I've been experimenting with betting for some time, but I must admit that I consistently avoid live bets. It's very annoying to me that the odds are changing fast, and that while placing a bet you're likely to see the odds changing again right in front of you, and then you have to accept the new ones before you can proceed. I also prefer to bet in advance because it gives more time to think and make calm informed decisions, whereas live bets put additional stress to the process, and I believe it makes the choices more emotional rather than rational. Then again, it might become way more obvious who's going to win the match after it started because you've already seen how the teams are doing today.
I placed a small low-risk live bet on Sportsbet.io today to see through the process, but I don't think I'll change my habits:

What about you? Do you prefer live bets or not? Why?

I've opened threads on gambling behavior and multi vs single bets before, and this one is another question I'm interested in to understand what the majority of this gambling community prefers. If you bet on soccer matches, what kind of bets do you prefer? Is it 1x2 bets or are you into something more risky like predicting the correct score? What do you choose more often?
As for me, I prefer the simple 1x2 bets because predicting the winner is often much simpler than predicting the score. However, I'm participating in Sportsbet EPL Pool, and there we're predicting the correct score of every EPL match (although you do get a point for guessing the outcome correct, so it's not as risky as placing bets on the correct score). So far, I've predicted the score correctly only 5 times out of 78 matches, so betting on the score is definitely not a good thing for me.

Here we go again. Bitcoin is on the rise, and even though it's up about 30% from the usual price of the recent times, the transaction fees are up 10 times. I've just sent 0.01 BTC, and the suggestion for a regular fee was $12! The priority was a couple of dollars more, and I went for it. There hasn't been such a spike since the 2017-2018 craze, but now enormous fees are apparently back, and they remind that we need a solution to the scalability issue. The LN is not inspiring, but nothing better is coming up. I think that such fees are a huge obstacle to Bitcoin adoption as money and should be considered a top priority. What do you think about the fees and the perspectives?

In my little experiment from the past, I was betting on Sportsbet.io on very likely outcomes with very low odds (1 point something). I won three single bets in a row:

But after a discussion on this forum I accepted the idea that these low odds give very low profit and are not worth the effort. So then I thought: why not make a multi bet consisting of these very likely winners and boost the profit this way? I decided to give a multi bet which combines three of such very likely outcomes a shot. And... I lost it because two out of three one and in one case another team won.

So my question is whether you prefer multi bets to single bets and whether you find multi bets significantly more risky than single bets.

I know that with EPL going on English Football League Championship might not be that interesting, but is anyone betting on it? Perhaps not on the particular matches, but on the EFL Cup winner? Manchester City won the last time, but can they do it again? Judging by the odds on Sportsbet.io, it seems like it's the most likely winner:

Are you betting on them or some other club? With the price boost the potential wins are pretty attractive even if we're talking about the likeliest winner.
Or is it too early to make this bet because the final match is in more than four months, what do you think?

The pandemic is affecting many areas, including sports. There've been discussions of how the home advantage doesn't fully come into play on empty stadiums, and on many events getting cancelled, resulting in people betting on stuff they would not normally be interested in. But yesterday happened something I did not think of before. It was football match France vs Ukraine. I've looked at predictions and France was expected to win, so the outcome of the match did not change. However, the score was predicted to be around 3-0, whereas Ukraine actually lost 7-1. One could think that things happen, and what does the pandemic have to do with an unfortunate game, but it has lots to do. According to Ukrainian Association of Football, due to traumas and positive COVID-19 tests more than a half of the current squad wasn't able to play yesterday. Three strong players tested positive on the eve of the match (with two more testing positive a few days ago), and Ukraine was left with only one goalkeeper.
This match went not as expected, but the outcome did not change, but this is just one case. What if the outcomes will change due to key players testing positive and weaker ones playing? Wouldn't it twist the games a lot, making them less predictable and less satisfying?
Do you think it's a big factor to take into account given the current situation?

Greetings! When I started betting on various events, I kept putting money on the options that were offering high payout but, naturally, weren't that likely to come true. I kept losing, so I decided to go for a radical change: betting only when the winner is pretty obvious and the payout is low but more or less secured. I won a few bets in a row like that, but my question is whether you'd consider it a good strategy for sports betting. I'm talking about bets for which the odds are 1.15 or something like that. Here're some bets I won like this:


Are these bets as safe as they seem? Would you go for this strategy or not? Why?

