Terms of Use

Welcome to hunch.mt("hunch", "we", "us"). hunch.mt is a website operated from Malta that lets people cast "hunches" on Malta's elections, sports and live events; trade play-money prediction markets on those questions; and challenge friends to friendly prediction battles ("Duos"). By accessing or using hunch.mt you agree to these Terms of Use. If you don't agree, please don't use the service.

1. Who can use hunch.mt

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, take part in a Duo, or place orders in a prediction market on hunch.mt. By signing up you confirm you meet that age requirement and that the information you provide about yourself is true. Anonymous polls (where no account is created) may be cast by anyone old enough to give meaningful consent under Maltese law, but we'd still rather you be 18+.

2. What hunch.mt is — and isn't

hunch.mt is a social prediction platform. It is not a gambling, betting, lottery or gaming service and is not licensed or regulated by the Malta Gaming Authority or any other gaming regulator. Nothing on hunch.mt should be treated as a regulated gambling product.

The prediction-market feature on hunch.mt is play-money only. When you sign up we credit your account with a virtual €20.00 balance. That balance, every order you place, every position you hold and every payout you receive is virtual. The "€" symbol on screen is a unit of account inside hunch.mt and does not represent real money. There is no deposit, no top-up, no withdrawal, no cash-out and no redemption path. You cannot exchange your in-app balance for money, vouchers, crypto, casino chips or anything else of monetary value, and we will not honour any private agreement that purports to do so.

We do not process, hold, transmit or facilitate the transfer of money between users for prediction-market trading. If a third party asks you to pay them through hunch.mt, please report it to us at hello@hunch.mt.

Duos (1-on-1 friend battles) work differently. A Duo is a private wager between two specific friends. The wager can be:

• a forfeit (for example, the loser buys the winner a coffee or carries out an agreed silly task); or
• a cash amount the two friends have agreed between themselves, settled offlinedirectly between the two of you (cash, Revolut, direct transfer or whatever you've agreed).

Either way, the wager is a private arrangement between the two friends. hunch.mt records the challenge, the declared stake or forfeit, and the eventual outcome. We are not a party to the wager, we never hold any money for it, and we have no responsibility for whether the forfeit or payment is honoured. By creating or accepting a Duo you accept that any cash settlement is between you and the other player only.

3. Your account

• You're responsible for keeping your login details safe and for anything that happens under your account. You can sign in with an email + password (in which case we store a bcrypt hash of your password) or with Google sign-in.
• Signup is gated by a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge to keep automated bots out. Bypassing or trying to bypass the captcha is a breach of these Terms.
• The display name you provide at sign-up appears next to your battles, your orders and on the leaderboard. You may change it from your profile, but it must not impersonate another person, contain slurs, or breach Maltese law.
• You may delete your account at any time from settings or by emailing us. Some anonymous poll responses cannot be tied back to you and so cannot be deleted individually — see the Privacy Policy for detail.

4. Polls, hunches and content you submit

You can vote on polls (the Malta election poll and any of the side polls), suggest poll topics, place orders in prediction markets, and create or accept Duos. When you submit content (a poll suggestion, a Duo title, a forfeit description, a profile picture) you grant hunch.mt a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to host, display and distribute it within the service. You keep ownership of your content.

You agree not to submit anything that:

• is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, hateful or obscene;
• infringes someone else's intellectual property, privacy or other rights;
• promotes violence, discrimination or content prohibited under Maltese or EU law;
• attempts to manipulate poll results (vote-stuffing, automated voting, bypassing the one-vote-per-browser or one-vote-per-account rule, sharing or cycling cookies), attempts to manipulate markets through coordinated trading or sham accounts, or impersonates another user;
• contains malware, scrapes the site, evades rate-limits, or otherwise interferes with normal operation.

5. Duos (friend battles)

A Duo is a record of a friendly bet between two users. When you create or accept a Duo you confirm that any underlying wager is legal, voluntary, and a private matter between the two of you. hunch.mt provides the scoreboard; we do not enforce, mediate or guarantee the forfeit or any cash settlement. If a dispute arises between two friends about who owes whom a coffee, what was agreed, or whether a Revolut payment landed, that's on you to sort out between yourselves.

