Like you and the majority here on the forum I use 2-5% of monthly income for gambling activities. Having a fixed percentage of my income for gambling is the best risk management tool. With my fixed budget I can choose freely if I want to play poker, slots, other casino games or bet on sport matches. As long as I don't use more money on a monthly basis, I will add any unspent money to my next monthly basis. An important difference is that I try to preserve my winnings as much as possible. So, whenever I have a decent win I will take that money out and save. At least for me it's important to keep a difference between my monthly budget and how much I win. Especially in poker I try to keep building my bankroll to slowly move up the blinds. Without having a growing bankroll it's difficult to survive a losing streak. Now I am curious how anybody can use 30% of his income for gambling alone over a long period of time.

I always found the American dream a nice motivation for people to try and be successful. Working yourself up from a dish washer or the mail room to become a millionaire is one of the greatest success stories that shows everybody can make it. Unfortunately in my country we don't really have the goal of becoming rich, over here it's more about living a good and happy life. In my country there are two mottos that my parents and grandparents lived by. The first one is to save as much money as possible so you have a good life during retirement. Instead of treating yourself today and enjoying life, it's all about working hard and for planning down the road 30 years from now. The other saying is that there is an insurance for every risk. People are very risk averse and love to take out insurance for any possible situation. This again prevents you from enjoying life today, because you have to pay all the insurances. You can spend all your life paying premiums for worse case scenarios that never happen, just so that you sleep better. The big problem for me is that being afraid of risk also means that you won't invest your money and rather leave it at the bank in a savings account. That's why the goal of becoming a millionaire is not really an option.

When it comes to gambling, we should always know what we get ourselves into. All the casinos’ games standardised and we can research about them online. Everybody knows about the house edge in each game and when we choose our games for the night, we should make up our decisions also based on the expected values from each type of game. Based on these numbers we can already know what a potential loss should look like if we play a lot of hands. There isn't one strategy that we can follow that will let us win consistently and make us rich. Losing is part of the gambling games and we need to prepare ourselves for it. That is why it's so important to not use any money that we can't afford to lose. However, just because we are at a statistical disadvantage doesn't mean that we are going to lose all the time. Luck still plays a huge role in gambling and with it we could win the jackpot. The excitement of betting with real money is what brings all of us back to the tables and has so many generations before us. Regret is unfortunately also part of the life of a gambler and we need to remind ourselves that there is always a new game around the corner, feeling bad about past bets where we should have bet bigger is not really helpful.

The main benefit from gambling for me is to have something to do in the evenings. Especially during the hard time of covid lockdowns I was struggling to find something to do at home except for reading a book or playing video games. Twice I had to isolate myself for a week and couldn't do anything than watch TV at home, which got boring really fast. I am getting too old for most of the new video games and don't get the fun anymore from them to play for a long period of time. Going back to playing regular online poker was my main form of entertainment during that time and with that I also started playing other casino games regularly again. My friends had similar experience and all started visiting online casinos again. So, the main benefit for my male friends is to have entertainment from home while you can't leave your house. As for my female friends I don't know if they get any benefit from gambling, maybe a quiet night knowing that their husband is at home and don't have to worry about them. In general, the tax benefit from the gambling industry is probably what helps society at a whole the most.

AI is like the top selling point of 2023, all the major companies are jumping on the hype and are looking for ways to integrate it in their business models. It's good that trading companies are doing the same, but computer automated trading is nothing new, it's been around for a long period of time already. Maybe now with the sophisticated AI programs there are more options to find profitable strategies. My main concern is how reliable these strategies are and if they are going to persist or if its only a short term phenom. And still in any case we should at least try and find value on AI. For anybody that has the technological knowhow I would recommend to run at least a demo portfolio with AI based strategies.

It's true that most casinos ask for KYC verification when making larger withdrawals, but it's not all of them. There are still some casinos that are open for everybody and you don't have to worry about giving out personal information. For me KYC is not such a big deal anymore because I got used to it and can understand that casinos want to seem more legit. Gambling laws are quite strict in some countries and even banned in other countries, with KYC is one of the best tools for casinos to protect themselves. A few years ago it was no problem for a website to ban people from one country to access it. However, since then almost every third video on YouTube promotes VPNs. Everybody I know has used VPNs in the past and with that you can get around any gambling restrictions. Would only be fair for the internet to not be so secret anymore.

I agree, it's not about how much money we make with our first investment, but rather about taking the first step to a more independent future. Leaving all our money in fiat currencies is not going to lead to anything. Only when we start investing our money we can achieve returns that are higher than the inflation rates. Beating inflation should be the goal for anybody that is trying to save long term money. Finding happiness in already small profits is what keeps us going and will lead to better results in the future. Also a couple of small profits in a row are already a decent outcome and will grow our portfolio. Any profit is a good situation and should be happy about, bigger returns come the longer we are invested.

