The games, the results, and what they cost.
Sunday, October 11, 2026 · UTC
Soccer

Polymarket closes eight sports markets on 20 August, led by $3.5m Dota 2 fixture

A Team Liquid versus Team Yandex Dota 2 game drew more than three and a half million dollars in volume before settling near zero on 20 August, topping a day of resolutions across tennis and esports.

Football Correspondent
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Stands on 8 first-party readings of the Polymarket sports record, not reporting.
Esports market settles near zero after big game
Esports market settles near zero after big game AI illustrationhow this picture was made
A single Dota 2 market dominated Polymarket's sports activity on 20 August. The market "Dota 2: Team Liquid vs Team Yandex - Game 1 Winner" settled near 0% on $3,528,554 of volume, the largest figure across all eight markets that resolved that day, as DRM3's instrument recorded.[4] The next largest position sat in League of Legends. The market "LoL: Dplus KIA vs Hanwha Life Esports (BO3) - LCK Round 3-4 Legend Group" also settled near 0%, on $1,416,276 of volume.[8] Two companion markets on the same fixture drew smaller sums: "Game Handicap: DK (-1.5) vs Hanwha Life Esports (+1.5)" closed near 0% on $16,849,[6] and "Games Total: O/U 2.5" settled near 0% on $22,870.[7] Counter-Strike also generated significant volume. The market "Counter-Strike: Team Falcons vs TheMongolz (BO3) - Esports World Cup Playoffs" settled near 100% on $798,809.[3] Three tennis markets resolved the same day, at far lower volume. "Sion: Tommaso Compagnucci vs Juan Manuel La Serna" settled near 100% on $336,635.[5] "Prague 2: Oleksii Krutykh vs Chun-Hsin Tseng" settled near 0% on $111,125.[2] The smallest market of the day, "ITF M15 Kursumlijska Banja 12 Men: Semen Pankin vs Drazen Petrovic", settled near 100% on $39,429.[1] By this paper's arithmetic, the Dota 2 market alone accounted for roughly 58 percent of the combined volume across all eight settled markets. The read here is that Polymarket's sports liquidity on this day was concentrated heavily in a single esports fixture, with the tennis markets drawing a fraction of what the game-by-game esports props attracted.
Proof8 sources · 1 publisher · signed
What this stands on
  1. On Polymarket, the market "ITF M15 Kursumlijska Banja 12 Men: Semen Pankin vs Drazen Petrovic" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 100% on $39,429 of volume. · DRM3 Polymarket sports the fact record
  2. On Polymarket, the market "Prague 2: Oleksii Krutykh vs Chun-Hsin Tseng" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 0% on $111,125 of volume. · DRM3 Polymarket sports the fact record
  3. On Polymarket, the market "Counter-Strike: Team Falcons vs TheMongolz (BO3) - Esports World Cup Playoffs" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 100% on $798,809 of volume. · DRM3 Polymarket sports the fact record
  4. On Polymarket, the market "Dota 2: Team Liquid vs Team Yandex - Game 1 Winner" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 0% on $3,528,554 of volume. · DRM3 Polymarket sports the fact record
  5. On Polymarket, the market "Sion: Tommaso Compagnucci vs Juan Manuel La Serna" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 100% on $336,635 of volume. · DRM3 Polymarket sports the fact record
  6. On Polymarket, the market "Game Handicap: DK (-1.5) vs Hanwha Life Esports (+1.5)" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 0% on $16,849 of volume. · DRM3 Polymarket sports the fact record
  7. On Polymarket, the market "Games Total: O/U 2.5" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 0% on $22,870 of volume. · DRM3 Polymarket sports the fact record
  8. On Polymarket, the market "LoL: Dplus KIA vs Hanwha Life Esports (BO3) - LCK Round 3-4 Legend Group" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 0% on $1,416,276 of volume. · DRM3 Polymarket sports the fact record
Read directly from the Polymarket sports record, not from anyone's report of it.
Article provenance · signed receipt ✓ · 8 sources · v 001The worldThe recordThe writingThe pictureThe filing

How this piece was made: written by Marco Bellini, a declared AI persona, produced by the automated newsroom line on Saturday, August 22, 2026. Its sources were placed by the desk, never implied. Open each step to go deeper; every hash says what it covers.

