It's true that the AI doesn't know anymore cards than we do, we only have our own 2 cards and the 5 community cards which we share with all the other players. This doesn't mean that the odds are 50.50, because we also know that the other players don't have our 2 cards. For example, we have 2 hearts on hand and the community cards have 5 hearts, then 7 out of 13 hearts are already used and can't be held by other players. This make it much more likely for others to not hold hearts themselves and if we have a higher card than the community cards we should have in most cases the highest flush. There are a lot of mathematics behind poker which tells us the optimal play. AI should be able to make these calculations much faster and in larger scale. So a human could be fine to play optimal on 1-4 tables at the time, whereas a AI could run a lot of more tables. Which would mean using our own time to play poker is not optimal anymore.

14 bn USD? What the hell, how do you even come up with such kind of money. These are sums where I wouldn't even Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk expect to get close to. Either he is an exceptional good or lucky gambler or something else is going on. Why not just take 1 bn out of it and your whole family never has to work a single day in their life. I don't feel that there is a real wagering war, every gambler should bet the money he is comfortable with and feel threatened by other gamblers. For me gambling is something personal between me and the casino, not between me and the public. Usually I only have 100 USD at the casino, everything more than that is unnecessary and only makes the risk higher for me to bet more money than my limit allows. So it's funny to see such gamblers but has no effect on my own wagers.

I hope you followed your new plan for the last few months and didn't sell your coins early. Buying fixed amounts of crypto currencies each month is the best approach in my opinion to build a big portfolio over time. Many other users here on the forum also recommend the so called DCA method. When you take your investment money directly at the start of the month away you don't face the risk or overspending. I can understand that you want to help our your family financially, but just make a monthly budget for it and if it's not enough post pone some expenses for the next month. When building a portfolio it's all about the longterm, which is why I wouldn't sell too early. As long as you don't need the money I would recommend storing it and wait at least for a new ATH. With the halving coming up next year there will be more positive impulses for the crypto world.

For me crypto currencies are just another currency like US Dollar or the Euro and I would never share publicly how much Euros I carry with me when I am going out, or how much money I have in my bank account. These are private information that I might share with my closest friends and my family, but never publicly. Bitcoin shouldn't be treated any other way. What good does it do if we are open with how much money we have invested in cryptos? To me it doesn't seem that there is any benefit from it and only will make feel people bad or even risk our own health. The kidnapping story is a very rare occurrences and I wouldn't worry so much about it in my country. Here it's more about being polite to strangers, because we don't know in which financial situation they are and it would be wrong to tell them how much money we have. I can happily talk about crypto currencies without mentioning how much I have myself.

I always just bet a fixed amount when it comes to slots, because I have a certain limit in mind and don't want to risk going over it. This means that I only have a limited amount of spins per evening before I stop. To increase my playtime I try to focus on games that grant free spins. My goal is to hit a big jackpot and for that I feel I need to play as many rounds as possible. In other casino games I usually follow the martingale approach, increasing my bet size with every loss. Let's say I get lucky early on and win a lot of free spins, then I would probably switch slot games after all the free spins. Mathematically the winning chances are likely always the same, but I feel like I used my luck for the one game and would probably not repeat the same win again during the evening.

Wow that is a lot of money for one country alone. With a GDP of 440bn USD, I can't believe that they would bet so much money every single day on betting. Interesting would be also how much tax revenues the gambling industry generates for the country. Now I am wondering where all this money is coming from that people use for gambling. Maybe they people in Nigeria are more lucky and win higher amounts than in other countries? I would expect that a majority fo the 65m gamblers are regular customers and they must be funding their bets from somewhere. With such a large betting market there is probably a high level of competition among the bookmakers and casinos to attract new capital. Also shouldn't this attract international companies to invest in the Nigerian gambling market? It seems very lucrative and as long as the government doesn't want to limit the gambling exposure of the people I would expect that the share of people gambling even rises over time. I am not sure if people will actually rely on gambling to survive, or if they use as a form of entertainment to spend their money earned from their full time job.

Not sure if you are the best person to approach him on the subject. Since you only know him for a very short time he might become defensive and this could ruin the relationship between you two forever. I worked in the past with elderly people and I can tell you that they can be very stubborn and once there is an issue they will rarely change their view and try to make peace. You won't believe how much drama there is in retirement homes and that even people who are above 80 will stop talking to each other because of very minor things. My best advice would be to try and get some contact information to his children and have a chat with them first before talking to your neighbor directly. Since the children are already old, they should know how long their dad has been gambling and if there was an issue before. If his children think there is an issue it should be also them that talk to their dad directlly. It's much better to have a serious talk with your own family than with a stranger.

