I am wondering the same myself. So far 2022 has been a terrible year with the Russia Ukraine war and the energy crisis including double digit inflation rates. Europe is in a dark place right now and it doesn't seem that 2023 is going to get better. Poland has been the number one country receiving funds from the European Union since the start. When is this going to change?The German infrastructure is failing, the digital expansion is not moving fast enough and more and more qualified employees are missing in the workforce. The country is falling behind in terms of investment - the last IMF report put Germany on last place in the European Union. Then we have the whole mess with the end of fossil fuels and shutting down all nuclear power plants.  I wonder how long this can continue until the German public will demand changes.

Insane news so shortly before the game, and it seems that game is going to happen normally. Right now the odds are still x3.22 for Qatar to win after everybody has heard about the bribing scandal. The bookmakers even think a draw is more likely than Qatar to win. Are people not believing it to be true or the Ecuador team can't throw the game anymore? When it comes to professional football it's easy to fake a game when you bribe half of the enemy team. They can easily miss a few shoots and fall into offsite traps to not score any goals in the first match. I do think we are going to see more goals than the planned 1-0 win, but a Qatar win seems more likely now. From me it will only be a small bet, not more than 5 USD on Qatar, just to make sure if the match is really fixed that I am going to a small profit. But what happens if the Ecuador team is throwing the game too hard? Can Fifa cancel the game afterwards and will our bets than be voided? I am a little bit afraid to not get paid my winnings, but if Qatar loses than the game would be legit.  

I wouldn't call it my lucky casino, but I also like to play on different casinos for different games. Like you I also feel that sometimes a losing streak is coming from a casino and that switching to a different website can help to break that streak. This is of course a subconscious thing and not true. If there really was a lucky casino, shouldn't we then only play at that casino? The main thing for me to switch casinos is that I am taking a step back and start from 0 again with my strategy. Sometimes it's just that I can't get a win even if try really hard. When at the different casino I am continuing with my losses than I will take break from gambling all together. I do have a casino where I only play poker and no other games there, I want to make sure that my whole bankroll there is only coming from poker. When I want to play Black Jack or Roulette, I will always switch casinos. And then I also have another casino where I only play slots.    

It's true that this a terrible situation for crypto currencies, but to be honest with you the trust was broken a long time ago. It's nothing new that there are considerable security risks at an exchange and we shouldn't leave our coins there for a long time. It's fine to trade, just make sure to withdraw as soon as you are done with trading. The problem with cryptos is that it became very popular last year and attracted a lot of new people. And with anything in life there are good and there are bad people. Saying that every exchange is a scam is wrong, its not a ponzi scheme either. We do need exchanges to trade our alt coins and some people even make a living out of it. It's the same with a stock exchange, people are also not calling it scams. It takes a bad person with criminal intent in a position of power to defraud customers and investors. Better oversight would be one thing for the future to prevent it happening again.

How can you have 181 million USD in one single wallet? This is really bad decision making and if everything is really lost than there is nobody to blame than himself. Already with a few thousand USD in cryptos I would recommend to split it between multiple wallets. It's going to reduce the risk of losing it considerably and it makes it much harder for thieves or scammer to get their hands on all your coins. Also having backups can  save us. In general though I agree with you that we should store our own coins don't leave them at an exchange. The security risks of an exchange is too big for long periods of time. I would rather lose my money based on my own fault than having someone else steal it from me. If I can't have my own coins than nobody else should have them.

That is a very interesting approach for cashing out or sticking to your bets. I guess if you place a lot of combi bets it makes sense to such a logical approach to take care of the decisions. It's been a long time since I placed most of my combi bets and stopped eventually using them all together. My approach was to never cash out early, but I lost too much money with that. Maybe my problem was also that I added too many risky bets together. I have the same motivation for my bets like you and that is too win big. Small wins are nice too, but that is not my goal. Now with the Worldcup approaching I will give combi bets another chance and see how I am doing. During the group stage I want to focus on sure wins to build my bankroll up for the semi finals. I will try to copy your strategy and see if it makes more sense to cash. The idea is now to combine 5 save wins into combi bet to get better odds.