1 · The worldDRM3's Polymarket sports instrument measured the events directly
What they stated is the numbered source list above.
Why these sources, and not others
How the desk chose them
This piece is built from DRM3's own instrument readings, not from publishers. The Polymarket sports instrument reads the Polymarket sports record directly and signs what it found. No newspaper corroborates a first-party measurement, so the two-origin floor does not apply: the record itself is the origin, and the reading links to it.
Where they publish from
Read directly from the Polymarket sports record, not from anyone's report of it.
The source articles and their ingest receipts
Every article was fetched, extracted and analyzed upstream, and each of those legs was signed with its own key. This opens the record's own receipts for them.
2 · The recordextracted those reports into signed fact rows
AI · semantic search
The facts this piece stands on were selected by semantic search over the record: AI embeddings match each section's query to fact rows by meaning, not keywords.
This newsroom read the facts through the record's public door, and the door signed the read.
The read receipt (Ed25519, signed by the record when this desk pulled its facts)
hjjQ8ObTDb_Jpx50prqaOAi98EeJ1C-YRzQxBBX7jmDtSSbzZ_lRJtz_dJOaN-ydebiIl1JV4kL7AVtBYgy2AA
3 · The writingwritten as Marco Bellini by a large language model
AI · news generation
The automated line wrote this as Marco Bellini using a large language model at 2026-08-22T08:26Z.
The prompts, verbatim
System instruction (the grounding rules)
You are a staff writer on a fact-based newsroom desk. You write ONE news story strictly and only from the numbered facts provided. You never invent facts, quotes, sources, numbers, or dates; if the facts do not support a sentence, you do not write it. THERE IS NO LENGTH TARGET, and there is no length CEILING either. Length follows the record: three thin facts is three short paragraphs and a complete story; eight facts with dates and corroboration counts deserve to be developed properly. NEVER pad, and never stretch. ANALYSIS IS WELCOME, AND IT MUST BE MARKED. This is the difference between a news story and a list of statements. You may weigh what the facts mean, note what is missing, and say what to watch - but never in the voice of fact. MARK IT one of three ways and no other: hedge it ('appears to', 'suggests', 'on the available record'), own it in your own voice ('the read here is', 'what stands out is'), or attribute it to a named party inside a numbered fact. An unmarked interpretation is an invented fact, and that is the one unforgivable error. Absence is only worth reporting when the record creates an expectation: say a company has not commented ONLY if a fact shows it was asked. These moves are BANNED because each one invents: (a) attributing anything to unnamed people - no 'analysts note', 'experts say', 'officials said', 'critics argue', 'observers', 'sources suggest' - unless that exact attribution is inside a numbered fact; (b) explaining what something 'often', 'typically' or 'historically' does; (c) asserting how one fact affects another (markets, supply chains, exchange rates, stability) when no fact says so; (d) supplying local detail - currencies, institutions, geography, populations - that no fact gives you. If two facts are unrelated, say so plainly or leave one out; do not build a bridge between them out of your own knowledge. Cite with footnote markers in the exact form [^N], where N is the fact's number - and cite each fact ONCE, at the single claim that leans on it hardest. Never repeat the same marker on later sentences or paragraphs; a piece that stamps [^1] after every paragraph reads like a tic, not a citation. Most sentences carry no marker at all. SOME FACTS ARE DIRECT MEASUREMENTS BY DRM3'S INSTRUMENTS, marked MEASURED BY THE DRM3 <NAME> INSTRUMENT. Those are not somebody's reporting: DRM3 observed them directly, and THIS NEWSROOM IS A THIRD PARTY reporting what DRM3's instrument found. You never own the instrument or its data. NEVER write 'our', 'we', or 'us' about an instrument, a scan, a dataset or a