I don't fully understand your situation, you started with 1k USD and kept adding more money up to 6k USD. But how did you manage to lose 16k USD? Maybe you are counting from the ATH of prices and not from the money you invested? There is a big difference between realized and unrealized wins and losses. I wouldn't be comparing my actual wins against the highest possible winning if i had sold at the right time. The same goes for losses, it's not helpful to assume the optimal decision making after events occurred. There will always be better decision we could have made and thinking about them is only bringing us down. Also buying a coin that went from less than 1 USD to 11 or 14 USD seems like a bad trade. We should be buying coins that are cheap and before they become popular, otherwise there is no upside potential left to make money.

What gives you the idea that you can make a career in gambling? Have you done very well in the past and developed a good strategy? Unfortunately I don't think it's possible to have gambling as your full time job. For many years now I have been gambling and there are always good and bad times, winning and losing streaks, overall I probably lost more money that I won. Which is due to the house edge of casinos. The casino has a higher winning chance than the player, to ensure the profitability of casino. This also makes any gambling strategy negative in the long run. If you have a lot of capital and time at your hand, maybe you could make it work. But for the average person it's not realistic to become a full-time gambler.

I haven't paid close attention to these new type of games. Are they real trading of assets or are they guessing games where prices are just simulated? I have been trading myself for many years now and there is both a fundamental and technical edge to predicting the future price. I am wondering now how the casinos are simulating such scenarios, because if it's real trading on real assets than how is the casino making any money? It's not like the casino has any edge or insider information on how the price is going to move. To me it seems the casino shouldn't engage in such activities and focus on gambling instead. However, if prices are completely random then it would hard to make why predictions, also technical analysis is not really going to help here.

Having virtual competitions of animals is good alternative to real world fighting of animals. Especially when it involves death of an animal the sport will be illegal in many countries. Betting on such type of sports can have moral consequences if it becomes known publicly. Not sure if NFT is really going to be the solution here, but I could imagine that some games would become very popular if there is such big competition. Also does it really have to be real world animals like roosters or horses? It's already a virtual game, why not make it virtual creatures too? Pokémon would be the perfect game, millions of people already know it and played it in the past. Having now a more competitive side where it's all about fighting and tournaments could attract a lot of new players. On top of that it would be easy to create a betting market where gamblers could place money on their favorite trainers.

This is a tricky question to answer, I do believe that bitcoin is a great protection for our money and assets. But I am not sure how well bitcoin would actually do during a global conflict. The main issue during global wars is that international trade would collapse. With a large number of countries fighting each other there would be no more global supply chains, a lot of products couldn't be finished and many companies would go bankrupt quickly. In such a scenario where unemployment rises quickly the question would be how people can afford their basic needs. Instead of gold or bitcoin, I would rather expect food and water to become a major currency again. Large companies won't be able to keep selling us everything we need, I think a lot of peer to peer trading in goods directly becomes the norm again. Bitcoin could be possible to pay for goods if enough producers are willing to accept it. During the first few month of panic I think people will be hesitant to accept bitcoin or gold.

I think every gambler has been in your shoes, facing a long gambling session where we had initial profits and didn't save any of them only to not be able to breakeven again. Unfortunately, that is part of the game and sometimes we just can't force a win again. It's better to take a break and try with a fresh start in the next days again. Chasing losses and trying to turn a loss into a win was one of my biggest gambling mistakes. There will always be winning and losing streaks and we should adapt that. It's good that you realised your weakness yourself and change your behaviour accordingly. Taking a break is one thing that can help to clear our mind, another approach that I found to be useful is to always take profits when I make a bigger win. I have a fixed budget to gamble with each week and month to protect my overall bankroll. As long as I stick to my limits, I don’t face the risk of losing all my money. And if I save some part of my profits each month it’s helping me to grow my bankroll overtime.

It happens to all of us and Drake is such a rich guy that I don't really feel bad for him losing such large amounts. It's cool that he shares his betting slips online with his fans, but this could also be a marketing campaign for him. We don't know what kind of deal he has negotiated and maybe some of his losses are being paid back by the gambling companies. The good thing about sharing his betting slips before the fight is that we know it's not rigged. Drake lost already a lot of money through his betting, but if you put the money in relation to his total net worth then it not so much. Everybody shoudl be betting within his own means and only use the money he can afford to lose. I just hope that there aren't any young kids that follow Drake and think now it's cool to bet such large amounts on a fight and want to do the same. It's clearly fun and entertainment for Drake betting on these matches and he isn't doing gambling as a side business to make some money. 

I can only speak for my personal experience and what I heard from my friends, we don't watch woman sports. My most watch sport types are football, basketball and CSGO. In all of these games there is a huge difference between male and female performance. Sometimes I check scores for big tournaments, but I would never watch a full female match in that category. All my friends have the same opinion, even during the football world cup for woman I didn't know anybody who was watching the full games. And the next step is that I would never be betting on games that I don't actively follow. There are enough games I watch where I can bet money on that I don't need to switch to female sports. If I don't watch the games myself than I don't have an advantage and there is no point on betting money.

