I used to be a Financial Advisor for a very brief period almost 10 years ago for Peter Schiff. At the time I was in my early 20s and liked a lot of what he said. He frustrates me a lot more now and fails to adapt accordingly. Anyhow, I now run junkiebonds.com. Mostly a website researching US macro and discussing the worst institution ever created: The Federal Reserve.
Here’s some quick advice for beginners and even further on up I’m sure.
I've seen an unbelievable amount of these advertisements in the last few weeks. I just came across a comment in this room about just beginning and who to trust for paid services.
This may seem counterintuitive but if you're just beginning in the stock market DO NOT buy anything for education or trading. All the material you need is available for free online. Investopedia and YouTube have everything.
If you're just beginning you need to educate yourself and make small purchases. Education is the easiest part of trading in the stock market. The hard part is educating yourself about yourself. I've seen a few beginners that trade frequently and have done very well - in all likelihood they'll eventually lose all of their gains(+95% chance at bare minimum).
Stay away from paid services that claim they can help you trade. 99% are bullshit. Only experienced individuals should use these services because those individuals most likely know the few real people or firms that actually provide value. Experienced traders use these services for insight, education, and to help their process. Beginners have other obstacles to deal with first before these would properly benefit them.
Fuck Tim Sykes, those raging bull fucks, and others. They're full of shit. They are just a salesman using flashy marketing. It doesn't mean they haven't ever done well themselves - I think Tim Sykes actually did - but they realize selling hope, making millions, along with a little education is not just more profitable but it also eliminates risk.
In my opinion, I believe I could start a very “successful” subscription service. It’s aggravating seeing these guys because fooling beginners is almost like shooting fish in a barrel. But I’m not going to start a business where 95% of profits are based off of fooling others with slick marketing.
If anybody comes across a service you may be interested in but aren’t sure of its validity, feel free to send it to me and I’ll provide my two cents.
I’m going to explain trading by summarizing how I go about it. I’m not a day trader - I’m not making multiple trades a day and I recommend you do not do that either unless you want to lose money.
Before joining Euro Pacific Capital I would make a few trades a day. 50% of my portfolio was for long term investments 1+ years and the other for my speculation. I was fortunate enough to begin these investments at end of 2008 and early 2009. The long term side would do well and my speculations did alright too. The problem was I had big goals and desires for more wealth even though I had almost doubled the 12500 in less than a year. This led me to abandon stock speculating/trading because gains were too small and slow. However, stock options provided the leverage needed and I thought I had a trading process that would work.
Btw... “back in those days” I was paying 5.99 to buy and then 5.99 again to sell every trade! In 2010 my commissions were well above 2gs.
Reflecting on it now my process was abysmal and I’m surprised I was able to hold up for time I did. I was making reckless trades but one in particular really boosted my confidence. I bought far OTM calls on VXX(volatility) that expired in a few days. It was only a 100 dollars or so.
The market got slaughtered the next day. My calls were up over 4000%. I was up 4,950 dollars at 1205pm and then 4,150 a few minutes later. I believe I exited with a return of just over 4,300% which was a close figure to the actual dollars I made.
Here’s one of the most important points I’ll make: a PROFITABLE trade does not make it a GOOD trade by any means. That’s still one of the largest returns I’ve ever had and certainly the quickest but it was foolish.
It’s like going up to the roulette table and placing money on any number. The outcome of the spin does not change the fact this is a bad decision. Do not fool yourself by thinking your gains are all good decisions or investments. The only way you can have a good bet playing roulette is if you have knowledge or insight which puts the odds in your favor. And the only way you can do that is through some illegal con I believe. However, the market is not roulette. It can be. It can be worse if you make it that way.
Moving on... A few months after the big gain I had steadily lost money and I was getting a bit frustrated ——-
understanding how your emotions impact your thought processes and decision making is fundamental. There’s no manual for this part because every tradeperson is different. Happiness can and will influence your decisions. For some people it may cause them to be less disciplined or open to taking a risk and for others it will do the opposite. Traders create a process to eliminate the effects emotions can have - a simple example is to set a stop loss on a trade so you aren’t trying to guess when or if should prevent further losses or risk it. It’s important for beginners to do this. Do not enter trades where the losses cause worry and stress and you have no idea whether or not to sell. I don’t always have pre determined actions when I trade these days but I’ve also been doing this for over a decade and there are trades where it’s not as important or just not a good strategy. Again, if you’re a beginner please do not do this.