It's a bit hard to give a general advice without knowing more about you. From what I get from thread is that you are struggling with your living and food expenses, which is definitely a serious situation. It's good that you have an emergency fund and investments you can rely upon. Now with the question of which one you should choose first we would need to know what kind of assets you have. In case you have positions that done really well this year and are deep in the green, than I would recommend you take some profit. And if it's the opposite I would probably rely on your emergency cash and wait for your assets to do better. The problem with high inflation and expensive food and drinks is that it's not likely to go down anytime soon. The companies used the inflation excuse to increase prices and boost profits and will likely not revert to pre 2022 levels again. Don't empty your emergency fund completely now, because things could still get worse and you might have another emergency coming up.

After playing the lottery for such a long period of time winning 600k USD doesn't seem so much. When winning the jackpot, I think people should at least become a millionaire, because in today’s world you can't even get a big house for such kind of money. Just yesterday someone won the Euro jackpot for more than 100 million. That is a life changing amount where you never have to work a single day in your life, but with 600k you can't quit your job and retire early. Don't get me wrong, 600k would be awesome to have and with such kind of money you could build a good investment portfolio to generate returns that help out a lot. I would not put all the money in real estate because the risk is too big of just owning one single asset. A steady rent income is nice to have, however we can achieve the same thing with puying financial assets that offer period returns. Diversification is they key when it comes to long term wealth protection and focusing on a steady return. There could be of course a riskier approach where you say that you want to gamble more and try to reach a million at least before you invest your money more conservatively.    

What a crazy week this was in the IEM Cologne 2023 tournament, so many close games and surprising results that lost me some money. GamerLegion one of the teams I wouldn't have suspected to reach so far in the tournament got 7-8th place together with NaVi. I am going to keep a closer eye on them in the next few matches. The biggest loss this tourney was for me the poor performance of Heroic, they lost 2-1 against ENCE and 2-0 against Astralis. Such a weak performance for a team that didn't lose a single match in their last few tournaments. Hopefully I can recover my losses today in the semi finals and the grand final tomorrow. The first match will be ENCE vs Vitality, where Vitality should be winning as they are the stronger team with more experience. I am just a bit afraid that ENCE is going to keep pushing their winning streak. The second match will be G2 vs Astralis, which is going to be a hard match that could be pretty close. But the two teams already played each other in the first match of the tournament and G2 won 2-1. I think they are going to repeat it and will reach the finals playing against Vitality. The final would be G2 vs Vitality, which we also saw already this week where G2 managed to win 2-1 also. G2 has really good chances to win the overall tournament tomorrow, my money is with them.

   

There are scams around is every day that try to steal our money. For example, I receive scam mails, text messages and even phone calls every week of people that have special deal for me. We need to be cautious in every aspect of life, crypto currencies are just one of many. That is why it's so important to teach people more about the crypto world, only educated people can evaluate the risks correctly and not fall for scam projects. Another thing is that for any beginner it shouldn't be about buying meme coins as their first investment. It would be much better to start with a bitcoin investment before buying more exotic coins. When buying the leading crypto currency, it offers a protection against sudden price movements. Also, who teaches the beginners about the meme coins in the first place? I don't expect friends and family to recommend meme coins for a new trader, and why would you listen to a stranger from the internet that recommends a particular coin? It's better to make up our own mind and not blindly buy coins recommended by someone else. 

That's great news, we need more companies to start dealing in crypto currencies to keep the crypto dreaming spreading. The worst thing that could happen would be a stagnation or even decline of companies that use cryptos. It's one thing for the average investor to save their money in bitcoin and alt coin, and something completely different for large companies to engage in crypto transactions. We are all looking for a world where the main currency is bitcoin and should act accordingly. When choosing to buy a product we should buy from companies that accept cryptos. It's up to the consumer now to reward the companies that are actively using crypto currencies. Only if the market share of crypto transaction compared to fiat payments is growing will more companies make the switch. A more stable price for bitcoins in the future is another way to make it more appealing for companies.

That's a good approach to bitcoin, buying with the DCA method helps a lot in accumulating a crypto portfolio over a longer period of time. Like you I have started to buy bitcoin regularly since the drop from it's ATH. I don't feel bad about buy above the 30k USD, because I also bought below 20k. My average purchase price is around 24k, which puts me in the green compared to today's price. But I am not thinking about selling any coins as I am going to keep buying instead. 100k USD seems like a good goal before I would even consider selling some coins. And even then I would only take profit in a small fraction and keep holding most of my coins.

I never really looked at slot games in detail in the demo modes, most of the times I checked out other games. The few times I played slots with play money I didn't really see a difference to live games. With a demo account at a casino, we usually get large bankrolls that give us a lot of opportunities to check the various games. It might be misleading that we are playing higher buyin games than we would be with our real money. But from my experience there is no difference between the demo casino games and the live games. If casinos would let you only win with your play money it should be pretty obvious after 2-3 days at the real casino and I would expect all the gamblers to quit again. Also, I don't expect there a connection between the live and demo games on round-to-round basis. Switching regularly between the modes could only be misleading, because we tend to gamble more loosely with play money than our real money. Also, the rounds itself are not really connected, every round is a new game with same winning and losing chances as before.