Yes, I regularly change my plans and think it's important to do so, because circumstances change as well. Capital and crypto markets are very volatile and change quickly in times of a crisis, that is why we as investors should be ready to adapt to a new situation. More sophisticated plans might already include different outlooks and give a recommendation how to act. For example, having a different plan for the bear market and the bull market makes a lot of sense, but also for times without large prices changes we should have a plan. For me, I prefer to reevaluate things on a constant basis instead of following one fixed plan for a long time. The only real strategy that makes sense to follow consistently is the DCA method in my opinion. Here we buy a fixed number of crypto currencies each month and following the strategy blindly is fine as it will lead to a decent purchase price of the coins over a long enough period. It saves a lot of time in doing research and after a few years this will lead to large crypto portfolio.

I agree with you, crypto gamblers seem to have a deeper understanding of the gambling industry than regular gamblers. At least among my friends I noticed that the ones that own crypto currencies and also gamble more regularly have a better approach to casino games. It might be the case that they just spend more time with it and invest their time to think more deeply about strategies and bonuses. The thing with traditional gambling is that it happens quite rarely. For me and my buddies we went like 3-4 times per year to visit our local casino, on top if that were maybe 1 poker evening per month. This is not a lot of time spend gambling when you compare it to how easy it is to visit a online casino from home. Another point for crypto users is that you have to be critical where to invest your money, there are so many different crypto protects and we don't want to lose our money. This level of critical thinking helps a lot when gambling.

I am not sure if Bitcoin alone is going to solve the global poverty problem, it might be too much pressure on one single asset class. Don't get me wrong, Bitcoin is a great investment and everybody should add some to their portfolio. But what kind of return do you need to get millions of people out of poverty? I think it's too much to ask of bitcoin and could lead to disappoint if the expected returns are not delivered. The main problem for poorer people is that they don't have any money to start investing in the first place. One single purchase of bitcoin for 100 USD is not going to be enough to make people rich. This requires a constant form of saving and many people struggle to keep it up. In my opinion it would be best to try and educate people first on how to save money consistently. There are two ways to get more money, either by getting a raise and increase our monthly income, or by cutting back expenses. Trying to reduce unnecessary expenditures is a good way to have more money to invest each month. The second step is than to find a good asset to save money in. Bitcoin is definitely a good idea, but I would also consider spreading the money out into other assets to reduce the risk of our portfolio.

First time I am hearing that the crypto currency community is anti-scientific. Personally, I like science a lot, especially physics and mathematics interest me and I was never against pushing the fiends ahead. Trying to avoid scams is one thing and being anti science is something completely different. Not sure if trading is really part of science, but once you deal in large enough sums of money you are automatically attracting scammers. Scams are what some people call a free lunch, you try to take advantage of others without providing and my real services. The best approach to scams is to be cautious and realistic about the future. If some promises me things that sound too good to be true than it's likely not true and should be avoided. In science we should be more open towards new theories and as long as they are not proven wrong there might be benefits.

I don't understand, you want to own a casino only to gamble there yourself? But what would be the point of doing it, since any money you win is already your money as it comes from the casino and any money you lose will be yours again as it goes to the casino. You would also have to account for taxes which would make this a bad deal in the long run. However, doesn't this take out all the fun from gambling as there is no real upside and you could also be gambling with play money as it wouldn't affect your financial situation. Owning a casino sounds like a lot of fun, but there must be a lot of work behind it and with so many casinos around these days the success is not guaranteed. After watching all the Oceans movies with George Clooney as a kid I also dreamed of owning my own casino one day. It would be so cool to walk around the gambling for and engaging with all the high rollers while drinking champagne. Unfortunately, this seems much more glamourous in the movies than the job would be in real life.  Another issue is that you need a lot of money to run a casino, because there could always be a winning streak for a gambler that would lead to large outflows.

There is no way that I would start gambling at work, the day is long enough and we can gamble in the evenings without affecting our work. First of all, the risk of getting into trouble at work would be way too high. I work in a large office space with a lot of colleagues, it's nearly impossible to do anything private on the PC because there are always people walking around me. The only chance to gamble during the day would be in my break or on the way to work in the subway. But, I don't like to gamble on my phone as the screen is so small and clicking things is not so easy with my huge hands. I am always afraid for a miss click that leads to a big loss. The last real option would be to gamble from home during the days where I don't need to come in the office, but here I am really scared that they check which websites I open on my work laptop. I really need my job and can't risk losing it. Without the monthly pay check I would be screwed and also wouldn't be able to gamble in the evenings anymore.