Back to my frustration... I entered an abnormally large call option order attempting to make up some losses - another stupid and beginner mistake. Unfortunately, the next day my parents needed help moving to Florida from Iowa. I had a 5g option that expired in 4 days and I wasn’t at my computer so I put in an order to (stop)sell if it so happens to fall quite a bit. This stock was amazon and it just so happens a negative headline came out right before opening bell. I had no idea bc I was still sleeping and dealing with moving.
The option price was around 5.20 and I had 10. My stop was at 4.
At 1030am we were going out for lunch and I went to check my position.
I was down 4,700 dollars.... because I put a LIMIT at 3.85.
You see, On this trade I went through ETRADE for whatever reason and I knew these sleezy guys sell their order flow - oh, btw Robinhood also sells their stock option orders but it’s really only important for a very small% of ppl - basically ETRADE profits from selling orders to other brokers who then complete your trade. So if these guys can see a price quickly drop and pop back up they’ll execute your order at worst price and then sell it for a profit a second later. Free money.
I was trying to limit any excessive scalping by putting a limit but amazon dropped quickly so E*TRADE of course did not get my order executed. If they were an honest and customer first company the order would’ve been executed and I wouldn’t have lost thousands of dollars. However, ultimately it is my fault and once again a stupid trade.
Trading is different from investing. Being an advisor certainly doesn’t make you a good trader. Advisors are typically there to plan long term investments and get to know their client so they’re able to adjust the risk in their portfolio accordingly.
A year or so after amazon I was working for Peter Schiff. He had really exploded in popularity because his predictions about the housing bubble all came to fruition. As an advisor you can’t trade. I was only there for a year because my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and I left to be with her. I had to save funds and for a few years after didn't trade either.
These days I'm back trading but its much different. I enjoy macro research and writing so i use this to my advantage. In 2020, I made around 40 trades total. Some of these are still open. Most of my trades are options and last a few weeks to months but two open positions don't expire until Jan 2022. Last year I made a return of 135%. I made a few huge mistakes and one out of laziness. Earlier in the year I was up 200%. I believe my process is solid but also needs improvement.
I try to limit my trades and find areas I'm most confident in. I also recommend you do not make hasty decisions. MISSING TRADES can be hard but it's a much better result. 135% really isn't that great of a gain considering how well the market did and the style of my trading. I missed many trades I was really confident in and thought were easy bc I have a strategy that may require 100% of my proceeds into Few positions. It sucks knowing I should've and could've easily had a 400/500% year if I chose to be aggressive. But I stick to my game plan because I'm confident later this year or next my returns will be multiple 1000s of percent. Maybe I'm wrong. We will see. I do best when Im unbelievably confident in an outcome and yet able to remain patient. I find I can do better or much worse if I change these.
My friend that's a girl did better than me because she bought her first and only stock this year which was Tesla. Does it suck underperforming your beginner girl friend having been in this trade for 10 years?
Absolutely.
But all of that noise must be drowned out lol. Everybody has to find their own way and what works best for them. I don't use reddit too often but for some reason I received an invitation to this board and joined tonight. I figured I'd share my thoughts and story and I hope this helped. I didn't proofread this.
My website is junkiebonds.com and you can find me on @Twitter at @junkiebonds - I started both in 2020 but am just really beginning to take off.
I'm always willing to help anybody with questions. Thanks for reading

TL:DR

This is Part 1 of my two part deep dive on DraftKings (Ticker: DKNG, I will refer to the company as “DK”)
This first part introduces you to (1) me, (2) the company, (3) my thesis on the company, and (4) digs into how they make money.
The second part (already released, you can read it here - but get through part 1 first :) ) will go in depth to explore the question “Can we 10x from here?”
DK is an exciting, disruptive company working to change how we experience watching sports and make it better.
I am not a financial advisor and this is not investment advice. These are just my opinions to help facilitate learning and discussion.

Hello, welcome to my first deep dive write up.
My name’s Mark and I’m an accountant with a passion for investing. About two years ago, I used to work as an auditor at a public accounting firm and have been behind the scenes at many different publicly traded and privately held companies in the U.S. My goal is to bring my unique perspective from that past experience, my current experience working in a new role at a large corporation, and my understanding of accounting to help break down some of the most exciting growth stocks on the market today.
I’m a long-term investor. I am focused on finding great companies and holding them for a long time. I’m willing to endure volatility, crazy price drops, and everything that comes with this approach as long as the facts that led me to originally invest and believe in that company have not changed. If you want to learn more about this approach. I recommend reading the book “100 Baggers” by Chris Mayer.
