1. Bucks
2. Yes
3. Nuggets
4. No
5. Celtics
6. 76ers
7. No
8. Suns
111 points

A preguiça é a mãe do progresso. Se o homem não tivesse preguiça de caminhar, não teria inventado a roda.

– Mario Quintana

“Você tem poder sobre sua mente – não sobre eventos externos. Perceba isso e você encontrará a sua força.”

– Marco Aurélio.

On topic:

We have Fed Chair Powell Speaks today in couple hours while FTX announces they pretend to sell their crypto assets to return their funds in fiat to their creditors.
If Powell's discourse is hawkish today then we will have the perfect storm for another down in the market, considering September usually is a red month in not bull run years of the bitcoin price cycle. Maybe fill a more or less forgotten CME gap around the 20K again?
Or maybe Powell will say what the market wants to hear and the 20k gap will remain unfilled forever, like the one around 3k?

Any way, better be careful and watch out for sudden moves that could liquidate leveraged traders and don't take short term fluctuations in price today and in the weekend too seriously.

It is expected that as Bitcoin gained popularity, people would disperse to other internet places, because that's basically what happened with the older forums, people went to discuss Bitcoin on other social media, like Reddit, Youtube, Telegram, and so on, and if they are real fanatics they could even create their own things and gather their own follower and maybe even get monetized and earn real money with their contend.
That's the path that all internet followed and I doubt things would really change even if the alleged merit farming issue is solved.

Another alternative would be just ban people from posting in this thread if they are repeated offenders, how hard would be ban certain users from posting in certain threads?

Also be low rank is not a funny place to be if you want to post, because of the timeout between posts, so ranking is a factor that may cause a good poster be more or less engaged in the forum.

If you disable merits here then they will just go farm their merits elsewhere, and the good posters here will have less incentive to post, therefore decreasing the overall discussion value here.
Another alternative would be add a local rule that posts that are like the ones you mentioned will be deleted and enforce it, as in you have to post something original too in your posts.

Luton offered lots of opportunities for Brighton to score, 27 or so, and showed they won't play conservative against better opponents on paper, that they will go and attack, and probably should lose by many goals.
On the other hand, Chelsea always invests like 100M to make a great team on paper, and in practice they struggle, like their last year 12th place and their 14 games with a single win and low scored goals show us. They last defeat against West Ham raises some concerns, but play West Ham at their home is tricky and they sometimes cause upsets, and Chelsea did dominate the game in the first half, with their missed penalty being a turning point for the worst for them.
In the end of the day, it is a game to be observed, not to make bets on, in my opinion. Will Chelsea keep disappointing their fans and giving crap results again even after investing a fortune in the team? Will this game be a turning point for them?
Or will Luton cause an upset and maybe even change tactics and be more conservative against the big teams? The small teams that get promoted sometimes do cause upsets, and Aston Vila did re bounce  after their thrashing against Newcastle in the first round.

If Chelsea plays OK I might add one of their players in my fantasy team since they have some easy schedule ahead, but I will observe first.

Hi, what I'm supposed to do?
I honestly don't know much about the Portuguese League, except the teams that usually go to the Champions League, like Porto, Benfica and maybe Sporting.
However Benfica's story has Eusebio, one of the great players from the past that has been mostly forgotten, but people barely even know Pele nowadays.
I would have Benfica as favorite then, if it is relevant.

I also predict Benfica as this year's winner again, Benfica got a solid win against a Porto team that they generally lose against before the start of the season, and I don't think it was a fluke.

So many smaller teams that are unknown to me, also Juventus out of the big European competitions makes them unpredictable, they can focus on the Serie A, but with less games they also will have less opportunities to to actual matches and even do some experiments and try new things. Keep their stars and good players until the end of the season may also be a challenge, with the Saudis eyeing big stars everywhere and reduced income from games. 

Yet I managed to get a more or less good performance in the first week, let's see if I can keep it up until the day the teams become "familiar faces" and it will not be luck and other people's analysis based anymore.

My bad, I forgot the username

It is Kanapka

Cheers and sorry for the inconvenience

I just paid.

Tx id: c62d07693fdf2fe7972258509e5a61504706128add6d1f35b44a1c44f9d3d8af
Superbru username: Kanapka

@Trofo

should I send DM too?

May I still join, considering that start at week 2 is a valid strategy with some advantages?

https://www.premierleague.com/news/1824242

I will pay before this week transfer deadline.

Sorry for taking so long, but I don't feel safe accessing bitcointalk outside home without double checking the email and the stacked address, which I just did.
Will double check the Sportsbet account too.

Let's see how this round goes.

Now I'll be able to participate more in the forum

Bitcointalk username: Kanapka
BTC wallet: bc1qp74k7n8ak3ef6lp622spas0a262vyt3k7adnyv

Yes, as Trofo said above:

"3+ covers three goals or more. So 3,4,5.... or winning combinations."

So it should be read as 3+ goals.

I sent my picks yesterday because there is no point to overthink the answer, given the unpredictability of this WC.

Good luck for you too, slaman29

Croatia got very lucky that Brazil, after their first goal they keep attacking and got caught with 7 men in the attack when the Croatians made their counterattack.
Morocco was lucky too, they got a shot on the post(as Schwarzenegger said on predator: if it bleeds, then it can killed) and their back has some injury.

We know that luck one day ends, but both teams need only two more days of luck to be the champions.

Would be nice to see what a meeting between the most defensive teams would be, specially if one team gets an early goal.

Usually Argentina wins against Mexico, specially when they really have to, however the question is trickier than it seems because of the possession, Mexico usually plays for possession and should have most of the possession even if they get wrecked in goals, as happened in 2010, a 3-1 win for Argentina but the Mexicans got more possession than Argentina.
I would not be surprised at all to see a solid Argentina win by 2 or 3 goals and Mexico still with more possession.

EDIT: in the 2010 game Argentina was with 51% possession despite the 3-1, I don't know why I remembered the Mexicans with more possession. However got only two corner kicks in the whole game, what makes the question even more unpredictable.

Here are the full stats for the 2010 game:

https://www.espn.com/soccer/match/_/gameId/264110

Might be hard to find because you need to ckick in the A1 dropbox and select the round 2 spreadsheet(not intuitive at all), so here is the direct link
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dYMhVj5uB_MrdL7NHINulDzhHllTX-qH9_xXo4EsJXw/edit#gid=1507694583

Lewandowski showed great team work today and decided it is more worth give the ball to someone else that in a better position to score than try and shoot in a not optimal position and maybe get his first World Cup goal. Others need to learn with him, specially Canada, that would've won against Belgium if the players were as eager to get the victory for the team than as they were to be the first goalscorer of Canada in a World Cup.

I hope Lewandowski scores a goal...in the next game

EDIT: he did it and I lost a point 

Neymar(5 goals)

User ID:  cf533245-a3cc-5c3d-8cfe-80f8e12dbace

Group A: Netherlands
Group B: England
Group C: Argentina
Group D: Denmark
Group E: Spain
Group F: Croatia
Group G: Brazil
Group H: Portugal

Winner: Brazil
Total goal in final: 2 goals
Id cf533245-a3cc-5c3d-8cfe-80f8e12dbace

Submitted my application.

I was feeling we would see some surprise just before the first match, now I have a slightly advantage in the France game since the Benzema option is already a no