Yeah it's really what you could be doing with so much money instead of placing it on sports betting. In my city you could have bought two decent apartments and rent them out for nice income for the rest of your life. It's hard to wrap my head around how anybody could place so much money on a single bet. But then there are people who own 100m USD yachts which they only use a few times per year. In the end everything is relative to your total net worth and your monthly income. If you get a bonus every year of several millions than betting one million doesn't seem so out of line anymore. Also what if you find out that your wife wants to divorce you, wouldn't it be a good time to start gambling heavily? All the money you lose would have been 50% of your wife, so better to lose it at the casino. And if you manage to win than you might be able to hide some of the winnings until after the divorce.

The most common fraud I would expect to be multi accounts that try to advantage of bonuses and other promotions multiple times. The bonuses casinos offer are very attractive as they can be as high as 300% deposit bonus. It's hard to make such kind of money by gambling alone, that's why so many people try to take advantage of it. I don't like cheater on online gaming, they are the worst kind of people. That's why I would never cheat myself in games or in casinos. Another form of fraud is misinformation, this can happen in gambling and sports betting. Some people will try and spread wrong information in an effort to try and take advantage of it for themselves. For example, gamblers could try and promote a certain slot game and say that the chances of winning are much higher than they actually are only to keep making the jackpot bigger and win it themselves. Another way would be to spread fake odds for a upcoming sports match and hope that more people will buy the wrong side of the bet. When it comes to money people will try everything to get ahead.

That sounds terrible mate and we should never fall in that trap in the first place. All my life I tried to live within my own means and never take out any loans - which of course doesn't work. I needed a loan back in university to finish my studies and I needed another loan to help our families keep our house and renovate it. In both cases it was necessary to get the money from the bank and there was no real alternative. In my opinion it's best to look at a loan as a means of last resort that should never be used lightly. We shouldn't be borrowing money for leisure or other unnecessary expenses, because the risk of getting used to living a lifestyle above our means is too great. Before you take out a loan make sure that there is no alternative, maybe you can hold of your purchases for a few month and save the money first? In my country it's not really easy to get a loan, the bank asks for a lot of collateral and if they see that you already got money from another institution they will likely not accept any new loan. 

Really sorry to hear that buddy, hopefully your mother is good and the operation was a success. I know the feeling of being lonely very well from my past, but I never tried to fight it with gambling. My main go to place to numb the pain where alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. It was a really dark time for me back then, it took me a long time to realise that this was a cry for help and I used all those substances to try and avoid changing my situation. Like me it seems that you are unhappy in your situation and should work to change it. How about you call an old friend or some family member you haven't spoken to in a while? Gambling while dealing with strong emotions is not a good idea in my opinion. When it comes to evaluating risk and remain in control of our actions we should be emotionally stable. That is why I never try to gamble when I am drunk or angry and mad. With your big loss you only make things worse and will feel terrible afterwards. We shouldn't be looking at gambling as a tool to make us feel better, because the chances of us losing is higher than of us winning.
   

I know that feeling very well, my first bitcoins I had in 2016 and unfortunately I sold all of them back in the days. It was my biggest trading mistake to not stick around. From time to time I think about how many bitcoins I had and how much money that would have been today. Such a thinking is of course not really fruitful and only makes me feel mad. It's hard to accept that we can't turn back time, the only thing we can do is learn from our mistakes and not repeat them. I am also happy that I am invested in bitcoins now and I am never going to sell all my coins again. Don't make the same mistake like me guys and stay invested, otherwise you are going to feel bad in a few years.

No you can't start a gambling business without any funds at hand. Casinos are a games with a lot of randomness, especially in the beginning when there are not so many customers yet there is no guarantee that you are going to make a profit. Let's say you have a very lucky gamblers who manages to only plays roulette and doubles up his money a few times in a row. What are you going to do if he wants to withdraw his money? You can't start a new business and directly have trouble playing back customers or even worse, go into default. You are right that the casino pays out the winners with the money they make from the losers minus their expenses and taxes. The casino needs a large number of customers to be profitable and of course a large enough bankroll to pay out lucky winners. As long as there is no legit accusations that the casino is not paying out winners we shouldn't be too concerned. Why would a successful business who has been around for years risk losing everything by not paying out one winner? Once word gets out that the casino is not paying customers anymore no one is going to play there anymore. You can only lose your good reputation once and there is no coming back from it.

