there are obviously way less single-deck games now than there used to be. you can still find several casinos in vegas (and elsewhere) offering them though, just not on the strip.

i'm not too familiar with the online casino scene these days, but i know playtech, microgaming, and rival gaming software all include single-deck variants. it's just a matter of whether specific casino skins offer them. my understanding is that when you find single-deck games, the odds are usually switched from the classic 3:2 to 6:5 to offset the easier games.


i disagree. face up cards = dead cards which cannot be dealt from the deck again.

if single-deck gives card counters no edge, why did casinos switch to multi-deck? why do single-deck games pay with worse odds?

bump!

the next bitcointalk tourney is in 2 days. i'm not sure if the spreadsheet is accurate re fees paid, but we've only got 11 players signed up for the next game so far. get in the game!

with everyone under 12 points in the standings, the series is still wide open for the taking, so anyone joining this weekend still has a great shot at qualifying for the championship game.

place in the top 9 in the points standings and you'll qualify for the final table: ~0.08+ BTC prize pool + a ticket to a 0.75 BTC guaranteed tournament. check the OP for details. every qualifier has its own prize pool too of course.

i hope to see some new faces on saturday!

it's definitely not "the bulk" of the labor market, but you're right, it's a huge sector. according to these sources, it represents 20% of the labor market and >10% of the country's GDP.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/april/informal-labor-market
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2013/04/29/daily-circuit-shadow-economy

that means the real situation is much worse than the official unemployment numbers show, since informal workers aren't usually captured by those stats.

a better metric may be the "U-6" stat, which adds all persons marginally attached to the labor force and those employed part time for economic reasons. in april that was 22.8%, which is basically great depression level unemployment.

bank interest doesn't yield shit, and now trump is pushing for negative rates:



short of that, they are already doing everything they can to stimulate spending---lowering rates near zero, injecting trillions of dollars in liquidity, stimulus/relief payments. and still, people aren't spending. some examples:

Florida Retail Reopening Fails To Draw Consumers

Retail Survey: US Consumers Bargain Hunting

Why Consumers Aren’t In A Rush To Reopen The Economy

something to consider is that direct-to-consumer services (like amazon) are growing fast at the expense of the brick and mortar economy. i dunno how physical retailers are gonna convince consumers to return. and that's a huge chunk of the economy.

that would generally be insufficient for KYC. i haven't seen people doing cash by mail in years anyway.

this is all dependent on where you live and do business, but in the USA the lowest MSB reporting threshold is $2000. that means at $2k or above, you should probably be collecting name, address, government ID, taxpayer ID, and date of birth. https://www.fincen.gov/money-services-business-msb-suspicious-activity-reporting

all of the cases i've seen where localbitcoins traders were arrested/charged involved high volume traders dealing in single transactions above $10k without AML/KYC. >$10k requires mandatory CTR reporting so it's an obvious threshold to be careful of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_transaction_report

for card counters it definitely is, especially when it comes to single-deck blackjack. with a house edge around just 0.15%, it's beatable if you know the game well and can ride out variance.

i would never gamble on chance-based games. i love poker, and i'm all about playing in games where i have an edge.

or maybe you'd have been knocked out with QTo or 89s or some other rubbish even earlier. who knows?

preflop odds on that KQs vs AKo hand:



so you should expect to lose that hand 3 out of 10 times.


so true.

i dunno about that. under your scenario, we are pushing towards wiping out all debt. that's a dream come true for the world's poor and middle classes. it's a nightmare for the elites.


was the 1918 flu manufactured too? there is a big difference between deliberately manufacturing a crisis, and exploiting an existing one in furtherance of power and financial gain. governments and political elites have a long history of the latter.


oh ok, i'm glad we got that cleared up.

i watched that video, as well as veronica brill's which kicked off the whole controversy. i'll admit it's suspicious as hell---lots of circumstantial evidence, and amazing that his stats are better than absolute poker's infamous potripper.

but.......how do we know he's not just an incredible hand reader? this is live poker, not online, after all.

i agree with doug polk. we need to see postle play somewhere besides the stones cardroom. let's see if he can pull those amazing soul reads live streamed at the bike.

the crisis might cause defaults in smaller/weaker countries, but i remain unconvinced that it will actually end the debt bubble in the USA and china. there are certainly no signs of that yet. on that basis alone (weak motive) i would really have to question kooky conspiracy theories like these.

in fact, despite all the monetary stimulus, the crisis seems to be reinforcing the USD's role as "safe haven" reserve currency: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2020-05-12/u-s-dollar-to-be-broadly-stronger-td-securities-s-kotecha-video


he was impeached by the house but acquitted by the senate in february. one might argue that the media focus on the senate trial (and quite probably trump's own focus on it) took away from any sense of urgency around the coronavirus at the time. when the outbreak exploded, it quickly became yesterday's news.

i suppose the same could be said for bakkt (the ICE) or CME, and the rest of wall street too. we know they are coming though. it's inevitable.

in this case, they are just processing customer bank deposits/withdrawals and handling cash for exchanges, something smaller banks have happily been doing for years. it's just a sign that licensed bitcoin exchanges have achieved a certain level of business legitimacy, whereas previously they were treated by the big banks as high risk.