The blow up of FTX is a pretty big event that has a lot of negative implications for the crypto world. Hopefully this was the last bad news this year and December is going to be a more happy and calmer month. The bankruptcy of a big crypto exchange brings a lot of bad headlines for crypto currencies and let's investors question their positions. Once the initial panic is over things will go back to normality again. We can see the bitcoin price already stabilised above 16000 USD. This doesn't look like a destruction to me. If we compare the current situation with the bankruptcy of lehmann brothers, back then many people believed it was the end of the financial system. And with hindsight things weren't as bad as they seemed back then.

I agree with you that both Biden and Trump are not ideal candidates for the 2024 presidential election. I would not be placing a bet on either of them right now. Joe Biden is way too old and Trump is more concerned on how he looks on TV than actual politics. Just imagine how much worth the condition of Joe Biden will be in 3 or 4 years, it's not going to get better for him. I do like the memes we got from Trump and now from Biden, but imagining they are voice of reason in these troubling times doesn't comfort me. The best would be for both of them to step aside and make room for younger candidates. Kamala Harris would be one option, but I would only place a small bet on her at the moment. The democrats did fine in the US senate elections with all the crisis going on. It remains pretty even between the two parties and it will come down to who is making the better election campaign. A bit too early in my opinion to place any larger bets for the election in 2 years.

Sounds interesting, but it's a pass for me. Been to both countries and while they are nice for a while, I don't see myself living in either of them. If I had to choose between the two I would go for USA, UK doesn't look so strong at the moment. Are you sure to compare these two in the same way? I thought that UK is expected to have a recession next year. The news I read about the UK economy are not that great. This doesn't leave many options to move to, in UK the only place to be is probably London, whereas in USA there are many big cities where you can make a living. The main problem will be to get a permit to actually live and work their. Don't you already need a job or special qualification to get a greencard? I always thought it's hard to immigrate into the USA. Also the living cost are quite high over there, getting a good job is one thing, but actually becoming rich a something else. I still think you need some very good skills to be paid a lot.

I think that any form of gambling under the influence is a very dangerous situation and should be prevented as much as possible. It doesn't matter if it's the influence of alcohol, drugs or medication, any substance that changes our mind should not be used while gambling. When it comes to gambling we need a clear mind to properly evaluate the risk, otherwise we are in danger to lose large sums of money and even worse become addicted to gambling. This doesn't mean that clean people can't become addicted to gambling, but I think the chances are much higher. Unfortunately can a casino not find out if a gambler is intoxicated or not, this has to be our own control. Something that could help would be to have more Hotlines where people in trouble can call and get advice. It would be best to have former gambling addicts themselves to work at these Hotlines, they could give a much better advice for someone who is struggling. Also it feels much more sincere to talk with someone who has experienced what you are going through than psychologist without any experience in gambling. It's one thing to understand the academics and make a theoretical approach and something completely different for a person to have lived through it.

That is a very valuable lesson, it probably took me 20 years to learn that. When we are young time seems like a never ending resources, we don't prioritise and when looking back many years later, we realise that we wasted a lot time. Having a fixed goal and working towards it is one of the best motivations for myself. I wish I would have started earlier with to follow it, I would probably have more focus in my life. The main problem for me was that I didn't want to believe the old guys trying to teach me that. In high-school we had seminars about career building and to be successful in a business environment. It was usually by 50+ year old man who tried to tell us what to follow in life. For me it was very hard to accept anything by such older people. Now I wish I had listen closer to them, time is a very precious resource.

It's fine to rely on luck and not stick to a fixed strategy. Even the most advanced strategy will not change the fact that the casino has an edge over us and has a positive expected value in all their games. A casino can only remain in business if they are profitable and this means to have a higher number of lowers than winners. Trying to identify patterns in gambling is not for me, but I have a good friend who does the same. For example at roulette, he will only start gambling when he sees a 4 or 5 times Red streak, and then he starts betting on black. I don't really believe in patterns, every new round is independent of each other. Even after 10 reds in a row the chances of Black to come is still the same. What is more important than a strategy or betting on patterns, is to keep track of your gambling habits. We need to make sure we only gamble with the money we can afford to lose.

