Official Competition Rules for the Bridgewater Open Forecasting Tournament (the `"Tournament`")


  • Description of Tournament. The Tournament, run by Metaculus, Inc. (`"Metaculus`"), will test participants' ability to make probabilistic forecasts on questions concerning future events across a variety of question types (binary, continuous, multiple choice, and conditional). Bridgewater Associates, LP (`"Bridgewater`") may reach out to participants who perform well in the Tournament to gauge their interest in beginning a recruitment process for employment with Bridgewater. By entering and participating for the duration of the Tournament, you consent to Metaculus sharing your registration and performance information, including all personal information (which is information that can be used to identify or contact a specific individual, such as your name and email address) (`"Personal Information`"), with Bridgewater, and consent to Bridgewater contacting you via email following the competition regarding potential employment opportunities with Bridgewater.
  • How to Enter and Participate. Any person wishing to participate must create a free Metaculus user account, if they do not already have one, and register for the tournament via the Tournament landing page, thereby accepting Tournament terms and conditions. To make forecasts in this Tournament, visit the relevant forecasting question pages on Metaculus and submit your own probabilistic forecasts. To qualify for any of the prizes, you need to achieve a sufficiently high Peer Score, as assessed by Metaculus' Tournament Scoring Rules. Note that you may update your forecasts as frequently as you want. No purchase or payment is necessary to enter or win. You may enter only once. Entering more than once will void all entries and result in disqualification. You may not enter more times than indicated by using multiple email addresses, identities, or devices in an attempt to circumvent the rules. Participants are not allowed to share accounts – forecasts must be your own work.
  • Eligibility. Participants must be 18 years of age or older as of February 3, 2025. Employees and contractors of Metaculus and Bridgewater and their affiliates, subsidiaries, and agencies, and members of their immediate family or persons living in the same household are not eligible to participate. Void where prohibited.
  • Timing. The Tournament webpage will be made available on January 3, 2025. Practice questions will be available from January 13, 2025 or earlier to February 3, 2025. Official scored forecasting begins February 3, 2025, with additional questions posted February 10, 2025 and February 17, 2025. Final rankings will be determined and winners announced in early April.
  • Prizes. The Tournament will have a total prize pool of $25,000, which will be awarded to a number of participants based on their performance in the Tournament. The top 125 forecasters in the open category and 125 forecasters in the undergraduate category will be eligible for prizes.
  • Allocation of Prizes. Allocation of prizes will be determined according to Metaculus' Tournament Scoring Rules. Winners will receive payouts that depend on their rank and forecasting performance, according to their score. A total of $25,000 will be awarded across a maximum of 250 prize disbursements. Payouts may be paid in the form of cash or a cash equivalent, which may include but is not limited to prepaid virtual cards, gift cards, or similar methods, at the discretion of Metaculus. Metaculus reserves the right to determine the specific form of payment, and no alternative form of payment will be offered unless explicitly provided by Metaculus. Participants will be scored using Metaculus Tournament Scoring Rules. The details of these scoring rules are mathematical (you may view the details here), but there are three key features:
    • You should expect to receive the highest score if you report your true beliefs. For continuous questions, this means that you should put the center of your distribution so that your probability of the true number falling outside of your reported confidence intervals actually reflects how confident you are.
    • The scoring rules reward forecasters for being more accurate than the rest of the participants (Peer Score). This means it's worth doing equally a good job on questions that are difficult as it is for those which are relatively easy, as although your absolute accuracy might be worse for the former, you can still increase your score by beating the crowd.
    • The score you are awarded is time-averaged over the time for which the question is open, such that the score you earn depends upon your predictions' accuracy and when they are made. This means both that you should make your first prediction early, so as to be rewarded over more of the question's lifetime, and also that you should update your prediction anytime new information comes to light that alters your best estimate of the probability.

    Metaculus will decide the final resolution of all questions at its sole and absolute discretion. Ambiguous or annulled question resolutions will be avoided to the maximum extent possible, but in the rare instances where they occur, those questions will no longer be scored as part of the tournament. Prize recipients will be required to verify their identity. Taxes and fees are paid by recipients.

  • Right to cancel or modify. Metaculus and/or Bridgewater reserve the right to cancel, suspend, or modify the Tournament if any unforeseen problem—technical, legal or otherwise—prevents the Tournament from running as planned.

Participation in the Tournament is additionally subject to the following Terms and Conditions:

PLEASE NOTE THAT YOUR USE OF AND ACCESS TO OUR SERVICES (DEFINED BELOW) ARE SUBJECT TO THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO ALL OF THE FOLLOWING, YOU MAY NOT USE OR ACCESS THE SERVICES IN ANY MANNER.

Welcome to Metaculus. Please read on to learn the rules and restrictions that govern your use of our website(s), products, services and applications (the `"Services`"). If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding these Terms or the Services, please contact Support [at] metaculus [dot] com. These Terms of Use (the `"Terms`"`") are a binding contract between you and Metaculus Inc. (`"Metaculus,`" `"we`" and `"us`"). You must agree to and accept all of the Terms, or you don't have the right to use the Services. Your use of the Services in any way means that you agree to all of these Terms, and these Terms will remain in effect while you use the Services. These Terms include the provisions in this document, as well as those in the Privacy Policy. In these Terms, the words `"include`" or `"including`" mean `"including but not limited to,`" and examples are for illustration purposes and are not limiting.

  1. Will these Terms ever change?
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  3. What about my privacy?
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    By entering and participating for the duration of the Tournament, you consent to Metaculus sharing your registration, Personal Information and performance information with Bridgewater Associates, LP (`"Bridgewater`"), and consent to Bridgewater contacting you via email following the competition.

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  13. What are the rules for competitions on Metaculus?
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  23. What else do I need to know?
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  25. About These Terms
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