It's true that we need to take risks to get anywhere in life. There is nothing free when it comes to trading and investing. Without risks is only our bank account that provides no interest or a maximum of 0.5%. Comparing that to 10% inflation is awful. We need to take risks to make decent returns, but this doesn't mean that we should be taking any risks. A good trader can distinguish between the risks that are worth taking and the risks to avoid. Running after the highest possible risk there are is not going to make us rich. It's like only betting on 0 in roulette. The risk we take needs to be in relation to our capital and our expected profits. If we don't have enough capital to sustain a loss we are in big trouble.

I don't really like if others make decisions for me, that includes gambling and sports betting. Only good friends I trust to bet my money for me, relying on betting recommendations from strangers is a no go for me. Not sure how AI based betting is going to be any different. Is this going to be a self learning AI that can access all the sports information on real time to update his predictions? Would be nice to see how well the AI is doing in out of sample test. I expect it to be average results, otherwise bookmakers would need to adapt their quotes. When it comes to AI based betting it feels a bit like gambling bots that take all the actions from you and bet your money freely. This is always a blackbox to me and I am a bit afraid that there could be an error that will make me lose all my money. What if due to an coding error the AI bets all the money on a complete underdog? In the end it's our own money and we are responsible for the bets we take, even if we don't know what it is we bet on.

I agree with you that investing is the only real alternative we have at the moment. With inflation rates at 10% and not likely to fall next year it makes no sense at all to keep money at the bank. In my country the interest rates on bank deposits was 0% for the last 5 years, only now the rates are rising. But even if you get 0.5 - 1% interest on you money, you are losing 9% purchasing power each year. It even makes more sense to spend your money today an enjoy it for a nice vacation, or something else, instead of keeping it in the bank. Investing and trading crypto currencies would be my first choice to get rid of any excess money at the bank. Real estate I already have enough invested in, and I am afraid that property prices are going to fall soon because people will have trouble to get financing for their existing loans. Most of the real estate deals where calculated based on 2-3% borrowing cost, but now with the rising rates it will be much more expensive to refinance your mortgage loans. Also Gold and Silver doesn't really seem like a good investment at the moment. Gold made only 0.1% profit over the last 12 months, where you would expect so much more. My grandparents always said Gold is the best investment during a crisis, this doesn't seem to be true in 2022.

Not sure if I understand it correctly, the sports betting problem in Australia is that people bet more money than they can afford to lose? This is among the biggest mistake anybody could do when it comes to gambling or investing. In both cases there is a lot of risk involved and no guarantee to make money. That's why it's advisable to only use money that we can afford to lose. To me this sounds more as a banking problem than a gambling problem, and of course people need to be more financial responsible. I don't understand why credit cards are still so common these days where you only see the money you spent at the end of the month. I also have a credit card, but only for emergency and I never really use it. The fees and interest on credit cards are way too high and should be avoided as much as possible. I only use a normal bank card that gives me a notification within 2 minutes of using it and shows me the amount. On my phone I can check my balance anytime and don't need to worry about spending more than I have. I think the best solution would be for people to use more modern bank cards and limit their overdraft possibilities.

That is a bit hard to answer. I don't think there is a fixed number that is going to cover all your expenses and possible withdrawals, because of so many variables in the gambling industry. First of all, are you planning to work all alone on the casino or do you need employees? It can be quite expensive if you hire support staff, IT specialist that run the website and casino for you, and a security system to make sure there are no leaks and your money is save. The more people that work for you the higher your monthly running cost and your 100k USD could spent quickly. Another factor that can be quite expensive is advertising cost. It depends on how fast you want to grow your casino, to attract a large number of gamblers you need to run some ads to promote your casino. All this will be initial cost that only after a few month will be recovered by money made from your casino. And the last big factor is your bankroll to cover potential outflows. It could happen that a whale plays at your casino, becomes lucky and wins 50k USD. That would ruin your bankroll and needs to be addressed quickly. It's probably better to make sure that you other monthly income that you could rely upon to cover potential outflows.

I can understand the argument behind minimum wages and it makes sense for some jobs. You are right that everybody deserves a certain living quality to have a happy and fulfilling life. There are two problems I have with minimum wages. First, some jobs involve money that is being paid outside of the tax scope, for example tips or builders on the construction site working Saturdays. All the money that can be hidden from the government makes a big difference. And the second factor that makes minimum wage unfair is the different living expenses. For example in the UK, it makes a huge difference if you life on London or in Wales/Scotland. Rent and food prices are depending on your location, so paying everybody the same minimum wage is unfair. The same in Finland, people in Helsinki need to pay much more than people who life in the countryside. Maybe a more dynamic approach to minimum wage, based on where you live would be better.  It's sad that the economic model doesn't work and the government needs to intervene.

