In every single discussion we have about this the fine line remains between pleasure, unhealthy behavior and horrible addiction. Pleasure is a good argument and it also implies a healthy approach as nobody would call it a pleasure when they are actually losing serious money - unless they can afford it, but that would still not really feel very pleasurable.

The so called pros are rarely successful forever and those times also have drastically changed in poker as well. When someone takes money that they can afford to lose and play some rounds on the weekends or whenever they want, that's cool. But calling it a steady source of income at any point is problematic because of the word "income".

If you play a large poker tournament and you win big prize money, does that mean it is steady income? No you could get lucky and win a huge jackpot that allows you to live without working for 10 years, but it is still not steady income.

It is funny when you see those casino streamers and they pretend to be earning all the time. Let me ask them then why don't they stop streaming and only play the casino Because their casino gaming is no steady income ever. Their streaming is when they have a big number of followers.

The intention to win is obvious. Nobody plays a final just for the sake of playing it. If you play it, you want to win it. The first few minutes are interesting as both had their first corner and Roma had a first shot, but as expected Sevilla has the ball possession. Though Roma doesn't care about that.

Finally Mou decided to let Dybala play. I think this is the right decision and perhaps also the perfect moment to give him a chance to be part of the starting team. But when it is true that he has fitness problems, it could be a danger that he can't go the whole game, which can then turn into a disadvantage.

The odds on this one aren't worth it. The bookmakers are sure about the outcome and you would have to be willing to select some crazy bets in order to get a decent win on this game. Over 4 goals gives you odds quite far below 2. More than 4 goals is not even unrealistic, but it would still be an outlier and is definitely not the norm to see 5 goals no matter how important this game is. I have had a look at all the betting options across different providers and there is really nothing that struck me as being worth a bet.

Indeed, but I think it is not merely due to Pep Guardiola's overthinking. First of all, losses can happen even if you are the superior team. There have been other finals where one team dominated the whole game and the other team won, but not due to overthinking. Against Chelsea you are right, that was a tactical mistake. But at the same time Inter's strategy only works when they do get a goal. Although it is an option for them to go the full distance and still have a 50% win chance when it ends in penalties.

But if Inter gets the goal, it is much more difficult because they can immediately park the bus as you said. That won't be fun for Manchester City anymore. There is no guarantee that a goal from distance will happen like Manchester City did against Bayern Munich in the first leg or against Real Madrid. But I am still on the fence whether Inter will try to keep a reasonable attack rate throughout the game until they get their goal or whether they will park the bus very early on in the game, betting on some lucky goal or accept a game without goals to make it into extra time. Because they know that that would make Manchester City very nervous.

Regrettably, a weird incongruence also developed over time between education and a degree. Education is always good and who would I be to say the opposite. But a lot of students or young people are not after the education in the first place, but after the degree. There is a difference as that diluted the quality of education a lot since some universities understood the trend, started charging higher tuition fees but at the same time made it easier to pass the exams.

We often talk about hyperinflation concerning currencies, but there is also hyperinflation in people obtaining degrees. It is not only the people who are to blame, but also the employers and society as a whole. In some countries it is almost worthless to send your application if you are not able to attach a degree to it. It has become so normal and pervasive that employers take it as a given that everyone went through higher education, which is actually a bad trend.

In regards to financial literacy, it depends on what type of education you are talking about. Hands-on experience in my opinion is at least as important as specific education. You can read all the books you want, but as soon as you trade yourself you get a better understanding of market dynamics. An academic career in finance can help you learn fancy formulas, but you can gather most of the required subject matter on the Internet. Reading and understanding financial reports, but also gathering news from reputable economics and finance websites or more basic news outlets and then putting those news into a coherent economic and social context. This is something you can only develop over time by constantly consuming relevant news sources and broadening your horizon.

If you better know how to place your trades in your early 20s than you know in your 40s, you have probably done something wrong - or you have done a lot of things right in your early 20s and are sipping Pina Coladas 24 hours a day on the beach of your own island

Not many investments had the potential to make you so filthy rich with even small investments that you could afford your own island. I am only aware of one investment that had the potential and that was Bitcoin 

Inter's best friend in that game is the time. As long as they can keep Manchester City busy and use up their energy while not scoring a goal, Inter is still in the game. But Manchester City won't rush it and they will also take care that they are not running into some stupid counter attack and give Inter what they actually want. Manchester City will play this one with a lot of patience and drain Inter's mental and physical resources slowly. Defending can be very hard if you have to pay attention to the details in every second. That is how Manchester City will keep pressing during that game until Inter finally fails to close that little gap. These gaps will exist more often as the game goes on. That will be some of the highest and demanding tactics in that game.

