A recently viral video shows football star Neymar playing online poker while celebrating his daughter's birthday with a group of other people present.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-13299361/Neymar-online-poker-daughter-Al-Hilal.html

This to me goes to show that no one is immune from addiction. Neymar may have largeley solved his money problems but still he doesn't seem to be able to control his time spend gambling. Therefore he's seen utilizing his time very recklessly, prioritizing playing the right cards over living these once in a lifetime precious moments the best he can. And if a multimillionaire can get addicted in this way, anyone can. Consider this before spending too much of your precious time gambling. Put some limits and enjoy responsibly!

Well it's quite interesting because while Bitcoin prices reached an ATH also what happened was that the market keeps bleeding only a few days before the actual halving takes place. So all the talk about a supply crunch and exceeding demand after the halving show it had all just been speculation because right here and right now we get a huge price drop that reminds us that the halving was priced in. Thanks for the FOMO to anyone that played 

Well to be precise, yes betting is a form of gambling but people who bet often don't really see it as such even though in principle it's similar to chance based games. They think they can overcome chance by utilizing their knowledge of certain leagues. Is this realistic? Of course not. In the end it's more likely than not that the odds as they're fixed by bookies will get to you. It is theoretically possible to have some people that win more predictions than the ones they lose.

But it's rare as I said because if this was the most frequent case bookies wouldn't exist and we'd just all play fantasy league to see who's actually the best at predictions against each other or something. So being realistic we can't expect any form of gambling to let us win all the time, be it chance based games or betting.

How can you be sure that it's actually a student running the bookmaker site you saw? While entirely possible, it's unlikely. A proper bookie will have its own support and staff to keep things going. So a single student having the budget is just unlikely.

But the other thing here is that you'd probably want to avoid no-name bookies for other reasons. Let's say you have an exceptionally big win, how can you be sure that they will pay out? Generally don't just gamble on sites that just pop out of nowhere. Search for their reputation here and in other reputable forums and hear what actual gamblers have to say. Bitcointalk is actually a very good forum to seek established online casinos that you can trust. Because if there's any discrepancy to an online casino experienced users here will pick it apart to every detail.

When I play at stake, I open up my stats page and it shows a very concise graph of my recent bets. And you can also download statistics on your profitability or view your detailed gamble history.
It's good to have access to all this data about yourself because some casinos might think people will be inclined to bet more if they make it harder for their players to access their own data.

So yeah, prefer to play at casinos that make it easier to track your stats. These casinos have access to all your history so why not just give it to you? Casinos that have very good tracking are out there, so might as well play at one of them or also use the other ones to embrace stats tracking.

There's some interesting matches in this match day.
AEK and Olympiakos have important matches ahead of them as they are competing for the first place. Panathinaikos has the easy one among them.
It's a crucial point for who will come first, who will have chances for european leagues etc.

PAOK and Olympiakos also have matches on the 18th for conference league with both having a chance to advance.
But as of making a bet, to be honest I don't see anything that's too interested. The Panathinaikos Lamia match doesn't have odds that are that interesting. It's seen as a bet too secure probably. I think the match day on April 21 is going to be a bit more interesting.

People who do sports bets are sometimes never interested in gambling.
The thing is, chance based games are in principle very similar to how bookies set the house edge for sports bets too. For Two possible outcomes, the odds are never 2.0 and 2.0 or above. They're like 1.90 and 1.95 or something. So regardless of how bets are placed in both, there's an edge. And ofc if a large bet is made on one side the odds change and the bookie shifts the multipliers.

So really there's a house edge on every online casino game. But people who like sports sometimes disregard that. I do however think that sports gambling can be a little more renowned than just chance based games of someone is reserved with how he plays. Yes it's very unlikely to keep a winning streak for very long, but it's also not impossible to have some edge over the odds if you're exceptionally good at digesting information about a league you know. It's an unrealistic expectation to have however because if everyone was so good bookies wouldn't have a reason to exist. 

You can buy a Saint Kitts passport for 60k USD. Is it worth over just paying your taxes? You would also have to renounce your citizenship and additionally file lot of paperwork with an overseas bank to be able to cash out your money without being legally liable to any tax at all.

We'll see, taxes are the price you pay if you like the country you stay at. Usually gambling profits are around 15%. You can just pay it and not have to worry about it ever again. It's really not an exorbitant amount.

If someone is at a point of losing all his wealth in gambling and potentially attacking other people then let's admit it, in general he is not very well in his mental state. Not only would such a person need to avoid gambling all together, he would have to avoid stressful activities in general in my view.

Being unwell in ones mental.health has become a very common issue lately. We've entered into a wider mental health crisis after the quarantine and it has never really been addressed. Many people never really returned to their normalcy and it's.driving them crazy in many ways. Of course gambling gets caught in the way very often on such occasions.

This is a plan that even if executed perfectly will lead you to losing your entire balance 55% of the time. House edge on casino games is around 5% on most games or a bit lower but if your goal is a 2x and you lose more than half of the times overall you are losing money.

So all in all the house edge is pretty tough on being a winner in the long run. Of course having a max loss set and then leaving without second thoughts is a good practice because this way you can control impulses and not have to worry about losing money you can't afford.

When gambling I set my expectations super low because for me all it is about is gabing fun. I could go on a lucky streak or unlucky streak and it wouldn't matter that much either way. It's not about making an impact or achieving any specific goals. Sometimes I just want to pass time and it's one of the many options.