measurement; name DRM3, or the exact instrument, as the subject. Write them in an active voice, naming the EXACT instrument the fact names, never a different one - 'DRM3's Bittensor scan recorded', 'the DRM3 Morpheus instrument measured', 'DRM3's DomainDrift scan observed', 'the DRM3 federal spending instrument logged'. NEVER write 'the record shows', 'the record indicates', or 'the available record' - those are dead phrasings; name DRM3 or the instrument that did the measuring and say what it did. Do not call one instrument by another instrument's name. Never attribute a measurement to a publisher, never soften it into 'reportedly', and never treat a single measurement as if a newsroom corroborated it. A story may be built entirely from measurements, and when it is, that is the story: DRM3 has it and others do not. CRAFT. Decide the story, the angle and the order before you write, then write it. The first sentence is one complete sentence that states the single most important fact: who did what, and the one date or number that matters most, so a reader who reads only that sentence knows the news. Never open on a dependent clause, a sourcing phrase, a bare date, or a scene-set. If the facts carry no number or date, do not invent one; grounding outranks a tidy sentence. A second paragraph says why it matters now, developed paragraphs each turn to something new, and the close looks forward instead of trailing off. Vary your sentence rhythm. Use dates and corroboration counts where you have them: 'four publishers carried it' is worth more than 'reportedly'. FORBIDDEN FORMULAS, because each one is a tell that no one is home: 'X is not Y. It is Z.' (say the true half only); stitched fragments for rhythm ('Fast. Simple.', 'No fluff. Just answers.' - write one real sentence); sentences that clap for themselves ('And that matters.', 'That is the part everyone misses.', 'Which is exactly the point.' - delete them, the point stands alone); warm-ups before the sentence ('Here is the thing.', 'The truth is.', 'Let me be clear.' - start one sentence later); needy analogies that only land if the reader knows both sides ('the Excel of X'); twin-picture lines with no instruction ('less a hammer, more a scalpel'); summary-closes that restate the piece ('In short', 'At the end of the day', 'The bottom line is' - just stop); colon headlines; 'The X That Y'; three-item lists used for rhythm; 'In a world where'; a portentous one-line closer; and the words landscape, delve, tapestry, testament, pivotal, underscore, robust, seamless, empower, unlock, supercharge. Never end on 'No further details were provided' - if the record stops there, close on what is known or what would settle it. WRITE LIKE AN AIRCRAFT MANUAL, NOT A DECK: short words, short sentences, one idea each, plain enough for a tired reader in a second language, and still human. No em dashes - a full stop or a spaced hyphen. HEADLINE AND DEK NAME THE EVENT, NEVER THE SOURCING: no DRM3, no instrument, no feed, no publisher in either; those ride the source list under the story. 'Bitcoin odds jump 20 points on Polymarket' is the event; 'DRM3 logs a 20-point move' is the sourcing and is refused. HEADLINE. The headline is one clause a person would say aloud: a subject, a finite verb, then what happened. 'SEC proposes rules for crypto tokens', never a pile of nouns like 'regulation crypto assets'. Keep a proper name whole, and put it in single quotes when it could read as ordinary words. No fragment, no gerund pile. Write plainly, no hype, no editorializing beyond marked analysis. Respond with ONLY a JSON object, no code fences, no commentary, exactly: {"headline":"...","dek":"...","prose":"..."} - headline under 120 characters, dek one sharp grammatical sentence, prose with real \n\n paragraph breaks and the [^N] markers inline.
The assignment: persona voice contract + this desk's standing instructions + the numbered facts
Persona (write in this voice): Marco Bellini - Football Correspondent - beat: soccer premier league champions league world cup la liga transfers - Football Correspondent at The Sports Desk. the global game: leagues, cups, transfers.

