@Trofo I'll ping again when Iron Man finals are around near September, but also only if I can help figure out a useful way to make questions. I also really like casperBGD's Tour de France (I don't know shit about it but everyone remembers the famous Armstrong doping scandal), and that's probably easier to quiz.

Tour de France is just one of the three circuits leading to the World race (not sure what it's called). The aim is for a treble of Italia, de France, World titles. Could have all 3 if we have some super cyclist nerd (any Dutch guys in BSFL?).

==

Tennis question made me think (and I actually thought about it before last season but am reminded about it) -- could it be worth allowing a system in future where you can submit picks, and still change them before deadline?

It seems the fairest that someone who put picks in early shouldn't be penalised if something happens on the final day of submission, or are we deliberately asking people to submit as late as possible? The reminders suggest that we prefer people putting picks in well ahead of time (Georgia was why I submitted late, and it proved to be a helpful point), but then if we can't change answers, of course, we want to post as late as possible.

Another thing I wanted to clarify, not sure if already: what if we're trying to submit answers in the final hour and Googledocs is down or sheet is inaccessible? Fair rules probably say you would be allowed to give an answer, but probably to send an answer in PM to Cro2? Failure to submit should be ruthless, right? No excuses for "no internet" and all that? Could be useful to figure out some additional rules on deadlines.

==

I can't remember but the Tsitsi question didn't have him winning without dropping a single set, did it? I know he's not Djoko but...

Something tells me this has quite a bit to do with the recent woes Balinese police have had with certain types of remote workers who've made the island home ever since the pandemic. I was there a month recently and my local friends told me about this nuisance. Tourists are welcome there, for sure, always have been, and despite a high level of tolerance for terrible tourist behavirous, patience appeared to be wearing thin for the new breeds of long-term residents who act like tourists.

Specific nationalities were mentioned actually, but I don't like passing on rumours. However, because I also personally know from work crypto people remote working in Bali, and the kinds of behaviours associated, I feel there is some truth. Problem is, probably isolated incidents with entitled, cruiseship-trawling, cocaine-snorting, crypto brats who do scammy crypto startups from Bali. Giving a bad name to Bitcoin in general.

In any case, no big loss. In all my wanderings around the island, and even in the supposedly glitziest locations out of curiosity, I found just one shop accepting crypto.


Server I asked said she never had a customer request though =)

I'm personally in favour of fewer prize spots -- it makes the prizes bigger, but have to say when it comes to the size of the pots here and in UCL, it probably makes it more fun for everyone to have more spots, even if those are just consolation prizes (it's a nice way to say, hey, here's your ticket back for next season). It might be my imagination, but people who feel they no longer have something to play for (ignoring that yellow caps themselves are fantastic weekly prizes) seem to drop out at the latter stages of the league.

Hate to praise Igebotz too many times in a year but he does have a potentially interesting solution in those freebets (as opposed to cash) for consolation. People tend to waste those freebets anyway, maybe even give them as a single $100 freebet or is that just exposure books hate? Haha.

Instead of the megajackpot, why not run a parallel league, just open another on SuperBru? Separate entry fee, possibly double or triple the regular fee, plus an additional requirement (a deposit of $100 at Sportsbet and 1x wager through the entire season)? Then they could cross-promo it the whole pre-season. Maybe a smaller sponsorship there but one winner-takes-all. That might offer hints at how a bigger pool with bigger fees might look like.

Having lived and work in parts of the unbanked -- in fact, myself being practically unbanked during those periods -- I can only concur, and have said so myself. Fintech's had great success there, and because they filled a need, without requiring people to have what they couldn't already access.

But I would disagree at least partially (again, based on the interest I experienced from people there about crypto) that popularising Bitcoin was a matter of fees. Fees is a problem as a mass p2p payment solution, but still will vastly superior as a remittance option, which is still what people need and mpesa didn't solve (mainly because it didn't work cross border). Even as late as 2017 the majority of these unbanked I worked with had, at best, SMS technology, which was all that mpesa needed. When using Bitcoin is as easy or easier than whipping out that GPRS phone, it might yet see more users.

I have never seen such intense discussions about esports! I don't have much take on it but I can honestly say I've been following DOTA more since BSFL, following F1 more because of SB but also because that's what my kid watches, and I believe one point of BSFL was to get people to discuss more about sports, banter is great, even welcome -- so objective achieved I should say, based on evidence of conversations here.

Go to most other discussion threads and it's crappy spamfest with rehashed news. Come to the pools and BSFL and you hear more passionate discussions. I love seeing people get mad about sports, it's fun

Not to "defend" Cro2 here but we do have to accept that as organisers, they must feel comfortable enough and confident enough to put questions that have as black-and-white answers as possible, with scoring sites that can back them up. Tennis and football, F1, are the ones I'm pretty sure tick the boxes, I couldn't really say for anything else.

