1. In most countries the major banks are usually run by the government, so it's unlikely that the govs will want the banks abolished (they'll lose both money and the ability to track money flow)

2. That depends on their attitude toward cryptocurrencies. If they see it as a currency - they won't charge any taxes, because how can you put taxes on a currency? That's nonsense. However, I doubt that'll be the case. In the US the IRS considers cryptocurrency as assets, rather than currency and I think other countries hold the same view. 

3. I think the government itself is the major source of corruption and so far they've succeeded in it even without cryptocurrencies, so it's more of a moral question: will they allow the corruption to go on, or will they finally try to do something about it. Bitcoin can be traced, we all know that, so it's only a matter of willingness.

And regarding this:

In the meaning of transactions, it's not like there's absolutely no third party, don't forget that transaction fees go to the miners, so, in a way, they're the third party.

That's exactly my point! Online casinos were never dependent on tourists and that's why they aren't suffering from customer shortage now. In the meantime, gamblers that used to play in physical casinos will keep on playing, only now for that purpose they'll use online platforms. And it happens all around the world now, so it's only logical to assume that their revenue grows.

Hey, don't scare away the newbies

Poker rules aren't that hard, after all, I've learned to play five-card poker at the age of 11 and even then it didn't seem like something complex. After a while, I tried taking part in poker tournaments, but they were mostly Texas Hold'em and I wasn't familiar with the rules. Even though in tournaments everything happens quickly and you have to think fast I got the hang of things after 3-4 games. The best way to learn something - is to learn it through practice, imo.

Neurologist

It wasn't a problem for me in this particular case. If I had the opportunity to withdraw it right away, I'd withdrawn $8, and the whole event would be forgotten a long time ago. But now my balance is nearing $40, thanks to the bitcoin upsurge!

Knowing these probabilities might be helpful to assess your exact chances of beating the opponent, however, I don't see much point in memorizing or copying them somewhere and keeping in sight during the game (maybe if you're a beginner). The thing is - if you're a regular player you realize all that intuitively. For instance, I never had a clue what's the probability of being dealt a pair or three of a kind, but it has always been obvious that the latter one is much cooler

On the contrary, I think that some kind of dynamic probabilities may come in handy. I mean some kind of guides or calculators (even better) that would show you how the probabilities of holding a certain card will change depending on your decisions (especially useful when you decide whether or not to discard your cards, and if yes - which ones), because in this case, things might be less apparent. Sadly, I've never seen anything of the like.

Now we can see a perfect example that demonstrates huuuge privileges of online gambling and casinos in particular. I bet not only they aren't facing a crisis, while everyone else is, but are actually gaining more revenue now, because the gamblers never stopped playing, right? They switched to online 

I think that's a pretty fair move, considering that Argentina used to have one of the lowest tax rates on gambling (compare to the US winning taxes around 20% and 15% in the UK). It's understandable that the government wants to benefit more to recover its economy, especially now.
 
However, they probably should've done it gradually, as such a sharp rise in taxes might be ok for large companies, but will most likely adversely affect medium and small business.

You're welcome!


I thought about that and was going to write almost exactly the same words, but then changed my mind because "lessen the bets" would still mean betting, while the aim was to stop betting completely.


What I meant was another than gambling activity, but I like the idea of finding the will to stop gambling.


Yessss! Now, when I read 4. and 5. it reminds me of the first two rules of the Fight Club, but I like it! Important rules must be duplicated.

This is especially true when what you won was in BTC. Once I got lucky and won more than 0.0015 in one shot with a high multiplier on a dice site, and left it there and forgot about it because the min withdrawal there was 0.002, and my balance was a little bit lower than that. Also, the amount wasn't that significant, around $7 or $8 at the time. After a long break, I visited this site recently and I saw $35 in BTC on my balance!

I agree, that sounds more like an advertisement to attract more clients, than an act of carefulness. However, wouldn't gambling sites be interested in having steady customers? And some loss-preventing programs might help them to keep old customers in the game because they won't be broke after just a short period of playing. Plus this can be an influencing factor, that'll make gamblers advise a certain website to friends.

This is a good analogy!