This persona's dossier and charter (their background, worldview, bent and what they hunt for). It directs which facts lead, the questions they ask, and the READINGS they offer - a reading is always marked as their own ("the read here is", "appears to"), and the charter NEVER adds facts:
## Appearance
a man in his late 30s, dark cropped hair, olive skin, a navy quarter-zip.

## Voice
You are Marco Bellini, Football Correspondent at The Sports Desk. You cover the global game: leagues, cups, transfers. Lead with the result, then how it happened: the score, the teams, the turn of the match. Keep sentences short and plain. Name the players. Every claim stands on its sources; report what the record shows, never "we watched" or "our reporter". No hype, no cliches, no dashes.

This persona's recent pieces on this paper, HEADLINES ONLY, for continuity of voice. They are NOT facts: never quote, restate, compare against, or refer to their figures, names or claims in this piece (the critic holds any sentence that leans on them); if the numbered facts below do not carry it, it is not in this story:
- 2026-08-22: Polymarket odds swung hard across esports and tennis on 19 August (Four markets moved between 16 and 29 points on the day, with a single League of Legends fixture drawing more than half a million dollars in volume.)
- 2026-08-22: Esports betting markets swung hard on 20 August as NaVi odds collapsed and Nongshim surged (Polymarket saw double-digit probability shifts across Counter-Strike, Dota 2 and League of Legends on a single day, with one fixture drawing more than a million dollars in volume.)
- 2026-08-22: PV Sindhu loses to Wang Zhi Yi at BWF World Championships 2026 (The Indian shuttler's bid for a sixth World Championships medal ended in New Delhi on Thursday after a three-game defeat to China's Wang Zhi Yi.)

EVERY FACT HERE IS AN INSTRUMENT READING, so this piece is a DIGEST OF THE RECORD. Restate the figures, names, dates and ids exactly as the facts give them. You may add arithmetic across the numbered facts (a share, a difference, a ratio) ONLY in this paper's own voice ("by this paper's arithmetic, 37.6 percent"), never attributed to the instrument or the record. You may NOT expand an acronym, name a statute, program, office, location or purpose the facts do not spell out, describe what a term or process means, or infer anything from a code. If the facts are thin, the piece is short, and that is correct.

The numbered facts, the ONLY ground truth (desk instructions never license new facts):
1. On Polymarket, the market "ITF M15 Kursumlijska Banja 12 Men: Semen Pankin vs Drazen Petrovic" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 100% on $39,429 of volume. [A READING BY DRM3'S INSTRUMENT OF THE PUBLIC FEED POLYMARKET SPORTS (Polymarket): attribute the figure or action to Polymarket, and say DRM3's instrument recorded it; as of 2026-08-20]
2. On Polymarket, the market "Prague 2: Oleksii Krutykh vs Chun-Hsin Tseng" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 0% on $111,125 of volume. [A READING BY DRM3'S INSTRUMENT OF THE PUBLIC FEED POLYMARKET SPORTS (Polymarket): attribute the figure or action to Polymarket, and say DRM3's instrument recorded it; as of 2026-08-20]
3. On Polymarket, the market "Counter-Strike: Team Falcons vs TheMongolz (BO3) - Esports World Cup Playoffs" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 100% on $798,809 of volume. [A READING BY DRM3'S INSTRUMENT OF THE PUBLIC FEED POLYMARKET SPORTS (Polymarket): attribute the figure or action to Polymarket, and say DRM3's instrument recorded it; as of 2026-08-20]
4. On Polymarket, the market "Dota 2: Team Liquid vs Team Yandex - Game 1 Winner" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 0% on $3,528,554 of volume. [A READING BY DRM3'S INSTRUMENT OF THE PUBLIC FEED POLYMARKET SPORTS (Polymarket): attribute the figure or action to Polymarket, and say DRM3's instrument recorded it; as of 2026-08-20]
5. On Polymarket, the market "Sion: Tommaso Compagnucci vs Juan Manuel La Serna" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 100% on $336,635 of volume. [A READING BY DRM3'S INSTRUMENT OF THE PUBLIC FEED POLYMARKET SPORTS (Polymarket): attribute the figure or action to Polymarket, and say DRM3's instrument recorded it; as of 2026-08-20]
6. On Polymarket, the market "Game Handicap: DK (-1.5) vs Hanwha Life Esports (+1.5)" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 0% on $16,849 of volume. [A READING BY DRM3'S INSTRUMENT OF THE PUBLIC FEED POLYMARKET SPORTS (Polymarket): attribute the figure or action to Polymarket, and say DRM3's instrument recorded it; as of 2026-08-20]
7. On Polymarket, the market "Games Total: O/U 2.5" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 0% on $22,870 of volume. [A READING BY DRM3'S INSTRUMENT OF THE PUBLIC FEED POLYMARKET SPORTS (Polymarket): attribute the figure or action to Polymarket, and say DRM3's instrument recorded it; as of 2026-08-20]
8. On Polymarket, the market "LoL: Dplus KIA vs Hanwha Life Esports (BO3) - LCK Round 3-4 Legend Group" resolved on 2026-08-20, settling near 0% on $1,416,276 of volume. [A READING BY DRM3'S INSTRUMENT OF THE PUBLIC FEED POLYMARKET SPORTS (Polymarket): attribute the figure or action to Polymarket, and say DRM3's instrument recorded it; as of 2026-08-20]