As Jinetics1111 says above, bring it on! Come at me. Cricket? Women's volleyball? Arm-wrestling? Strong man competition? Iron man?

BTW World Iron man 2023 is in September and for me, it's the biggest endurance event in the world, and the most "level" competition because it's not about privilege (like F1 or golf) but about pure "I will outlast you". But it's a huge complicated competition with so many qualifying levels (essentially the whole world is one big group stage starting at country level, and you need to earn qualifying tickets from smaller Iron Mans). Would love to see a question on it from the qualifiers July onwards but it's a tough ask to get a question in...

Prize money's shit, though, I guess which is why it doesn't get a lot of TV attention.

Suggestions, not tips, I lose majority of my bets, if you haven't been paying attention heh.

Georgia's been punching way above their weight in today's U21 game (55/10), but I've been hammering on Caucascus teams in football ever since Nations League so I see great value v results.

Next week, America MG visit Atletico Mineiro in Brasileiro, price boost gets you 7/1 for the away team. I think that's only because America's in relegation spot, and have a bad record H2H but it's not like Mineiro's playing awesome football now anyway?

Champions League prelim qualifiers tonight though are eye-catching: the home teams are each 5/1 and 30/1 to win. Tre Penne is San Marino's champions and meet Icelandic champions, so you can understand why that happened but I try to remember that club football has more upsets than national football, and that Tre Penne is essentially Serie D (loads of Italian players) -- against Iceland's champs who're defending their title poorly, who knows?

1. Verstappen
2. Verstappen
3. Perez
4. 8 seconds

12. Abus Magomedov
11. Damir Ismagulov
10. Michael Morales
9. Ariane Lipski
8. Ismael Bonfim
7. Nursulton Ruziboev
6. Rinat Fakhretdinov
5. Joanderson Brito
4. Yana Santos
3. EGuram Kutateladze
2. Ivana Petrovic
1. Blagoy Ivanov

NOT go the Full Distance 6

Oi, the only spreadsheet I open these days is BSFL and my "Igebotz IOU" sheets of all the sidebets I'm winning from you. cryptofrka can you stop drunk checking?

Yeah. I'm sticking to my boring guns of "a year after halving" to see a return to ATH. And that's optimistically assuming that that cycle won't be affected by the unravelling of the world economy in the period coming up to that. I'm still certain we haven't seen the worst of things yet, and Bitcoin cycles haven't also gone through this kind of period -- then there's also the uncharted territory of what's going on in Russia/Ukraine.

Surely we can't ignore that backdrop, no?

There is reason to be optimistic though. Bitcoin at 30k now despite desperate situations everywhere says quite a bit about deep strength.

I'll add to the already logical deductions made by Lucius and LTU_btc to: why are mixers advertised here and not on the dark web?

Mixers are a legitimate tool for privacy, so a mixers make a business out of selling privacy. Any marketing agency will tell you: sell to your audience.

Who's the audience for a mixer? Bitcoin users (not Ethereum, not USDT, etc.).

Bitcointalk is the most-viewed forum and first stop for anyone seriously considering using Bitcoin or looking for Bitcoin solutions. You get the most eyes from Bitcoin users here. Also, that means reaching out to a general audience of Bitcoin users who don't already use privacy solutions. This means regular Bitcoiners, not chiefly dark web users, who, presumably, if they're already on the dark web, already know about mixers or are using "privacy coins" that suit their purposes more.

Thanks for the freebets! I don't think I was ever a contender in the first season. I also need to thank arallmuus for the win -- had his picks counted, we'd be 5-4 for a win to him mainly thanks to GG somehow winning the final. Close call for me =D


You're right I don't see him either, but seem to recall reading several outlets saying he's playing Eastbourne as his girlfriend also is. Jarry has indeed replaced him according to this article. Don't really get the explanation there, if he pulled out...

Didn't actually know much about Kent, but I was hearing a lot about Conor Bradley, who swept all the awards while on loan last season at Bolton Wanderers, serenading him on their last game as they want him to stay. Apparently he was the most-played teenager in world football last season (10% more than Bellingham!). He appears to be training with the seniors so I guess Bolton won't be having good news they wanted in the new season.

Also remember Sepp vd Berg? Not sure how he did in Germany, Schalke got relegated but he was injured most of the time... but I didn't really miss him.

Thanks for freebets SB + jeremypwr. Got them today from BSFL. Gonna smash underdogs in future games.