The lowest point in my life emotionally and financially was when my grandmother died. My dad is sick for a long time and already stopped working more than 10 years ago, he is getting almost no benefits from the government and couldn't support me at all when I went to university. All the money I got to study either came from my grandmother or from a loan. She died really suddenly, we couldn't even say goodbye which was very painful and I was struggling to get by in the month afterwards. At one point I was afraid I couldn't afford to finish my studies and would have to quit. Luckily I found a decent paying job very close to university that let me work freely after lectures and in the evenings. I am really grateful to my former boss for giving me a chance and giving me so much freedom to still focus on university. Without help from others it is really hard to get out of these terrible situations.   

I agree with you, it makes no sense to try and follow a strategy by someone else that we heard about and was sold to us as a successful gambling strategy. We need to invest our own time and make a decision for ourselves if the strategy suits our playstyle. When it comes to sports betting and casino gambling I would be careful to trust other people who want to sell us their profitable strategy. Just because they made money with it doesn't mean we are going to do the same. It could be that they were lucky in the past and the strategy is not really that good. It also comes down to our own gambling habits and how comfortable we are to stick to one strategy. For me it works best to switch around with different strategies. For example there are days where I blindly follow my martingale strategy, there is no real decision making to be done. When I am tired it's the best strategy for me. And then there are days where I want to be more active and change my strategy.

It's really hard to give a short answer here, because I invest in so many different things over the years. The question is also are you only looking at trades that are completed and lead to a profit or also active positions which are meant to be held for a long time. Bitcoins is one example of assets that I have sold in the past but are not going to do again. So it doesn't really matter if bitcoin is up or down 20% as I will keep holding. The same is with a real estate fund that I have for 15 years already, they pay a decent dividend each year and I will probably never sell it. Overall I think my portfolio is up 40%, where cryptos and stocks make up the biggest part. I lost money with stocks in the last year but my crypto coins are covering that loss.

In both your cases the gambler successfully beats the casino and if he manages to hold on to his winnings he is a lucky gambler. The thing about the saying "the casino always wins" is not correct about every individual gambler, it's true about a large group of gamblers. In any casino game the house has its edge to make sure they make money in the long run. The winning chance of the casino is higher than that of us gamblers, which doesn't mean that we can't win. The casino needs a larger number of losers than winners to remain profitable and not to bankrupt. So when ever you make a huge win it makes sense to withdraw at least some of the winning and save it. The real question is if you are willing to bet all your money on a risky. I remember the story of an English fella who sold his house and bet everything on a single roulette spin. Luckily he won and doubled his money. I would never have the stomach to bet so much on a single bet. Another thing is that many people enjoy gambling and won't stay away for ever.

Being independent from the US Dollar is a good thing and many countries are trying to achieve it. The question is how well the digital yuan is going to be accepted by investors. Merchants are probably happy about the digital version as it's going to make international trade more easy. But I don't think that any of the companies will sit on the digial yuan. Most of the international companies will switch back into their own fiat money quickly. As for investors I don't think there is a strong demand to invest into the Chinese currency at the moment. Tensions are high between China and USA, and if there is going up be a military conflict with Taiwan China could be isolated very quickly like Russia now. The Chinese economy still depends heavily on export and if there are disruptions the currency could collapse.

My mindset is very similar to yours, I invest for the long term and don't worry about the short term price movement. I am not sure how often you used to trade and if you want to take a step back then not checking prices every few hours is a good idea. Every morning I check the bitcoin price to see how the market did in the last day, but this is only informative for me and I don't feel any urge to trade my coins. As long as the bitcoin price is not going back down to 1 USD everything is fine in my opinion. We are seeing a recovery in the market as people are more optimistic for 2023 than they were for 2022. For me the biggest factors is going to be the halving in 2024, before that price will rise again much higher. Anybody who missed out buying new coins around the 16,000 USD level can try and wait, hoping prices will go down again. But there is no real guarantee for bitcoins to drop below that level. I would recommend to buy some coins now and just forget about them for a year.

That is a good idea to save as early as possible for your children to try and make their life more easy once they are older. It's true that some people would like to get rich first before saving money for their family. The problem is however that there is no guarantee to become rich. What if we invest all our life and end up making bad trading decisions. In my opinion it's better to include our children in our financial planing and put at least some money away. Already a small amount each month can grow to a decent portfolio over 18 years. The important thing is to spread out our money across multiple projects and not to put all the money into one basket. It's very hard to predict how the world will be in 20 years and what is going to be successful then.