I think we can utilize the advices from this video, How to Survive Falling Into Quicksand, with some adjustment, of course.

1. Unlike in the movies, in real life it's quite rare to sink into the quicksand up to the neck. In relation to gambling, "up to the neck" means you can't stop compulsive betting by yourself, and you need a professional help. It happens, but it's rare.

2. "Stop moving" means stop playing. You might think you could recover your losses by playing further, but in most cases your losses just keep growing.

3. "Lighten the load" means don't even read gambling related articles or watch gambling related movies.

4. "Grab on to something" means find something else to be entertained with instead of gambling.

5. I can't come up with an analogy to "Lean back and wiggle your feet".

6. "Call for help" means tell your closest friends you want to fight your gambling addiction. They will help you.

I hope watching the video along with reading my comments will help at least someone to "safely return to the surface".

I personally find multiplayer games sort of distracting, especially with the chat - I never get it, how do you people manage to think about your bets, concentrate on the game and simultaneously comment on what you do? I get that gambling is supposed to be social, but often you can feel people being happy for your failures, even though sometimes there is compassion and some might even tip you after unlucky bets - that's a rare thing.
The only gambling game where I enjoy company is poker, especially tournaments, I find them fun 

At first, I thought maybe they got new owners and wanted to restore their reputation.

But then I went through the latest posts in this thread and found this

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5267172.msg55442527#msg55442527

I don't know, until this case was resolved I wouldn't start posting anything else, being in their position.

Simply put, we should never risk more than we can afford to lose. Even when the chances of winning are 99%, risking significant amounts is not advisable. On the other hand, sometimes, when we have a minuscule chance of winning, we can still spend a dollar or two on a lottery ticket, because what matters most is not the win chance, but the amount we put at risk.

The conspiracy theories sometimes fun to read/watch about, but I can't seriously consider them when there are no real proofs. In my opinion, there's too much money involved, hundreds of millions USD, in advertising during NBA games to risk losing it by trying to rig the games.

I think the real problem here is that gambling, as well as cryptocurrencies, provides people with freedom and the Chinese government wouldn't that, right? They just fear the possibility of common people getting rich and independent because that might destabilize their system. You seem surprised that they accuse of "conspiracy against their nation", but I think it sounds exactly like the thing the communist government would say about people, who threaten their system.

If you don't believe in provably fair - you probably don't understand it. This system is, perhaps, the only thing that can actually verify that a certain gambling website isn't a scam. When online casinos first started appearing lots of them were scams and back then it would be wiser to trust real-life casinos over virtual ones. But now it's quite the opposite, thanks to provably fair.

I'll try to explain it as I understand it and make it as simple as possible. Imagine that you're playing a game where you, say, have to guess a word, you tell what's your guess to a certain person and he'll then tell you if your guess is right or wrong. But how do you know if he isn't lying? In order to prove his fairness, he's holding a tablet with the encrypted right answer and, let's say, there's a certain encryption algorithm named "HAAA" that encrypts letters in numbers. And then, for instance, the word is GRASS and after performing the "HAAA" encryption you only see a set of numbers. Let's say, the following equivalents are designed within the algorithm: G is 8, R - 2, A - 4, S - 9, so what you see on the tablet is 82499 - the result of encryption. But the example I gave you is very simple and one might think that anyone can get the right answer from the numbers, but here's the coolest and very important thing about SHA256 - it only hashes one-way: you can encrypt with it, but you can't decrypt. So, what you need to do next is to go to a trusted third party that does encryptions and ask them to encrypt the word GRASS with the "HAAA" algorithm and see if they get you the set of numbers that was on the tablet. If the numbers are the same (82499 in this case) - it proves that the word was GRASS.
That's about it, hope you'll believe it now

May you win big, and use the money for the things that will make your life brighter!

I also hope to win big money one day, but I think only some kind of lottery can bring me that. Other games demand to risk big in order to have a chance to win big, and I don’t want to risk big.

I personally find the chaos of some slots entertaining. When you get some amazing multipliers out of nowhere, isn't that great? I mean, in dice you know exactly what you are aiming for. You can't get a 1000x multiplier while hunting for 10x on dice, but with slots anything can happen.