PicksPal set up a website where friends can gamble with virtual money (for free) to show off how good they are at gambling and beating the odds. As such there’s nothing new to this idea of offering a free gambling site to have some fun. However, there’s great wisdom to be tapped on with people trying to outsmart each other in hope of cash prices.

Last year the company capitalised on this community by offering the best and most bet odds for 10 USD. With 10 dollars you can get the top 30 users’ picks on any 5 games of your choice. So, is PicksPal community beating the Vegas odds? So far it seems so:

PicksPal’s overall record, against the spread, has been 562-338, or a 63% win rate. In college basketball, the win rate is 66%. In pro football, 62%. They are even getting a 52% win rate in pro hockey, their worst sport. Some of the recent results can be viewed here. (via Techcrunch)

I’m reading Wikinomics which speaks about the issue of harnessing different development projects through mass collaboration. It’s full of similar examples and I’m quite sure that currently companies are only touching the possibilities of the phenomenon. Some of the largest and most simple examples of this sort of knowledge harnessing is Wikipedia, however PicksPal is another great example.