What a crazy story, when reading these stories I really ask myself how things like that still possible in 2023. There has been so much fraud in the past that eventually people need to realise that we can't trust each other when it comes to large sums of money. First of all how is there 200,000 USD in a graduation fund for only one class? Brazil is a relatively poor country and I wouldn't expect such kind of money in a graduation fund. And why has one student alone oversight over the fund? With so much money I would expect multiple people to be involved and at least an official from the university. It's really sad for all the students who lost money there. If she is addicted to gambling and has access to so much money without any oversight, I would say that it was only a matter of time for something to happen. Hopefully this is a lesson for the university to increase security to make sure its not going to happen again.

I was really surprised to see that new white card in football. When I first read about it I thought that maybe the referee was colourblind and someone made a bad joke. But this seems to be a new trend now to make football more about fair play and sportmanship than about big rivalries. Not sure if we really needed a white card, even though this might give some new opportunities to bet on matches and how many white cards we are going to see per season. Many football teams are very hold and have a long history of team where they are friendly which each other, and teams where they have a big rivalry. Losing an important match against your nemesis can increase tensions a lot for the next several matches. So I am wondering now if there is any opportunity to make money with it. Are they maybe some special games where we would expect to see more white cards?

Not really sure if this is the case in the crypto market right now. Looking at bitcoin for example we see the price is up 38% in the last month. That is a huge profit for anybody who bought his coins around the 16,000 USD. To me it seems that the bottom for bitcoins is around that level. The price has dropped a few times to that level, but nowhere close to the 10,000 USD level from a few years ago. I still remember Robert Kiyosaki stating publicly on Twitter that he will be buying a lot of Bitcoins at 17,000 USD. Like him there must be many big investors who would be willingly but a lot of coins if prices would ever drop further. The best thing we can do is to not try to find the exact bottom, because if we are wrong we could miss out on the next rally. Better to stay invested and participate on any new upwards trend.      

The last four matches of the BLAST Premier Spring 2023 are being played today and tomorrow. Was a bit of a surprise to see NaVi losing 2-0 against G2. For the last few weeks NaVi has been struggling, but still they two matches weren't even close. G2 looked so dominant in the match and simple with an ADR of only 55 couldn't perform. Especially NiKo is playing so well since leaving FaZe Clan. For the next big tournament I will go with G2 to win it probably. Today is playing Astralis vs NiP, two very equal teams where the match could be going either way. Astralis is a bit more likely to win, but to me it seems like a coin flip. I will go with a small bet on NiP. The second game is going to be NaVi vs Complexity, which is going to be an easy win for NaVi. Tomorrow will be BiG vs Heroic which is going to be hard match for BiG. It's my favourite German team and I am going to make a small bet on them, even though it's very unlikely for them to win against Heroic. BiG played really well in their 2-0 match against Team Liquid, maybe they can pull of a small miracle. The last match will be OG vs the winner of NiP/Astralis.

I agree with you that without the big money in the crypto world the prices would be much more stable and be more attractive for people looking for a save way to store money. The last big  bitcoin rally showed us how fast and high the prices could rise when there are a big investors like Elon Musk trying to influence the bitcoin market. To a certain extent it is good to get the publicity for the crypto community, as we still need more people to get involved with it. By now everybody has earned of bitcoins and so many more companies are willing to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. The problem is of course that we can't deny anybody access to bitcoins and other crypto currencies. If some rich investors want to diversify their portfolio with cryptos than there isn't much we can do about it. Same goes for the traders who are only looking for a short term profit, they will buy what ever project that seems the most profitable to them.

I had no idea Tom Brady was doing so badly in 2022. When I was younger I always felt a bit jealous about him, because he managed to get Gisele Bundchen, my number 1 crush when growing up. Seems a bit crazy how you can "ruin" the perfect life with so much money and the perfect family. Ruin is probably the wrong word here, he is healthy and will so fine in life. Even in case he lose a big fortune, he can just rebuild it. A few new advertising deals and he should be fine. No idea how you can lose a lot of money in the FTX scandal, with the millions he had it would have been best to spread the money out, buy different properties to rent out, a well diversified stock portfolio, a save retirement fund. High net worth individuals usually have money managers that make sure they don't take all the risky deals out there. What we can learn from this is that even the best among us can lose big in gambling. We should always gamble within our comfort zone and make sure not to use money we can't afford to lose.

Renting is definitely not a waste of money. Just because you own a property doesn't mean you live for free. There are fees and taxes you have to pay if you are owning or if you renting. Then there is the whole topic of modernisation. In my country when you are doing repairs on your house or apartment you are required to meet new requirements for insulation. This makes even smaller projects very expensive. So in case you own an older property or there is an external damage that is uninsured it can be very costly to own. The biggest issue for me is at a younger age that you are fixed in one location. If you get a better job in a different city it might be hard to sell your house and move.