When it comes to bonuses I think they are great way for casinos to attract new customers. In most cases casinos offer welcome bonuses for gambler when they make their first deposit, any later deposits are usually not part of a bonus scheme. Which makes it important to think about the bonus before starting to play at a new casino. I made the mistake in the past where I only deposited 20 USD at website to check it out and wasted my bonus. This doesn't mean we should only focus on a bonus when choosing a new casino. It's a nice addition to our gambling balance, but shouldn't be our main concern. Over the last 2-3 years my experience with bonuses have been quite positive and I am gald that we still opportunities today. Especially in poker where I got some free tournament dollars, I managed to win of the tournaments and got a 70 USD boost to my bankroll. For me anything free is a welcomed addition that helps to grow my gambling balance. As for casino ranks I am less concerned with them, because they usually require a constant amount of gambling per week to not drop in rank again. People that are gambling regularly at one casino will probably get a lot of advantages of a VIP rank, but I like to switch around between different games and don't have time every week to play a lot. As long as reaching a certain rank is not your motivation in gambling I don' think there is anything wrong with it.   

That's the main point why so many people are struggling today, using our income for consumption and not investing. Saving is good as long as its don't properly and with a goal. In case we save money today only to use it for unnecessary purchases next month or next year it was a bad investment. We need to have a longterm plan for our savings and not give into short-term desires to spend our savings. The main argument for investing our money is that high inflation will make the normal savings account a wealth trap. Even though we might get 2-3% risk free interest, the value is declining with inflation rates at 6-9%. The best approach to saving and investing in my opinion is to only take out interest and profit, but never touch the initial investments. Like that we make sure our investment keep working for us and we can enjoy the rewards for many years to come.

Most people here on the forum agree that gambling is a form of entertainment that had been around for hundreds of years. Even ancient cultures already engaged in basic form of gambling to make their life more interesting. My grand father loved to gamble and never learned about crypto currencies in his life. I would expect that there are many elderly people like him that enjoy gambling regularly, but have no interest in crypto. It's hard to compare the two because crypto currencies are used for investing and compete against fiat currencies, not gambling. What surprises me the most that I would expect people to gamble less during times of crisis. The war in Ukraine is still happening, inflation is still high and people are struggling to pay the rising living expenses. During such difficult times I would expect people try to find new ways to save money and start invest in bitcoin and other cryptos to protect their savings from inflation. Using more money for gambling seems like the exact opposite of what people should do with their savings. The last big boom of online gambling happened with the boom in crypto prices and right now we are in a different situation.

I think that we need to distinguish between losses that are part of gambling and will occur regularly, and losses that come from wrong actions and could have been avoided. Many times these wrong actions are giving in to our bad emotions like greed and not knowing when to stop. After winning a few rounds in a row it's hard not to fall for greed that keeps telling us we need to bet more to make more money. My main concern is that greed lets me focus only on the profit side of gambling and I slowly forget about the higher risks I take with every bet. During a winning streak it's greed that leads to my downfall, and during a losing streak it's recklessness that leads to me chasing my losses. A good discipline is one way to avoid falling for greed. Having fixed systems in place on how to deal with a losing or winning streak is a good way to try and minimise our losses or save some our winnings from betting it all again. Your advice on taking a break is very good and I try to do it myself after big losses and big winnings. Going for a walk and clearing my head helps a lot to make better decisions later again.

I agree, running a casino doesn't qualify you as a gambler. Actually, the casino owners are the opposite of a gambler, because the casino takes all the opposite side of our bets. If there was no house edge and all the games would be fair then the casino would also be a gambler, but in the long run the casino is going to win over use. The term gambler includes uncertainty in itself, whereas the casino can rely on statistics of large numbers to make its profit as long as there are enough customers. Which is exactly the point why gambling can't be the main source of income, it's not reliable and we can't plan ahead to pay our bills in the future if the income is not steady. Avoiding losses is one thing in gambling and making constant returns is something completely different. Even with the best strategies in gambling there is no guarantee that we are going to make reliable profits in the future. That is why gambling is for me only a small challenge on the side, where I only use money that I can afford to lose and any profit I make is something special and I am happy and grateful about. 

   

So far, I only had to take out two loans in my life and I am still paying one back today. The whole experience of applying for a loan and paying interest on it for such a long time is not pleasant for me and I hope too never do it again. I got the loans from my local bank so I have no experience with taking out loans online, but I would expect it to go more quickly and easily. That could be a problem, if you get access to a loan too easy the chances of getting used to it is high and it might be difficult to stop again. The issue with loans is that some people take them out for unnecessary things and spend the money quickly. Getting used to living above your means is a dangerous situation, that is why borrowed money shouldn't be used for normal consumption each month. It's easy to get used to spending more money than we actually have and once our new habit of a more expensive lifestyle is formed, it will be hard to get rid of it again. The mother of a good friend of mine is using her overdraft almost every month, she buys new clothes every month and spend so much in bank and interest fees over the years. We tried many times to convince her to stop, but it’s an addiction by now. Don’t rely on other peoples money, better to first save and then buy the things we really need and want