REFERENCE · THE TERMS ON THE BOARD
Glossary
The terms behind Polymarket esports market data, in plain English. Every entry has its own anchor, so you can link someone straight to a definition.
Reading the line10 terms
- Closing line
- The final odds on a market just before the match starts: the market's last, best-informed answer. Sharp traders grade themselves against it. If you consistently beat the close, you're finding value before the market does.
- Closing-line value (CLV)
- The gap between the price you took and the closing price. Take a CS2 team at 55¢ and watch it close at 60¢: that's +5¢ of CLV. Over a real sample, positive CLV is the strongest evidence of edge there is. It's the number PolyPin is built around.
- CLV vs P&L
- P&L tells you what happened; CLV tells you whether you deserved it. Short-term results are dominated by variance: a trader with positive CLV and a losing month is usually doing better than one with profits and negative CLV.
- Pinnacle
- The low-margin bookmaker where sharp money settles, which makes its line, especially its closing line, the industry's reference for true odds. PolyPin uses Pinnacle as the benchmark beside every Polymarket esports market.
- No-vig fair price
- A bookmaker's two sides of a market sum to more than 100%; the excess is the vig. Removing it and rescaling gives the no-vig fair price: the book's actual opinion of the probability.
- Vig (margin, juice)
- The bookmaker's built-in margin. If both sides of a match imply 52% each, the extra 4% is vig: the price of trading into that book. Pinnacle's is the lowest in the industry, which is why its de-vigged line is treated as fair.
- Implied probability
- The probability a price implies. On Polymarket it's direct: a 62¢ contract implies 62%. For decimal odds it's 1 ÷ odds; decimal 1.80 implies 55.6%.
- Edge
- The difference between the probability you can buy at and the fair probability. If Pinnacle's no-vig line says 60% and Polymarket sells it at 55¢, that's five points of edge, before fees.
- A trader (or book) whose prices move ahead of the market: the money the closing line follows. Opposite of a square.
- Square
- Recreational money: bets placed on favorites, narratives and hunches rather than price. Squares fund the edges sharps collect.
Market types3 terms
- Moneyline
- The simplest market: who wins the match (or the map). No spread, no total, just the winner.
- Handicap (spread)
- A market that levels a mismatch by giving one side a head start, usually in maps or rounds. A −1.5 map handicap on a CS2 favorite only cashes on a 2–0.
- Total (over/under)
- A market on the combined amount of something: total maps, total rounds, total kills, rather than the winner. You bet whether it lands over or under the line.
Trading mechanics8 terms
- Order book
- The live list of resting bids and asks on a market, with size at each price. Depth tells you how much you can trade before you move the price, and how seriously to take it.
- CLOB
- Central limit order book: the exchange model Polymarket runs on. Traders trade with each other through resting orders; there's no bookmaker taking the other side.
- Limit order
- An order at your price that rests in the book until someone matches it. You choose the price; the market chooses when (and whether) it fills.
- Market order
- An order that fills immediately against the best resting price. You choose when; the book chooses the price, and you pay the taker fee.
- Maker
- The side whose resting order gets matched. Makers add liquidity and pay no Polymarket fee.
- Taker
- The side that crosses the spread and matches a resting order. Takers remove liquidity and pay Polymarket's taker fee.
- Taker fee (Polymarket)
- Polymarket's own fee on taker fills: 5% × price × (1 − price) × shares. It peaks at mid prices (1.25¢ per share at 50¢, i.e. 2.5% of stake) and shrinks toward the extremes. Makers pay nothing.
- Builder fee
- A fee some Polymarket interfaces attach to orders placed through them, via Polymarket's builder program. PolyPin attaches none: trades through the terminal carry no PolyPin fee at all.
Wallets & custody5 terms
- Non-custodial
- Software that never takes possession of your money. PolyPin is non-custodial: your funds stay in your own Polymarket wallet, and every trade is signed by you, in your browser.
- Wallet sign-in
- How you sign in to PolyPin: with your wallet. No email, no password, no gas. One signature proves you control your address, and we automatically sync your Polymarket account for bet history and P&L.
- USDC
- A dollar stablecoin: one USDC is redeemable for one dollar. It's what you deposit to Polymarket.
- pUSD
- Polymarket's trading collateral since the CLOB V2 upgrade (April 2026): an ERC-20 on Polygon backed 1:1 by USDC. Deposits convert automatically; one USDC in, one pUSD to trade with.
- Deposit wallet
- The wallet Polymarket creates for your account. Your funds and positions live there, on Polymarket, and PolyPin never holds funds. See non-custodial.
Performance4 terms
- P&L
- Profit and loss: what you've made or lost, realized and unrealized. The scoreboard everyone watches, and the one most polluted by variance. See CLV vs P&L.
- ROI
- Return on investment: profit divided by amount staked. Useful for comparing traders with different bankrolls; meaningless over small samples.
- Strike rate
- The share of your bets that win. Only meaningful next to the odds you took: a 40% strike rate at 3.00 average odds is excellent; at 1.50 it's ruin.
- Drawdown
- The peak-to-trough fall in your bankroll. The number that decides whether a strategy is livable, not just profitable.
Free to use. Connect a wallet and you're in.Open the terminal