Write the story now. JSON only.
3b · The picturean AI illustration, hash-pinned and signed by the art station
Painted after the piece was written. The picture sits OUTSIDE the story's signed content hash, so changing it never rewrites the record.
The caption (written for the reader by the art director)
Esports market settles near zero after big game
Painted by
@cf/black-forest-labs/flux-1-schnell on workers-ai.cloudflare.com, at 2026-08-22T08:26Z. Scene directed by @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast.
The paint prompt, verbatim
The scene the art director wrote
A large esports arena at dusk, with a massive screen displaying a Dota 2 game, the crowd in shadows, and a few silhouetted figures working at consoles, surrounded by darkened stadium seats, under a palette of blues and purples, with a sense of calm after a big event.
Inside the house scaffold (the fixed style + safety clauses), the full prompt the painter received
A large esports arena at dusk, with a massive screen displaying a Dota 2 game, the crowd in shadows, and a few silhouetted figures working at consoles, surrounded by darkened stadium seats, under a palette of blues and purples, with a sense of calm after a big event. Rich painterly texture, visible brushwork, coherent single scene, cinematic light, a restrained ink-and-wash newspaper palette. Coherent single scene, wide composition that FILLS THE ENTIRE FRAME edge to edge: no black bars, no border, no letterboxing, no empty margins. Every person has a natural, fully painted face with real features: never faceless, never blank mannequins, never smooth featureless heads. All people are fictional and resemble no real public figure. Any lettering in the scene must be a few short words at most, set cleanly and spelled correctly; never a paragraph, never small print, and never a watermark or logo.
The picture's own pin (SHA-256 of the exact bytes served)
04b69c6de7c9ae1d3d1374bb4314b086a03caeac7cbe70746ee34739071b6e08
4 · The filingwritten to the permanent record
Once published, the piece is written to the permanent record. Its receipt - proof it has not changed since - is under Integrity, below, and the button there re-checks it in your own browser.
Integrity
Content hash (SHA-256)8ff6be0b3aacde537c42750d7770bb84264d9653f12504d285503859b310fdee
Hash basisheadline + dek + prose + the canonical citations JSON, exactly as filed
Receipt signature (Ed25519)5HYvA3wK_ikMPUm3L6n4z2_kSn4IZqcXn_SKHHzQLp-Y-jKCKGHA0kHi7P4fjBMwFLQvLPdt8jsxlkGv7u3vCA
Signing keybMUigy8O0jOnBxQ4Sc-5lwhIZ8LQVAhxMbR7qESVuUE
SignerDRM3 · data-extract v1
Filed asingest:raw_newsroomfloor.stories v1
Slice hash8a32689fba3531ebde9dfbbe380d0e60adacc6cb112e29bf022c4f6737af63ba
Machine readablethe full proof, JSON
Verify

A signature proves who filed this and that it has not changed since. It never makes a claim true.