The payment method recorded on a cash Duo (CASH, REVOLUT, DIRECT TRANSFER, or TBD) is a label the two players choose; hunch.mt does not initiate, route or verify any payment.

6. Prediction markets (play money)

hunch.mt operates a play-money prediction market. You can place LIMIT or MARKET orders on YES / NO outcomes; orders are matched by a continuous double-auction order book; trades debit and credit your virtual balance. As above, this balance is virtual play money and cannot be exchanged for anything of monetary value.

• Resolution — when an outcome is settled we credit the winning side at €1.00 per share and the losing side at €0.00, in virtual balance. We try to resolve markets promptly using publicly verifiable sources; in genuinely ambiguous cases we may cancel the market and refund all open interest.
• Pause / cancellation — we may pause or cancel a market if facts on the ground make it unfair to keep trading (for example, the underlying event is postponed or its outcome becomes ambiguous). Cancellation refunds open orders and positions at their reservation price.
• Sandbox markets — some markets (eg the Weather Lab) are flagged as sandbox markets and are explicitly seeded for play / exploration only.
• No advice — nothing on hunch.mt is investment advice, betting advice or a recommendation to act on any outcome.

7. Election and political content

hunch.mt hosts opinion polls about political parties and elections in Malta. These polls are not scientific surveys. Sample sizes are self-selected, voters are anonymous (or signed in but acting in a personal capacity), and results may be skewed by the people who happen to use the site. Please don't treat them as a forecast of any election outcome — they are a snapshot of how hunch.mt's users feel today.

8. Beta service

hunch.mt is in beta. Features may change, break, or be removed without notice. Virtual balances, markets and Duo records may occasionally be reset (we'll try not to). You accept this as part of using a free, evolving service.

9. Our intellectual property

The hunch.mt name, logo, design, code and editorial copy belong to us (or our licensors). You may not copy, scrape or reproduce substantial parts of the site without our written permission, except as allowed by Maltese copyright law (e.g. quotation, news reporting, fair dealing).

10. Third-party services

hunch.mt links to and uses third-party services such as Google (optional sign-in), Cloudflare (edge / Turnstile bot challenge), Resend (email delivery), Railway (hosting) and news / RSS sources. We aren't responsible for the content or practices of those third parties — their own terms apply when you use them. The Privacy Policy explains what we share with which provider.

11. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent allowed by Maltese law, hunch.mt is provided "as is" and "as available". We make no warranties about uptime, accuracy, fitness for a particular purpose, or that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free. Nothing on hunch.mt is investment, legal, electoral, gambling or professional advice.

12. Limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by law, hunch.mt and its operators will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data or lost opportunities, arising from your use of the service. Our total liability for any direct loss is limited to €100. Nothing in these Terms limits liability for death, personal injury, fraud or anything else that cannot be excluded under Maltese law.

You agree to indemnify hunch.mt against claims arising from your breach of these Terms, from any private settlement (or non-settlement) of a forfeit or cash Duo between you and another user, or from any third-party claim that your content on hunch.mt is unlawful.

13. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close any account that breaches these Terms, attempts to game the platform (vote manipulation, market manipulation, abuse of the captcha, multi-account exploitation of the €20.00 welcome credit), or is reasonably suspected of unlawful activity. We'll try to give notice unless doing so would be counter-productive (e.g. an active abuse investigation). You can terminate your own account at any time.

14. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. The current version is always at this URL with the "Last updated" date at the top. For material changes we'll post an in-app notice or email registered users. Continuing to use hunch.mt after a change means you accept the new Terms.

15. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of Malta. The Maltese courts have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, except that consumers resident in another EU member state retain the protection of any mandatory rules of their local law and the right to bring proceedings in their local courts where EU consumer-protection rules so allow.

Before taking a dispute to court, please email us at hello@hunch.mt — most things can be sorted out with a quick conversation.

16. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email hello@hunch.mt.

See also our Privacy Policy.