Looks very cool the card, thanks for the raffle.

62 - Mauser

Good luck to all and happy holidays.

After watching all the teams play at least two games I am still confident that Brazil is going to win this year. Their team plays so well together and it feels like they are on a different level. Winning against Croatia should be no issue. In the semi finals they will probably meet Argentina which is going to be a cool match. The two countries are huge rivals all Brazil will give everything to win. So Brazil reaching the finals seems the most likely to me right now. For the other leg I also think it's going to be the winner out of the France - England match, which is likely going to be France. Both Spain and Portugal played well so far and will likely meet each other, another great rivalry which should be a nice match to watch. But both of them would likely lose against France in the semi finals. So my earlier pick for the finals is still the same: Brazil vs France, and Brazil winning the tournament.

Its been so long ago that I barely remember how I felt about Bitcoins back then and what I thought about the crypto currencies. Back in 2015/2016 I was heavily trading CSGO skins, I put some money into the game only with the goal to trade for my first knife, after that it had to be an expensive AWP skins and so on. Eventually I had too much money in the game, and once I got lucky in some case openings, I really needed to withdraw some money out of my steam account. The fastest and cheapest option on the big sites was with Bitcoins, so I made my first bitcoins transaction and owned my first crypto coins. As far as I remember it, I didn't think too much about the cryptos itself. For me it was more a tool to transfer money out of my CSGO inventory. My biggest investment mistake was to sell all my bitcoins back in the day, I wanted to have the money on my bank account and didn't save any bitcoins at all. That why I feel a bit bad about my first bitcoin transactions.

It sounds nice if a casino let's us gamble without a deposit and without creating an account first. But where is the initial balance coming from for us to gamble with? One option could be for the casino to offer playmoney for people to try out the games without actually spending money. This will not really solve the initial trust issue for the customer to know if the casino is legit or not. There will be no withdrawal process as we can't win anything with playmoney. The customer has to make the first step and deposit money if he wants to gamble for real money. I don't mind creating accounts at casinos as long as there are positive review for the casino. For example, if I read here on the forum that other users has a positive experience at a new casino, then I would also give it a try. In case someone raises red flags here on the forum than I would probably stay away from the casino. When it comes to playing at a new casino I will always first try out the services with a very small amount to see how legit the casino is and if there are any issues.

Selling investments at a loss is the worst situation we could be in and should only happen as the last solution if there are no alternatives. Before selling at a loss I would always consider holding the coin until prices recover. Only when a project turned bad and there is no chance for the price to recover we should get rid of our position. Holding is the best strategy for me, it requires almost no management and requires the least amount of time compared to other strategies. I agree with you that it can be hard in some situations to stick to holding and not follow the herd in panic sells. Checking the prices of my coins is making me too nervous and increases the pressure to trade more often. When I first started with crypto trading I was checking my portfolio 6-7 times per day,  it got really hard to not constantly check prices. Now I only check the bitcoin price once per day and my portfolio 2-3 per week. Taking a step back from the fast moving prices helped me a lot to remain more calm and not feel the pressure to trade more often.

I agree with you, if you see that your children and wife are already struggling to be financial responsible with managing their own finances, then how is it going to be when they find out about the lottery win. Having access to large sums of money without doing anything can ruin every motivation to achieve something in life. His decision might have been morally wrong, but it's hard to. Judge without knowing his whole family situation. Winning big in a lottery only happens to very few lucky people, and the people who are doing well with their winnings we will probably never hear about it. What we hear about is the stories of lottery winners who manage to spend all their millions in a few years and are broke again. There are so many articles online about people who lived above their means and are poor now. In my opinion secrecy is everything when it comes to dealing with a big lottery win. Once the word gets out who won the millions, then all the people who you have known in life will come back. It becomes difficult to distinguish between real and fake friends. Can't blame someone to try and stay anonymous, even from our own family.

I am not rich and no expert in money management, but I made some good investments over the years that have helped me a lot to finance some of my dreams. The best advice I can give up anybody who is trying to build a portfolio is Diversification. Don't place a your eggs in one basket is the best phrase that I kept in my mind over all these years. Investing and trading always a form of randomness that can't be controlled. Even the best investor is not going to be right 100% with his trades. With that in mind it's best to split our money into multiple investments. Like that we increase our chances to pick good investments while decreasing our overall volatility. Lower volatility means lower risk to lose large sums of money. The more different investments we have the higher the chance that some will perform well when there is a general market downturn.

