymmetry, calculate probabilities, bet at the optimal moment, and then cash in.
So far, the total amount traded on Polymarket on predictions related to Iran exceeds one billion dollars.
The South Korean stock market has recorded the biggest crash in its history, greater than after September 11, 2001. Seoul has no connection to Tehran, but markets don’t read maps; they are sensitive to fear and react!
The neighbor who bought an apartment in 2008 because “prices won’t fall any further” hadn’t read Nash. The business partner who broke the contract when the market crashed misapplied minimax: he minimized today’s loss and maximized tomorrow’s. The gambler who bet on Polymarket that the U.S. would attack Iran on the morning of February 28 is the only true von Neumann in the whole story.
A “public good”
Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute unwittingly offered the most cynical conclusion possible: “If there’s going to be corruption in the government, at least let it happen this way, where it produces a public good.”
A public good, that is: if someone in the administration knew the war was starting and bet on it, at least the market found out faster than CNN.
So, let’s take comfort in that!
Von Neumann invented game theory in the hope that the world could be modeled rationally. Nash showed that stable equilibria exist even without cooperation. Both believed that actors try to optimize something — power, security, prosperity.
But neither modeled a world where state-actors play chaotically, and the only ones who play rationally are those who bet on their own chaos.
When the bookies are more lucid than the diplomats, it’s not a matter of regulating prediction markets. It’s a matter of civilization.
Which, obviously, is at an impasse!
Published in Romanian at https://sergiutoader.substack.com
SOURCES
- Britannica - What is the concept of game theory
https://www.britannica.com/science/game-theory
2. Britannica - John von Neumann-
Biography/Accomplishments/Inventions and Facts
https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-von-Neumann
3. Stanford edu - Von Neumann and The Development of Game Theory
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/1998-99/game-theory/neumann.html
4. John Nash - Biography/ Game Theory/ Nobel Prize and Facts
https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Nash
5. The Conversation - The Legacy of John Nash and His Equilibrium Theory
https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-john-nash-and-his-equilibrium-theory-42343
6. Watch “The Nash Equilibrium (A Beautiful Mind, John Nash): Definition, Explanation & Examples in One Minute” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/MSxgzaeKCJ0?si=wM7PZYo--xtgN94g
7. UK Parliament, House of Commons Library — US-Israel strikes on Iran
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10521/
8. Al Jazeera — US, Israel attack Iran updates: Khamenei killed
9. The New York Times — How Anonymous Bettors Cashed In on the Iran Strike (3 Mar 2026)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/upshot/prediction-markets-iran-strikes.html
10. Al Jazeera — Gamblers make big profits on Iran strikes (4 Mar 2026)
11. CNN Politics — Iran-related bets on prediction sites scrutinized (7 Mar 2026)
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/07/politics/iran-war-prediction-markets-polymarket-kalshi
12. ABC News- Anonymous gamblers betting on Iran strikes make millions on Polymarket