Greetings!
While there have been considerations about the possible cancellation of the event in 2020 due to the pandemic, it seems that BBC Sports Personality of the Year will probably be awarded.
Are you planning to bet on it? Betting is available on Sportsbet.io:
https://sportsbet.io/sports/event/specials/sports/bbc-sports-personality-2020/bbc-sports-personality-2020-5eef25090a476dd231e812f9.

Who do you think will win the award? It seems that Tyson Fury is the likeliest winner. He's been favorite for this award since February, and he's still holding the status. Would you call putting some mbtc on him a safe bet?

My spouse recently bought Valve Index, and we are exploring the new opportunities it opens. I enjoy the good-quality experience it provides, but it just came to my mind that there should be VR casinos as well. I googled VR casinos and found out that some indeed exist, but I started wondering whether there are any crypto casinos that support VR. I've searched the forum but did not find anything serious. Do you know any reputable casinos with VR support? Have you tried any, and do you think they could get popular?
I found some slots with VR support on Bitcasino through this article, but are there websites focusing on them more specifically?

I've been experimenting with betting on sports, and for now I don't see a difference between when I'm making an educated bet and just betting blindly looking only at the odds. It hasn't been long, however, so I'll keep experimenting.
My question is about a related matter. When I've asked in a different thread what is required to become a good bettor, many have mentioned that knowing the games, the teams and things like that is essential. But I'm sure there's a certain limit to this flow of information, and when this limit is reached, it's not useful and is even potentially harmful for making the decision. If a person is betting on a soccer match and reads about every match of every person on every team, plus weather forecast, plus research on home advantage etc., the amount of information can be overwhelming and probably not that important or useful to bet on the outcome a particular match. What do you think: is there a rule that would help not to drown in information but only focus on what is helpful? Or is it 'the more, the better' in your opinion?

Greetings! Yesterday I've started a thread on whether impartiality is good or bad for betting on sports (the issue that it's hard to bet against your favorite team when you know you should), but today I've noticed that the thread is gone. I believe it was under this link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5268835 (now, of course, it shows an error). I haven't received a notification that the thread was deleted by moderators (maybe the notifications are not sent out anymore, I don't know), but I just want to know why this happened. Perhaps I've done something wrong, I want to ensure I don't make the same mistake, I guess. I thought it was a legit topic to discuss... Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

I've been thinking about betting and what allows a person to be good at it. There's reason to believe that betting on, say, sports, is skill-based, as at least there are some people famous for being good at it. But if a person is betting on horse races, does the person need to know a lot about horses and horse races or can one be a successful bettor based on other things (for instance, choosing a certain strategy based on the odds or simply reading what others say about an upcoming race)? Is it about knowing how to bet or what you're betting on, what do you think? And do you think betting something a person can become good at or is it that there's a low probability of there being people who bet successfully on a regular basis and these people just exist?

I've had a conversation with friends a few days ago, and it was about online poker. The thing is, it seems that in online gambling in general poker is very popular and currently on the rise. For example, here's an article claiming that online poker is currently at its ATH. Hm, at the same time there are articles like this one claiming that it's in decline. In that case, I have two questions.
1. Is online poker (in fiat casinos) one of the most popular games?
2. Why isn't poker particularly popular when it comes to crypto casinos?

I've recently created a thread about the lack of success of new casinos, and one of the replies was the following:

The chances are low and odds are against unless the new casino aims to be a specific game focused gambling platform. The long term success will happen but there are questions have to be answered by the team before going to accept this decision: Will they be able to advertise among the new casino and gain the trust of players among all the old established brand casinos?

My question is, do you believe that a casino that focuses on a specific game is more likely to succeed than a casino that offers a variety of options? Is there any data related to the topic, and what is your personal opinion on the matter? Bustabit and Primedice are good examples of casinos centered around one game, but FortuneJack and Bitcasino.io succeeded with the opposite strategy. When you're choosing a casino, which seem more appealing to you: those that offer one game or those offering many games?