As you said it is all about assumptions and we do not have sufficient background information to derive any proper conclusions. Yet, there are many "ifs" that make this an interesting discussion regardless. Even "if" this was about belief and religion, would the belief still justify that action if this was a once in a lifetime chance for the son, the son is not addicted, would now have the money to get education and is eager to start a business and give back to the people around him. What "if" that is true, should religion still have the final word or be the only driver for the final decision? It is possible that the son has a big heart, or he was desperate and felt he had to change something in no time and got lucky. Belief and religion can be powerful, but when comes the point where it also starts to undermine positive fate?
It is an interesting post and it would be awesome to have more background information.

Luck doesn't end when we think it will end. It ends when it actually ends

It wouldn't be the fest time that a team overcame difficult hurdles and struggles one after another only to then also win the final game.

If you want I can give you an intriguing example from the past. Do you remember who won the Champions League in 2010? You are right, Inter Milan. They had to beat not only Chelsea, but in the semi-finals also one of the strongest Barcelona teams we have ever seen managed by Pep Guariola. ^source

In the final Bayern Munich was waiting for them and Inter Milan showed a rock solid performance and scored two goals out of the very few chances they had.

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I have asked a very similar question here and o_e_l_e_o kindly answered in detail. If you read that post I think everything should be answered. Miners will process transactions paying the highest fees and they are constantly building a "candidate" block which is adjusted on a highest fee first principle until the next block gets mined. Even if you are part of the candidate block for a second, your tx will only confirm once it is part of the candidate block that then also gets mined. Until your tx could be dropped and another one paying a higher fee be included instead. This is why I thought broadcasting a tx when fees are low in a certain moment will also ensure that your tx gets processed, but that was wrong because it could still get dropped again if the block hasn't been mined and a higher fee tx gets preferred over yours.

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Okay I followed your advice and Hoenicke's website is of great help when when it comes to choosing transaction fees and understanding the mempool in general. I wanted to share an observation, which hopefully motivates others to use it as well. With a little bit of effort you can quickly develop a decent understanding of the metrics provided.





I had the website running after o_e_l_e_o recommended it to me and I noticed that crash in the upper picture and instantly checked blockchair.com. What happened is that four blocks were found within just one minute, causing the estimated transaction fee for the next block to drop drastically, but only for a short period of time. I instantly tried to initiate a small tx and sneaked it in at something around 40 sats/b. It worked, but until this block 789,273 was mined it took until 20:10 (time as per Hoenicke's website). The fee to get your transaction included rose rapidly. I took another screenshot but I skip to share it here as I don't to want to turn this thread into an art gallery. The recommended fee by blockchair.com was back to 190 sats/b at 20:00 already and rose to as much as 233 sats/b on average by the time the block was mined.

There is one technical thing that I don't fully understand. As you can see at 19:41 block 789,278 was mined and the next one was at 20:10. I made my transaction at 19:45 and it worked like a charm. When a block has not yet been mined, miners keep adding transactions that they are going to include into the next block if they find it. They usually do it based on the 'highest transaction fee first' principle. If the fees drop drastically because there was a longer sequence of blocks found within a very short period of time and the tx count in the mempool drops significantly (as can be seen in my screenshot), how do miners choose and commit to transactions being executed? And are they making final decisions when they create their list of transactions that are going to be included? If I broadcast my tx at around 19:45 with 40 sats/b, but the block has not yet been mined, could a miner still drop my tx and replace it with another one that is offering a higher fee? When is the miner's decision final?

Bottom line is when I observe such a drop in the mempool and place my tx instantly according to what info I can extract from Hoenicke's website, will it always get executed if I hit the sweet spot for the fee right in that moment even if the average fee increases manyfold if it takes longer to find the next block?

Ok you've got a point there. Being a top scorer with like 30 goals or even more per season when you play for Atletico Madrid is "physically" almost impossible as they don't score, but rather defend.

But I was more thinking about the infinite amounts of money that Chelsea is spending anyway. Atletico paid 126 million Euro for Joao Felix and we can now only speculate what they will ask from Chelsea. That is not going to be anywhere below 100 million Euro. Is he worth the money?