This doesn't sound right to me; Fiat money is not a ponzi scheme because it resembles the economic output of a country. The government ensures the strength of their Fiat currency by the potential tax income they can generate in a country. As long as a country has natural resources to sell, or advanced products to export there is a strong value in the currency. It sounds a bit like you are confusing the high inflation we face at the moment with a ponzi scheme. It's not like everybody is losing at the moment, people with a well-paying job that got a decent raise to offset the inflation are happy and look forward to their Christmas bonus. A ponzi scheme would mean that the Fiat currency is worthless eventually because too many people got promised things that weren't true, but I don't see this happening in the big Fiat currencies like Euro or the Dollar.

Bitcoin ETFs are just one small part of the bitcoin universe, I don't think they alone can push bitcoin to a new ATH. It's definitely some positive Impulse for the bitcoin price if the ETFs get approved, but I think the halving that is coming next year is going to be more important. The bitcoin price already made a jump last month and we shouldn't expect too much of it for the next two months. The important thing with the bitcoin ETFs is that it shows us there is a lot of demand from investors to participate in the crypto markets. It's going to be just a matter of time for the new products to come to the market and be successful. As long as there is demand the financial service industry will find ways to give the investors what they want. I am definitely bullish for 2024 and wouldn't consider selling any coins in the meantime.

First time I am hearing the term Pump group. How exactly does it work? It sounds like it's a big group of people that are trying to push one particular coin higher, but what is the fundamental reasoning behind it? Or is it only to make a quick trading profit in the initial pump? Which would mean that they try to attract more traders to push the price even higher and are willing to take their coins of them when they all sell. I am not so active anymore with trading short term crypto coins as I used to be in the past, which is why I would probably miss out on all the short term pumps. Now I am wondering how reliable is this group, because if some smaller crypto currencies are getting pushed higher where the liquidity is limited then it could be hard for all their traders to get out at once. That could lead to a selling panic where price drop quickly and some of the initial investors end up with a big loss.

Personally I wouldn't treat crypto gambling much different from traditional gambling, or even any other money related subjects. When it comes to dealing with money in our everyday life I would recommend to be financially responsible as well. For me I don't make a big difference between spending money in a casino, going to the movies or eating in a fancy restaurant. All of it is leisure money that I need to include in my monthly budget plans. Allocating fixed amounts for all the things I want to do has helped me a lot to remain in control of my finances. That is also why I think that someone who is responsible in his normal life has no problem to be so in the digital realm as well. And someone who struggles to control his finances every day will also struggle online.

The last four matches of the Thunderpick World Championship 2023 are being played today and tomorrow. Heroic and Virtus.pro are playing first for who goes into the semi finals, where they are going to meet Monte. Virtus.pro is the clear favourite here, even though Heroic had a good tournament so far I don't see any chance of them winning. My money is on Virtus.pro reaching the semis and they will likely win against Monte too. The two teams already meet during another tournament 3 days ago where Virtus.pro won 2-1 against Monte. I think they are going to do the same today after beating Heroic. Monte had much easier teams to play against each other so far except losing 2-0 against FaZe. The second semi finals match today is going to be Cloud9 vs FaZe, where FaZe is the clear favourite. They already won the last big tournament IEM Sydney 2023 last month and will likely reach the finals again. The grand final is tomorrow, I would expect FaZe to play against Virtus.pro, where FaZe is going to win. And even if Monte manages to reach the finals, FaZe is the clear favourite this weekend.

   

After playing a lot of different casino games it's fine to try out sports betting for a change. Since you have no problem to control yourself in the casino, I wouldn't worry about keeping the same control when it comes to sports betting. The next step would be to choose a sport that you would like to bet on. One common mistake of beginners in the sport betting world is to bet on too many diferent games where there is no real advantage. What exactly do you mean you know a little about cricket and football? Do you only know the rules, or are you actively watching games and follow some teams more closely? In case you don't have any real interest in a sport it could become hard to follow the games on a regular basis and without it it's going to be hard to have any advantage over the other gamblers. You can still bet randomly at matches where you have a good feeling, but then your results are also going to be random. Both cricket and football are such common games that any major platform should offer you all the big games you want to bet on. If you already have one in mind than stick with it, just make sure that they have a good bonus for a new gambler in place.

Sorry, but I strongly disagree with your assessment of Bitcoins. Why do you think that Bitcoin can't be used for any real-life purposes besides being traded? There are already people who receive their salary in Bitcoins and use it to pay for a lot of things. Many ecommerce shops accept Bitcoin as a form of payment and as long as the number of vendors keeps increasing every year that accept Bitcoin we are on the right track. It might not be comparable to Fiat currencies that everybody is going to accept in a country, but that is just a matter of time to get there. Even some countries like El Salvador now accepts Bitcoin as a legal tender. So, any Bitcoin millionaire could relocate to El Salvador and only live by owning crypto currencies. Being traded is part of any big currency and it's not what defines Bitcoin, it just comes with the size of the market.