it's still a far cry from JPM touching cryptocurrency transactions or custody or anything like that. tbh it seems like a nothingburger to me.

i've been loosely following that case---"postlegate" as it has come to be known. we have still yet to see any hard evidence of hole card knowledge, or a conspiracy between postle and the card room. it's all based on statistical data, despite the fact that all the play was live streamed.

i wonder how it will all play out. 90% of the 2+2 forum seems to think he's guilty as hell and the numbers do suggest that, but without any hard evidence......

no, they only word it that way ("your tax information is missing", "to comply with tax regulations we need to collect certain information") to persuade USA customers to voluntarily provide it. notice the references to "form 1099-K"? that's not a UK tax form.

in fact, coinbase does not provide any tax forms to non-USA customers. https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/taxes-reports-and-financial-services/taxes/coinbase-tax-resource-center.html

however, be mindful that HMRC may request your info from coinbase, and they have made such blanket requests in the past: https://www.coindesk.com/british-tax-authority-seeks-customer-data-from-crypto-exchanges-in-search-of-tax-evaders

you were at my table for like one hand, then you immediately got knocked out by this super donk who was raising every hand and betting every street. he was also hitting every board though.

i just got knocked out in 24th. someone 3bet shoved TT into my AQ suited preflop. i wanted to take a gamble on a big double-up so i called. hit an ace but he hit a set. good game.

good luck to those still playing. @yahoo is still in it with a big stack.

it boils down to individual demographics. crypto gamblers who weren't too adversely affected economically hit the tables more, being shut in by the quarantines. SwC Poker had noticeably more traffic in april than march. they ran a quarantine poker series to capitalize on people staying home.

with spring weather in full swing though and the lockdowns being lifted, traffic seems to be lightening up again. our 2nd bitcointalk poker series which started last week brought out ~ 1/3 less players this time. hopefully that improves but we'll see. SwC is ending their quarantine series this week after a couple tourneys didn't reach their guarantees, which also tells me their traffic is dipping back down.

AK is good against random hands (~2:1 favorite) but nowhere near as good as a premium pocket pair. i have to stop treating them equivalently when it comes to oversized preflop bets and all-ins.

hand #1: second to act postflop, i like a bet there. lots of villain 1's range is missing that flop. as played, villain 2 may have hit a straight on the turn, possibly 2 pair. both villains (particularly villain 1) could have an ace. 3-handed on that river, i don't see a big reason to pay 1/2pot bet with one more to act.

hand #2: i feel your pain missing flopped quads but i'm not taking that risk preflop, no way.

hand #3: seems like kind of a marginal shove. i don't love it. i wouldn't have put villain 3 on AA (although in hindsight maybe he wanted to build a side pot rather than isolate the short stack) but still feels a bit donk-ish 9-handed and out-stacked. i could justify a call though, thinking lots of villain 3's range can miss the flop.

hand #4: that's a tough river. i probably would have played it similarly, you know i like my semi-bluffs. i might have put on the brakes on the turn for a shot at a cheap river, but with that river it's gonna be very hard to fold either way.

+1, although SwC has nothing to do with the points system. that's all done on our side. they just manually enter the top 9 we give them into the championship.


thanks, i've added some thoughts there.


bleeding chips are you? post some hands here, maybe they are worth reviewing: Poker talk - Specifically Hold'em - Hands and or strategy

good idea. it seems like everyone and their grandma has a different plan for how the points system should work. i guess there are lots of game theory considerations.

i posted a link to this thread earlier, where i think a lot of important points are covered.

the #1 goal to keep in mind IMO:


with that in mind, these are the most common structures:

linear points: (n-r+1) where n = number of entrants and r = rank placed. so for a field of 18 players:

1st place = 18 points
18th place = 1 point

points = ITM: points are based on tournament cashes. this is very top-heavy. the top 16.67% cash in a 30-man tournament on SwC.

what we did: a hybrid take on linear points, where we flattened the payouts on both sides. the top players get less, but the bottom players get none.

i'm seeing people lobbying for both flatter payouts and more top-heavy ones, so i'm not sure we'll end up changing what seems like a reasonable compromise.

if we did implement something more top-heavy---like some of the curve/sqrt based systems, or linear points but only paying out the top x% of the field---we should consider rules that keep the series competitive (nods to the #1 goal stated above). one way some leagues do that is to require a minimum # of games played, with only your top x number of games counting towards points standings. that could help offset variance so people can still recover from a few bad runs.

the most common argument against flat structures (like linear points) is they can encourage points angling. i think it's debatable how much of an edge late registration or sitouts gives there. it's annoying but i dunno if it makes a big difference. one additional way this could be addressed is by awarding points for KOs to induce action. lol, so many angles to consider!

+1. i don't see a huge need to change it (and i think cutting down late registration will help) and i strongly prefer a championship type structure vs paying out for points.

clearly everyone has an opinion about different ways the point system could work. there are dozens of ways to do it, and if you want to do a deep dive into all the angles, these guys have covered most of them: https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/league-points.6199/

the hash rate is dropping. it's hard to say by how much exactly, but blocks are being generated about once every 11.4 minutes now. it was slightly below 10 minutes before the halving. after only 8.5 hours, that's a bigger drop than i expected.

price-wise, a $2k dump is par for the course. that's just bitcoin being bitcoin.