Chess is a great game, it offers a lot of benefits that include among others training of the brain, increased concentration and helps us to think ahead in a complex environment. Anybody that played chess as a kid should keep it up as an adult. However, somebody that has never played chess in his life and only wants to take it up because of the health and trading benefits, might lack the long term motivation. It's important to also find joy in the game, otherwise it will be hard to invest the time to get good. That's why I would not focus on chess alone, there are other games like Go or Sodoku that train our brain as well and can help us become a better trader. Even meditation is a great tool that traders have recommended me in the past. Anything that helps focus our mind and let's us block out unproductive thoughts is good and if we enjoy the activity than we should include it in our daily routines.

I fully agree with you, the times of becoming rich with gold are over. Just look at the gold price for the last 2 years, it was moving around the 1.800-2.000 levels without giving any real return to its holders. Gold the number one asset that protects against a crisis, failed this time and the only people that got rich through gold are the ones that bought it 20 years ago. Back then the price was below 500 USD, so in 20 years you could have made 300%. There is no interest on holding gold and if you own a lot then you even have to pay storage cost at the bank or for a high quality safe at home. The only additional return we could generate with gold would be to buy and sell it more actively to take advantage of price changes. Still the return possibilities from gold seem really small compared to crypto currencies. For all the investors like me who didn’t have the opportunity to buy gold when it was cheap, I don’t think it makes any sense to buy it now. The price is way too high that we could make a decent profit any time soon. Even if gold would be more important again for investors, I don’t see any chance to make 50 or 100% return with it. Our chances are much higher to stick with crypto currencies. To me bitcoin and other cryptos is the new form of investment, like what was gold to my grandparents.

Any serious form of addiction should be treated with a therapy in my opinion. The risk of relapses are much higher if we didn't work with a professional. A big part of therapy is to learn how to deal with setbacks and not to fall into past behavior patterns again. Not every therapy is expensive, there is a difference between staying in a clinic or having a few hours per week sessions. In many countries you can also find support groups that will be free. Beating an addiction all on your own is difficult, better get help. Another form of treatment I learned about from my cousin. He was addicted to drugs for a longterm and normal therapy didn't work, so my uncle send him to a farm for addicts. It's much cheaper than a clinic because they have to work there and cook and clean for themselves. It took him two years to get fully clean, but now he lives a normal life again without addiction.

Chat GPT is awesome, you can just give it a try and check out all the different possibilities, it's free and we all can access it online. However, the big hype from Chat GPT is already fading and so far, I haven't noticed any difference when playing online poker. Usually, I play 1-2 nights poker per week and for the last several months the games are very similar, it's not like I started to lose more games now than usual. For me using Chat GPT to play poker is not really an option. I like to make my own decisions and I played for so many years that I kind of have fixed system on which I rely. The only reason for me to start looking for ways to include Chat GPT in my poker plays would be when I notice that all the other players are using it. I wouldn't say that this is never going to happen, but for now people don't seem to take advantage of the new technology. Maybe at higher stakes people are already using it, but then I would expect to read more about it on the poker news websites. During the last big poker tournament they didn’t speak about the impact of Chat GPT on poker.

That is a crazy story, why should the betting agent run away after one successful bet from his customer? Maybe he has lost the money in some other way, but still it doesn't make a lot of sense to run away from him. One bad bet alone shouldn't be the reason for someone to abandon his whole business and flee the city. It's not like you can just avoid some people forever and just act like nothing happened. Once the word gets out that you are not paying out winnings then your business as a betting agent it over. It's hard to say more about the situation without knowing additional details, but to me it seems like an overreaction. Hopefully the agent comes to his senses and will pay out the winner. No reason to shed a bad light on the whole industry by the wrong actions of one individual. I agree with you that we should be careful when betting larger amounts with independent betting agents, maybe it would have been better to choose one of the big casino names instead.

I agree with you that there is not going to be many changes anytime soon. Here in Europe, we have some Mediterranean cities that are getting visitors all around the year, it just doesn't make any sense for the landlord to get long term tenants when he can rent out his apartment short term with a premium to tourist. Tourist have much more money to spend on housing and don't care about paying higher prices as long as they are close to the city centre. The location is key here, as tourist are looking for ways to save as much time as possible in getting around the city. Which leads to the only real solution for the people living in the city, moving outside of the city centre. The time tourist will save to get around, the residents have to make up by commuting more to work. Some cities try to increase the regulation and make it harder for landlords to turn their apartment into Airbnb flats, but this is not going stop the change it will only slow it down a bit.

