Glossary
Resolution rules
Resolution rules are the written criteria that decide exactly how a contract settles: what counts as the event happening, which source is authoritative, and how edge cases are handled. On an exchange the rules are the bet itself, so reading them before you trade is basic discipline, not fine print.
A contract can only pay out if everyone agrees on what "yes" means, and that agreement is written down in advance. The resolution rules spell out the exact condition being traded, the source that will be treated as the final word, the deadline by which the event must occur, and what happens in the awkward situations that reality keeps producing.
The reason this deserves real attention is that two contracts that sound identical can settle differently. Consider a market on whether a fictional team, the Harbor City Kestrels, "wins their opener." Does a game decided in overtime count? What if the match is postponed past the deadline, or abandoned partway through? What if the official source corrects its result a day later? The plain-language title does not answer any of that. The rules do, and they are the only thing that pays.
Read the rules before the price
New traders study the price and skip the terms, which is backwards. A price that looks generous is often generous because the rules are stricter than the headline suggests. Since an event contract settles purely on its stated criteria, the terms are not decoration around the wager; they are the wager. Reading them first is how you avoid being technically wrong about a market you understood perfectly well in spirit.
Ambiguity is a risk you can price
When the rules leave real room for interpretation, that uncertainty is part of what you are taking on. Treat unclear settlement terms as a cost, not an afterthought.