I've been on this forum long enough to see perhaps hundreds of casinos come and go. They keep appearing and dying shortly afterward all the time, and I wonder why people still take such a high risk of opening a casino when there is a close to 100% chance your casino will fail. This got me thinking about popular casinos. Of course, we all know the names. But they are usually years old, not anything from 2019-2020. The one exception is Stake.com, but I wouldn't count it as an example of a new casino appearing out of nowhere and attracting gamblers because it did not come out of nowhere (it's owned by Primedice). Is it just me or are there virtually no recent casinos that got popular? Or can you name some examples? And in general, do you think new casinos appearing in 2020 stand a chance against those with solid reputation and long time on the market?

Three years ago I experimented with crypto trading on various exchanges myself, but since it was a long time ago, I want some more up-to-date information. A friend of mine wants to try buying and selling Bitcoin for USDT and perhaps a couple of famous altcoins just to see whether he can 'feel' the market. He was thinking about Binance, and it's of course a good exchange, but it seems that they have strict KYC policies and their terms allow them to share personal data of their users with too many entities (like, not just the authorities, but also companies that want to promote some products, it's crazy!). What would be a good exchange for a beginner that just wants to experiment with, say, $20 worth of BTC? It doesn't have to be a completely anonymous exchange, but perhaps an exchange that reserves the right to check identity, but probably would not actually do it if a person is playing around with such a small amount of money. Of course, it has to be reputable and the fees should not be overwhelming. Back in the days I had a positive experience with HitBTC. Would this be a good choice? Thanks!

While working on a project related to COVID-19 fake news, I've encountered an interesting article about a myth regarding cryptos, Bill Gates and the pandemic. So it goes like this: Microsoft received a patent for microchips that would monitor human body activity and mine cryptocurrency this way. It's also related to anti-vaccination stuff, but that's not the point I'd like to discuss. The point is the reality of “Cryptocurrency system using body activity data” patent that would allow people to mine cryptos using their bodily activity data collected by some wearable gear. You can read about it here. What do you think about such an invention? Would you be interested? Will it ever work? Do the risks (very private data being vulnerable) outweigh the benefits?

Hi everyone! So I've just watched Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and it was dedicated to sports. As we know, Bundesliga was pretty much the first major professional football league to resume the games. However, there's still a lot of concern on whether it's safe even under the restrictions, not to mention that football games without fans are quite weird. On the show, I've heard about something that sounded more like a joke, but turned out very engaging to me: the Marble League. It's basically marbles going down various tracks and commentators following the game. You can take a look at an example of the race on their official YouTube channel. I don't know about you, but I'd be willing to bet on those marbles with BTC, at least for the time being. What's your impression? If there's community's interest in this, perhaps major crypto sports books might be interested in picking this up (it seems that Nitrogen Sports offered betting on their event in April).
The problem is that their season starts in a month (of the 21 of June), so maybe this won't be relevant then?

I realize it's just one person's opinion but I do have respect when it comes to this one, so maybe it's an interesting topic to discuss. Yesterday, he published a new video on his Youtube channel where he talks about halving.
Here are some ideas I've circled out from the video.

1. Mining: The least efficient miners will face unprofitability because of the halving. Thus some miners are likely to turn off their equipment, leading to the drop of the difficulty rate, and mining remaining profitable to those who are still in the game.
2. BTC price: He calls making price predictions 'irresponsible', even comparing it to astrology.
It's also quite interesting how he interprets the previous halvings, saying that 'nothing much' happened in the short-term and mid-term perspective. And thus he believes that this is the likeliest thing to happen this time.

Do you agree with him?

I am currently doing my Master's program in one of the best universities in Ukraine. Now that the country is on the lockdown due to COVID-19, more and more courses are moving online, especially to our university's online learning platform. So I was minding my own business and checking out the materials on the course I am taking, when I decided to take a look at some other courses available on the platform. And among them, I surprisingly found this course called 'The basics and Blockchain and cryptocurrencies' for 3-year Bachelor's program students. I'm attaching a photo as a proof, but it's in Ukrainian, of course. Just so I can tell you more, I enrolled in the course to see the overview (system bug doesn't allow taking a look at what they're studying without enrolling).
Here's a list of topics they cover: Decentralized databases, attacks on Bitcoin, consensus type, crypto exchanges, functions of money and cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency types and trading basics. So the course is definitely pro-crypto, and let me reiterate that it's a part of a Bachelor's program in Computer sciences in one of the most popular universities in my country (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy), so it's pretty cool!