I agree that he is great at dribblings and movement, but you need players who have some inbuilt effectiveness when it comes to scoring goals. He doesn't have that.

To be more precise, the least they have to do is to equalize the game with two goals difference. I think it would be a huge performance if they could save themselves into a penalty shootout, but there aren't really any serious indications that AC Milan could have a realistic chance in the next game against Inter. But compared to some other matches, the difference here is that it is still their stadium where they are playing. It is not the typical away game. I don't know how the tickets get distributed and whether fans from both teams try to purchase some on the black market, but I would assume that it is still feeling a lot more like playing home than if they had to go to England or Spain.

There is nothing else Dortmund can do at this point and it is now even more in favor of Bayern Munich since they took the lead in the game against Schalke. It would need even more than a holy miracle now to see Schalke win a point in this game.

I am looking forward to any upcoming changes for the next season. There is a lot of work that needs to be done at Bayern Munich. The strength of the squad is a bit deceptive because the names are all strong, but they are not dominating the gams anymore like they used to in the past. This Bayern-like dominance is gone. Usually they don't allow their opponents to even breath, but now they are allowing countless of chances against them or miss their own chances.

Politics suck and it creeped its way into global sports at a scale that for a long time has been overlooked too much or not realized by the masses. Now that we have all the media at hand where we can inform ourselves from all kinds of sources, it is obvious that sports is not primarily about sports, it is primarily about politics I am referring to the big events here like the World Cup or the European Cup. In national sports there is also politics involved, but by far not as much as it is internationally.

There has to be a fine line between judging the host for political circumstances and the ability to actually host an event of that magnitude. But to be serious here, the hope that a host could change their political approach or put tensions with their enemies to rest because sports is supposed to help pacify conflicts, that is a myth. We have seen that with Russia when they hosted the World Cup in 2018 and four years later it rained bombs on Ukraine's civilization.

Yes, destroyed. No need to be sarcastic here KTChampions! Argentina destroyed the Netherlands 2-2 in regular time. Then Argentina destroyed the Netherlands 0-0 in overtime. Finally, Argentina destroyedthe Netherlands 4-3 in the penalty shootout after being behind 1-2 when Fernandez even missed his penalty. That's a very obvious case to me. The Netherlands never, at any point in the game, had a chance to win it!

But it doesn't stop there!

In the final Argentina destroyed France 2-2 in regular time. Then Argentina destroyed France 1-1 in overtime before they destroyed France in the penalty shootout.

Any questions?

But to contribute to the EURO discussion here, asserting that France has no competition besides England is nonsense. Even if some of the teams are not as good as we usually expect them to be, there is still Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, but also Portugal, a team that I would not underestimate. France is by far the best team in terms of the individual quality of their players. But there were wonders in the past, for instance when Greece won and that left everyone in disbelief and consternation. But this is how these tournaments play out. When out of a sudden an underdog grows beyond their limits, it is sometimes hard to stop them the further they make it in a tournament as those limits become higher and higher.

France having the best chances to win it as per the odds is justified, but we won't see them making a clean sweep.

Nothing is lost yet for Real Madrid as we are still speaking about Real Madrid and not Elche or Getafe. I think everyone agrees that Real Madrid isn't going there without any chances. They are too strong and the result was a draw, not a loss by 3 goals.

But Real Madrid missed the chance to put themselves into a good starting position for the second leg. Especially when the first leg ends closely like a draw or a 1 goal difference only, I think it is a significant advantage if you play the second leg at home. That's not like a walkover into the next round, but it is an advantage.

You went back to the year 2000 to find an example that comes close to the conditions now between Manchester City and Real Madrid. The reason is that more often than not the home team is winning. But nobody who followed the Champions League in recent years forgot what Real Madrid did in this competition.

But how good is Joao Felix really? I know that he is strong with the ball and can accelerate very well and go into driblings, but is he really the offender that Chelsea needs? He has only 25 goals to his name in almost four years for Atletico Madrid. The numbers Chelsea is moving around for transfers are astronomical. If they decide to spend so much money anyway, why aren't they trying to get someone who could be even more expensive, but has an inbuilt goal scoring insurance so to say. Chelsea has a heavy problem in their offensive game with 34 goals in 34 games. I can't believe that these numbers are true, but they are. Joao Felix won't solve that problem.