For instance, some people set goals such as making rent from gambling activity. Well that's very unrealistic and could even set you back a few month's rent actually which would put your life in misery potentially. So really don't use gambling to complete life goals. You need to do that through more realistic means if you want to go anywhere in life.

Celebrity poker games are usually sponsored and the celebrities are compensated win or lose. It's unlikely that the winning pot would be life-changing for them but the compensation can help them especially if they're at a point in their life where they need money. Usually the pay isn't that great but when celebrities have hit a low point in their career they might go to a lot of such events to get some cash on the side.

I kinda respect the hustle. Even if a celebrity has fallen on B-list status, if they can make a living just by being there and playing half-decent poker to entertain an audience, I'm all for it. Sometimes the pro poker scene gets a little too boring to be honest, and watching celebrities play that might as well be novices and make more unpredictable moves can be more entertaining at times. I like the bluffs and ridiculous risks these guys would take sometimes over any professional player.

I wouldn't consider this something significant unless we can see in the long term that there can be realistic prediction potential above just random chance.
But still, what's the fun. If AI and supercomputers have any better chance at predicting games, how much better would this margin be? 1%? 5%? Even it it's 5% higher than just random chance, will you keep following all of their bet suggestions to get the small profits? Do you have enough patience and capital to do that? Maybe in an automated sense it'd make sense economically. But even still if you're the only one making the right prediction it makes sense, but if everyone does the same predictions, the odds shift and you lose your advantage almost completely.

Surely the online aspect of gambling has additionally addictive elements and it has also become increasingly easier to out your money in there. Whereas land based casinos on most places keep requiring stricter regulations. So it seems like the animations and proc effects in a online casinos are made specifically with addictive personality traits in mind because you really see them in games that cater to this type of person most such as low RTP slots etc. No wonder the online industry has been meeting s lot of success. Many players but fewer costs.

I think if someone is an addicted profit chaser he won't care to ruin himself in either. I have heard bad stories with both cases to be perfectly honest. People who have an issue will just reach what is easier to them and surely each has its advantages. Even though you can access online casinos from home, to many it's more convenient to still get themselves to a land casino, pay by cash and be done with it. Either be it regulation or even lazybwss to learn. But if I were to make a distinction between the two I'd say that usually the land based casino people are more of the seasoned kind.

At least with provably fair gambling games it's impossible to mess with you in this way because the results are pre determined so the casino can not change them based on your bet amounts or how often you wagger.

So if you are paranoid about this but still want to enjoy some small waggers just stick with provably fair gambling games just to put your mind at ease. With games like slots it's also entirely possible that the casinos or providers could rig them. Maybe they do it, but probably not. It's only impossible to prove that they don't as they're not implementing proofs systems so far.

Well I'm sorry it took so long but that's the main point I'm trying to get across here.
Mixers are risky, trust based and to a large extent negate the whole point of bitcoin's existence.

It's part of bitcoin's functionality however that transactions are public. We knew this since day 1.

Source: Satoshi's bitcoin.pdf

Passing bitcoins through a so called mixing service introduces risks and likely doesn't even solve the issue of traceability that well. Because the reasons someone might want to use a mixer is disassociation coins from certain activities. Even through many false positives though, coins through mixers might even be easier to detect as "suspicious" to those looking. And the only reason I'm examining from this approach is because when talking about the disadvantages of using mixers, I believe that one has to also address the thought process of a likely user of such services.

Most Christian denominations will also classify gambling as a very big sin, but it's never enforced in law. Very few Christian majority states will go far in terms of enforcing anti-gambling laws in accordance to Christian church teachings. There are however ways to limit the spread of gambling. For example in many european countries the only form of permitted gambling is through state monopoly company stores. But generally speaking many european states have been electing liberal governments that keep introducing policies favorable to big corporations.

I personally wouldn't like to be restricted from gambling from the state, but I kinda respect Muslims for self-regulating themselves to avoid gambling, even when they live in countries where it's allowed. This goes to show that good traits in one's upbringing remain throughout his life.

What really bothers me in some casino is to have no provably fair games. It's ok to have some games from operators that don't implement provable fairness, but to have no games with provable fairness is crazy. At least casinos should make some effort to provide such games.

As of proof of registration with an license provider or state agency. I couldn't care less. Yes, it's generally good to have something, but the best casinos I've played online started without licenses or at least with low trust licenses. What matters most is the reliability of the service I get. Good support, solid rules, fast website and withdrawals. These matter more. If a casino has been running for years without scam accusations then it's good in my eyes, more over looking for details in its license.

Indeed so called "strategies" in chance based gambling about adjusting your bet to make back your losses are quite ridiculous in that it's entirely possible to lose everything this way unless you have unlimited amounts of money and the casino has infinite max bets. If you make tons of bets, you're bound to hit many losses in a row even at high win chances. The chances have no obligation to be on your side really so anything could happen, especially if we're talking random chance.

So really the lessons someone must take from losing is that one should never overdo it with his bets. If you lost more than you were expecting, it's ok to stop. But a budget on a weekly or monthly basis and never go over it with your losses. If you put aside x amount of money maybe you can afford losing let's say 10% of it. But don't deposit more. This is what has the potential to ruin you. Not losing a bit of pocket money, but trying to get it back "safely" with huge bets.