It's really hard to imagine how the world is going to look like in a 100 years. The best indication would be too look back 100 years and see how life has changed since then. There was no internet, no computers or even travelling by plane. The world looked totally different and where not connected like they are today. With this in mind I would expect the world to grow even closer together when all the bitcoins are mined. Hyper speed travelling and super fast internet is going to be common all around the world, and for that it would be great to have an internet currency as bitcoins that can be used all around the world very quickly. In my opinion bitcoin will remain the number one crypto coin in the world and a much higher price is going to reflect that. Unfortunately all of us are not going to be around at that time anymore, but hopefully our grandchildren will enjoy your mined bitcoins by then. 

My experience with gambling addictions are limited, but I have friends who were struggling with alcohol and tobacco addictions and for them it's almost impossible to be around people who are doing the things they are trying to stay away from. With gambling addictions I am assuming it is going to be same. Receiving advertising on a daily basis from casinos must be very hard and I expect many recovering addicts are struggling with it.  As far as I know there is no way to opt out of gambling advertising when browsing the internet. You can unsubscribe from a casino newsletter, but this doesn't include other ads you see online. And there is no real option to stay away from the internet all together. We all need to stay online and connected for our jobs. The only solution I am seeing is to use ad blockers as a browser addin to not see any advertising online.

Sorry to hear that you lost your bets, but that is the way of combi bets. One single bet can ruin our whole predictions, that is why I try to avoid them as much as possible, or only combine two or three bets the most. It's nice what kind of odds you get from combi bets, while also increasing the risk considerably. With your bets you ended up at odds of 10.36, which is very high in my opinion, these bets should fail more often than you win them. I usually only go for 2 or 3x bets. Making a 10x return is nice, but is not going to happen to often. We should keep that in mind and prepare ourselves for the worst possible outcomes. That is why I always like to take out some part of my winnings and not reinvest all of my money in the next bet. There  can always go something wrong with a bet and if we lose all our money from previous bets it is sad. Also the problem with losing all our money in a single bet is that we will have trouble to recover again. Splitting up our money and saving some makes sure that we can cover a losing streak more easily.

What do you mean with the crypto balloon is popped? The bitcoin price dropped below 17k USD and now everything is over? I don't think so, this was only a minor setback and the market will recover soon again. I can understand your frustration about the short term traders and speculators that make the bitcoin price so volatile. Unfortunately I don't see any chance for them to leave the market. Prices could fall back to 3000 USD and many investors would be hurt, but with such a low price investors would start buying heavily again to bring the price back up. A stable bitcoin market would make many things much easier, it just doesn't seem very realistic at the moment. The big problem is also that many people bought their coins above 20k USD, so if the price would ever drop below 10k USD I am sure that many people would never consider selling. Personally I would rather keep my coins until eternity and leave them to my family than to sell them at such low levels.

Sorry to hear this buddy, we are facing very difficult times right now and losing our job and main source of income is terribly. Hopefully you will find something new quickly. I have thought about possible opportunities during recessions myself and to be honest with you, I didn't come up with a great plan. Becoming rich during a recession seems nearly impossible in my opinion. Almost all prices feel this year, it was very hard to find something that didn't drop double digits so far. The only way for us to profit of it would have been to short the market, but this seems to late now. Prices are already low and going short into the market now can lead to big losses when the recovery picks up. The same is for selling our assets for cash and wait for prices to fall more to rebuy them cheaper. Right now I wouldn't be selling though, this should have happened at the start of the year when Russia invaded Ukraine. Also without a job you need to be more careful with your investment, maybe you need money in the future and could be forced to sell some investments at a bad price.

Nice to see another poker analysis from our @PokerPlayer here on the forum.