That sounds pretty harsh and I wonder if this could be accepted in a fully democratic country. In western nations cannabis is getting legalised, so people getting caught with larger amounts are not facing any prison time anymore. Which would be crazy if then people who own BTC are getting arrested instead. Owning BTC alone should not be a punishable offence, only if the BTC are being used for illegal activities. In my opinion banning crypto currencies outright is never a good solution and will only move BTC transaction out of the government reach. A ban one something never works 100%, there will be loopholes. If I were in charge than I would use taxation as my main tool to control the use of crypto currencies in my country. If the government really wants to reduce the use of cryptos, than increasing taxation would be one option. Like this the government will actually profit of the use of cryptos and still gives it's citizens the option to choose which type of currency they want to use. 

Oh maybe I have a better chance in the English forum

6 - Mauser

Thanks for the raffle @cygan

Good luck to all

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Congrats salad daging, that is a nice raffle to win.

That sounds really unlucky, I know the feeling well not so much from sports betting but rather from my casino experiences. When it comes to gambling from me I tend to set a fixed amount of time for me to gamble, so that I don't end up gambling all evening without stopping. The most common scenario is that I have decent evening where I am winning more than I am losing and then I tell myself 3-4 more rounds before I stop for the day. And then my last 3 rounds end up being completely terrible and I lose a lot of my winnings again. It feels a bit like the casino knows I want to stop and gives me only bad hands, which is of course crazy. For you it seems that you really like to place long combi bets, which is very risky of course. For myself combi bets were not a good betting strategy, I ended up always being unlucky with them and never make a good profit. That was with 3-5 combi bets, if you are running 8-15 combi bets the risk of one bet ruining everything is considerably higher. But if you are running good in your first 10 bets, you should really think about cashing out early. If it doesn't work on the last bet anymore, how about you cash out on the 9th or 10th bet? The profit should already be really high with so many wins and you could try to build your bankroll up more before going to the really long combi bets again.   

From my country I know that currency redesigns are done within 10 year time spans  to increase security of the bank notes. A new design also means the chance to include more anti counterfeiting measures. This doesn't mean that the old currency design are not being accepted anymore. Even today I see a lot of old bills that people had at home and didn't use in a long time. Only when the notes are being deposited at a bank they will be taken out of circulation. I am not really sure if the price of creating new designs and printing new notes is smaller than the economical damage of counterfeiting old notes. A new design also means to make someone else happy as  there can be new pictures on the notes. The main issue I have with new currency is that it seems to reduce the value of the old currency. When cleaning out the basement of my grandparents 2 years ago we found some old British Pounds and some Swiss Francs. The notes were probably 15-20 years old and I went to the bank to get them exchanged. They told me because these notes are old and not in circulation anymore she can't give me the full price anymore. We lost like 25% of the value only because the notes were old.

Wow round 5 started really quickly, thanks for another free raffle Betnomi. The wallet looks really cool, maybe I have more luck this round with new numbers:

45 - Mauser
75 - Mauser

Good Luck to all and a happy Sunday.

Good luck with your black jack career, hopefully you are going to make some money with it. Black Jack is together with roulette the oldest gambling games I know and I still love the game today after playing it for so long. After poker is black jack my second favourite card game. The rules are very easy so that you can learn it quickly and make your own strategies with it. There are also quite a few casino movies around the topic of card counting in black jack. Which is the only proven strategy that shifts the winning chances in the favor of the gamblers. That's why most casinos ban gamblers who are being caught counting cards. In high school we calculated probabilities of a few different strategies to find out the house edge. For me it's difficult to stay profitable over a longer period of time, but I still enjoy playing black jack regularly.

All these mistakes are not limited to bear markets in my opinion, they are also problems in bull or sideways markets. Panics and following your emotions is never a good idea in trading, no matter the market condition. Investing short term only works when you know what you are doing. Day trading is a very risky business and you can lose money quickly, during bear markets there is a lot of volatility in the markets and price tend to fluctuate more quickly. For me the best trading approach became to stay long term invested during bear markets. Don't give into the all the selling pressure and wait for prices to recover before consider selling any investment. Overtrading I see more as a big mistakes during bull than bear markets. If you sell all your positions in a bear market there isn't much overtrading you can do. But during bull markets where you see alt coins rising a few hundred % the pressure is much higher to trade more often. And finally mental health, this is probably the most important factor when it comes to trading and investing. We need to make sure that our mind is in a good spot, otherwise we will be burned out after a few weeks of trading.