^ Thank you! And a good reminder to us all we need to keep up the quality of our posts so the campaign gets what they're paying for!

a) SPFC
b) 4-2
c) 16'

Denial of service must be getting a new meaning these days, for a poor old 90s child like me to understand...


And then there are also people like you claiming all of this but probably doing nothing of the sort. If you're guilty of spamming the forum then you should be all right with network spammers.

How do you "receive" btc when you're the one making the transaction and paying a higher fee? Explain yourself, show your transaction, and sign the address and I will take back everything I say about you and posters like you. Promise.

I suppose this is slightly different from the typical "KYC" requirement, which is just to know who the customer is (duh) and ensure it's an actual person and same person -- I am against it too, don't get me wrong, but as I noted above, I feel like where you come from, where you operate from, and how connected your country is to other regulations -- definitely something to consider.

As I understand it, my situation is unique and triggers all kinds of flags on systems mainly all due to multiple location, nationality, currency I use.

So instead of asking for my personal identity (as in my name, etc.) I was instead asked:

Proof of Asset (signing from wallets) was to prove the crypto was my own and deposited by me.
Proof of Source of Income: The tax documentation was to prove the source of income if I was salaried, or if I was freelancer, etc. I didn't give tax docs, I substituted with invoicing proving payments to my crypto wallets used as Proof of Asset. To show the money I earned to buy crypto, or the crypto I earned, was earned, rather than stolen or given.

Perhaps none of this will ever apply to you or 90+% of people on this forum since I honestly haven't met someone asked for these. And after your response, I guess my fact-finding continues.

P.S. Well done!

Great discussions on the bracket style of games versus European football style of knockout tournaments and I've done a lot of reading and discussions on both too, so I can agree with the arguments for both, but the idea is to get a mix of both.

Brackets and playoffs styles reduce the randomness and encourage stability. Hence in North American sports the strongest teams with the best talents consistently win the majority of non-league tournaments. But this reduces watchability for those outside the majority. Instead of being fair, I call this system objective. Fairness means putting every team on the same level, capping expenditure to revenue rather than an arbitrary sum, and giving everyone same facilities, etc.

Objective just means giving the best talents and performance the best chances for recognition.

Single KO killer bow styles increases randomness, and therefore, overall watchability.

I feel like leagues like Championship in England (and BSFL haha) mixes this very well with direct promotion, plus playoff. It has a very very long season, not too many playoffs. So 80% of the teams have something to play for all the way to the near end. So yes, if we know the winner of the league early, we still want to watch it because they are playoffs.

Then playoffs themselves are a spectacle at the end of season.

Personally I like Champs League style, I love that City can fall at any time despite being the best team in the world. Or Real. Or whomever. I can imagine the horror of upper/lower bracket format in Champions League if teams decide they can risk experimenting or even hurting the opponent in the first game (they might feel, it's okay to lose, they can beat the winner of the lower bracket easily), to ensure they have an easier final.

Wait, I have been seeing MLS matches pretty much for the past few weeks... Or am I just imagining it? Had no idea they were just starting, or was I looking at friendly or pre seasons?

Really need to pay more attention to that league... Notice the betting markets are more and more prominent now on SB.

Great thread OP! Not so much because of the wealth of experience being documented, but because it can be tied to a known frequent user, as opposed to random reviews online and what I call incidental or anecdotal records, which is wholly unreliable if you come in as a new user wanting a serious dig in to "what to expect".

I want to add that experience probably differs greatly on your nationality. Myself, without revealing too much (I hint many times throughout my forum use as I also want to add my experience and help people who have my not-so-unique challenges), I find that my nationality has had a significant impact on my use of CEXs.

To start off, I actually don't use CEXs so much, and rely heavily on p2p over the years, despite it being more and more difficult, it was helpful that I started on LBC in 2016 and the networks I still use today are built from the trust of these 6/7 years.

Without going into too much detail (yet) -- the biggest reason I don't use CEXs is that they've slowly made it more difficult on the KYC for me. Since 2021, particularly, I've been subject to pretty heavy Proof of Source of Income and Proof of Asset (they use slightly different terms) checks. These range from straightforward tax documents, employment contracts, to pretty serious stuff like signing from depositing addresses (to prove ownership of the wallets I use to deposit). I wrote about it on some of the discussion threads but can't easily find them, but asking others, I actually don't know personally anyone else who's had to do this to keep their accounts.

At the accounts I still keep, they actually request this annually. So this year, my 3rd time doing it on one CEX. And no, it's not even to do with value transacted. I hardly have 5 figure dollar annual volume on each!

I'm surprised you didn't mention it, or is this also because you're not subject to them?