Oil might be a great revenue stream at the moment for many oil exporting countries, but the high oil price is not going to stay like this forever. There will always be fluctuations in the oil price, which is why countries in the Middle East are looking for ways to diversify their countries away from oil. Tourism seems to be one sector many of the smaller countries like UAE or Dubai are focusing on, this attracts a lot of people from around the world and can bring in a lot of money if you can attract the rich tourist. One problem for the rich oil countries is that living standards are quite high, which means that transforming the country from oil to agriculture is not going to be easy. The wages of farmers are going to be lower than people working in the oil business, it's going to be hard to make people understand that they need to cutback and are going to earn less in the future. One way this could be solved would be with government subsidies, like many countries are doing with their food industries. The rich oil countries tend to have government wealth fund where all the oil money is being invested. With such large money reserves the government could boost the agriculture sector for a longtime and make them competitive and against countries with cheaper wages.

Banks in my country offer now 4-5% return which is somewhat save and seem a lot for some people. But we need to take inflation into consideration, it doesn't make sense to keep money in the savings account with inflation at 6-8%. Annual returns of 10-15% seem like a reasonable target for active trading, but this is not going to be save. There is going to be considerable risk involved that could lead to short term loses. Any well diversified stock portfolio achieved 10% return over a long enough period of time, with crypto currencies the same is your possible. The only problem is if you need the money each year for other things you might be in trouble. The worst thing that could happen in trading is being forced to sell at unfavourable prices. I think the first step should be to determine how much risk you are willing to accept and then build your portfolio accordingly.

The first big Counter Strike 2 tournament is coming up next week with the IEM Sydney 2023. It's going to be awesome to see the professional play the new game and how much it has involved. Especially with the mechanics of the new smoke grenades we should be seeing some awesome tactics. On Monday the first match is already going to be with NaVi playing against Apeks which should be a clear win for NaVi. They had a disappointing final last tournament playing against Mouz 3-0, but I think against Apeks they should win without problems. Mouz directly plays the second match against VERTEX, which is going to be very one sided and I don't see any chance for Mouz to lose it. In the third match Vitality is playing against the new Russian team BetBoom, which I haven't seen playing before. Vitality with all their experience should pull through. Also FaZe against GamerLegion should be a good way to get a free win for FaZe. These are all best of one games and I don't see many surprises happening. The only issue is that there could be some new CS2 gameplay that some of the older players are not ready for. Cloud9 vs fnatic is going to be one of the old rivals meeting again, but I don’t see many chances for fnatic to win this one. The two teams met in August this year and Cloud9 beat them 2-0 without a problem. G2 vs Grayhound is going to be another one sided game and my money is going to be on G2 for the match.

This doesn't sound like a healthy situation for your friend, maybe you should talk to him and try to offer him some help. Going from 1 USD to 2.500 sounds like insane profit, winning such bets must have had very small chance to begin with. No idea how many bets you need to combine for such a profit, but it must be a lot. Why didn't your friend just cash out when there was only one game left? Combi bets are nice to increase your payouts, if you manage to pick the right matches. For me it never worked out with combi bets, I always ended up losing in the end similar to your friend. But I usually only combine 3-4 bets as I already struggle with them. Nonetheless we can't rely on making a profit with such small chances and if we feel sick after the bet then we did something wrong. Usually betting only 1 USD shouldn't invest us too much and we should try and keep some distance to our bets as emotions can lead to wrong decision making.

It's good to have dreams and goals in life, without them it would be hard to endure years of saving and cutting back. Owning a house is also one of my dreams and if you can help to fulfil your mothers dream than you should definitely do so. A house is a long term investment, it's not only for your parents but eventually also going to be your house. Keep that in mind when you are building it, maybe you have a some wishes yourself for a special layout or a particular room. Now is the best time to include everything you want, because eventually you could live in it yourself. I don't know how much money you are making with trading each month, and I also don't know how much money you need to build a house in your country. Keep up saving your money and your bitcoin investment is going to help a lot, but be careful when you have a fixed price that you need bitcoin to reach in 4 years. There can always be setbacks and the price could drop again. It would be helpful to have different income sources, maybe you can also save some money from your job each month to make your savings grow faster? Good luck with your mother’s dream.

You always need to ask yourself who is controlling the country and what would they personally gain from such actions. In most countries it's politicians in the government that control fiscal spending, but they usually only a few years in power and have to worry about reelections. Theoretically it would make a lot of sense for a country to reduce their debt levels during boom periods, because they can then cheaper take out loans during the next crisis. The problem is that this is not attractive for the politicians, they would need to cut back spending which is going to anger voters. For the government it's more attractive to keep spending high and make substitutes and gifts for various political groups. In economic terms it makes sense to have some debt for countries, because they can invest the money today to boost economic growth and repay the loans later when the economy is much stronger. This assumes the money is spend on profitable projects and not wasted. The optimal debt levels for a country is around 60% of GDP and not 100% like we are seeing at the moment.