First of all it's another 6-max game which are pretty common these days, it's also the regular tables I like to play. All of the players have pretty healthy stacks and BB is our chip leader at the table. We should always keep that in mind when raising or trying to steal the blinds of him, because the pots can become very large quickly and he might be more inclined to call our bets.

Pre-Flop: Our hero gets 85s dealt, which is a decent hand to be played on a 6-max table. You have chances to hit a straight, flush or even two pairs and it also makes it harder for your opponents to put you on a hand. There is no action before him so in the button spot he has to make a raise here. The 2.4x bet is pretty standard and I would do the exact same here to put pressure on the SB and BB and maybe even steal their blinds here. BB now makes a reraise to 10 BB already signalling to us he has a strong hand. In most cases defending my big blind I would rather call than to reraise large. Now comes the second reraise from our Hero to 23 BB, which is insane in my opinion. We know that the BB has already something and for him it's only  13 BB to see the flop. I don't like the reraise because it makes the pot even bigger and we didn't even see the Flop yet. If we really want to see the flop and represent a monster hand we need to raise bigger or even go allin. Same goes for the BB, he only calls the reraise and doesn't push us allin. In case he had AA or KK he would have likely reraised us allin preflop. In my opinion our hand is too weak for the reraise and we should rather have called to see the Flop and hope to improve there, right now it seems that our Hero is behind.

Flop: Now comes the flop which gives us middle pair. It's not a great flop and also not a very bad one, we should keep playing here. The chances of the BB to have flopped a straight or at least a draw are there and we need to take them into account. Same goes for expecting some kind of poker pair from him raising&calling preflop. The BB checks the action back to us which is pretty normal again, since we where the last raiser preflop. Now the Hero bet 19 BB which is not a good idea in my opinion. Our hand is not that strong to go to showdown, for that the bet is not big enough to get the BB out of the hand. The BB has only to pay 19BB into a 65.4 BB pot to see the Turn. The potodds for the BB are too good to pass on this hand, any single diamond card would likely make the call here. I would have rather checked back here. Also the raise from our Hero makes the pot even larger and gives the BB another chance to act. At this point the BB pushes us allin which seems a bit of trap to me. Now we know he really has a strong hand and we got into a very bad spot for all our chips quickly. This is nolimit poker at it's finest, with any hand you can find yourself be playing for all your chips. We don't have any additional information on the two players, so we don't know if they play more tight or lose in general. Reacting quickly and making a decision in this spot is hard, but given that we only have middle pair with a gutshot straight draw I don't think I would have called here.

My pick for the BB hand: Pocket Queens It feels like the BB had a pretty strong hand to begin with any let our Hero happily bet into him.

Good Luck to all

Accepting a wider range of crypto currency is a great way to be more open towards the crypto community. It should always be the standard that casinos accept all the popular coins out there. If you are looking for a new feature that distinguishes you from other casinos than I would try to make your chat room more interactive. The big difference between physical casinos and online casinos is that we rarely engage with our fellow gamblers. The atmosphere is very special when you enter a crowded physical casino, you will see so many different people having a good time. And noticing a big win on your table spreads positive energy that makes a lot of fun to witness. So if we could have more chat rooms while gambling online it would be nice. Maybe with a feature where you can share your big bets, so other gamblers see who else is winning big.

I agree with you, don't sell your coins during a panic. Right now BTC is at 17,222 USD, it's the worst possible timing to sell at an 52 week low price. We need to have the stomach to sit through this dip and wait for prices to recover. The best strategy would of course be to HODL and not sell any coins at all. It's a nice position you are in to be part of the Bitcoin community for so long and never have sold a single coin yet. I am also not going to sell any of my coins any time soon, only if I really needed to, due to some family problems. Right now is the best time to buy, the idea is to buy low and sell high. People are selling right now doing the exact opposite, and what for? Are they really hoping BTC is going to fall considerably more to make it an attractive trade? If BTC is just going to linger around the 17k level than you are going to buy back your coins at pretty much the same level and only to have paid transaction fees in the process. And the big risk is always when you sell all your coins to miss out on the next rally.