Introduction
I think it’s fitting that my first stock pick has to do with sports. Sports has been a part of my life since I could walk at the age of 2. First with baseball and soccer, and then later in my childhood with golf. I’ve always played American football and basketball for fun as well and have always been an avid fan of all the major sports in the US.
I started playing fantasy sports (mostly just fantasy football) about 6 years ago and have always enjoyed it. Traditionally, with fantasy football you draft a team at the beginning of the year and those are your players for the rest of the season. If you have a bad draft, oh well. You can try to improve your team with trades and free agent additions but it is tough. Leagues usually consist of 10-14 teams (each managed by an individual) and there’s obviously only one winner at the end of the season (about 4 months after the draft). This can lead to the managers of the lower performing teams losing interest as the season wanes on. I believe DraftKings’ (DK) founders saw this issue and saw an opportunity. Enter, daily fantasy sports. Now, with the DK platform you can draft a new team every week. Or if you want, every day. This allows fans of fantasy sports to engage at whichever point of the season they want and at varying financial stakes.
The Thesis Statement
For every stock pick I make, I want to provide a quick thesis statement that can serve as a reminder for why I’m buying and holding that stock for the long term. I’ll always aim to make it just a few sentences long so it can easily be remembered and internalized. This helps during times when the price may sporadically drop and you need to remember why you’re holding this position.
The thesis statement I have come up with for DK is as follows:
“DraftKings: The leader in allowing fans to engage financially with their favorite sports, teams, and players. Having money at stake makes the game a lot more interesting to watch. The era of daily fantasy sports games, online sports betting, and online betting (outside of sports), is just getting started and DK is as well positioned (or better positioned) than anyone to capitalize off of this trend.”
Notice how I said “allowing fans to engage financially” as the first sentence and not necessarily “allowing fans to gamble”. There’s a reason for that. According to US Federal Law, Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) contests have specifically been exempted from the prohibitions of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). DK has always been, and I believe will continue to be DFS contests 1st, sports betting 2nd, and other forms of gambling/entertainment 3rd. It is noteworthy that states at an individual level can still deem DFS contests illegal if they so wish, but as of this writing (11/26/20), 43 of the 50 US States allow DFS contests and DK, accordingly, is offering DFS contests in all 43 of those US States.
I’ll try to clarify the difference between DFS contests and sports betting real quick:
DFS Contest – Pay a pre-set entry fee to enter a contest. All entry fees go towards “The Pot”. “Draft” 9 players to be on your “Team” for 1 week. Enter your “Roster” into a contest with other players (could range from 1 other person to 1,000s of people, the DK user can choose). Whichever “Roster” amasses the most points for that week out of all contestants wins. The winner will get the highest payout, and depending on the nature of the contest, other top finishers will receive smaller payouts as well.
Sports Gambling – Team A is considered a 10 point favorite to defeat Team B. This means that Team A is expected, by the professional gambling line setters, to outscore Team B by 10 points. This is known as a point spread. You can bet on the underdog or the favorite. If you bet on the favorite, they have to win by more than 10 points for you to win the bet. If you bet on the underdog, you will win the bet as long as the underdog keeps the game within less than a 10 point defeat.
These are just a couple simple examples to help you see the difference. Sports Gambling (the 2nd priority of DK) is a very lucrative market just as the DFS contests are. However, in the US, Federal Laws and regulations are a lot stricter on Sports Gambling than they are on DFS. As of this writing (11/27/20), 22 states (including the District of Columbia) out of 51 possible allow sports gambling.
DK is still in the infancy stages of getting their sports gambling business going. In the 22 states where they could potentially operate, they currently have a sports gambling offering in 11 of those states. The sports gambling business model for DK can be broken into two main offerings – mobile sports betting, and retail sports betting. Mobile sports betting means you can place a sports bet online from the comfort of your own home, while retail sports betting means you must go to a casino and place a bet with the sportsbook in person. I personally believe mobile sports betting is the real potential cash cow for DK out of the two types of sports betting offerings due to the convenience and ease of access. DK is currently working on and encouraging customers to lobby their state lawmakers to legalize sports gambling in more states.
How DK makes money
At the very least, before you invest in a company, you better understand how they make money. In Chris Mayers’ excellent book, 100 Baggers, that I mentioned above, he continually references top line revenue growth as one of the main common indicators of a possible 100 Bagger. This isn’t to tell you that any stock I pick will be a 100 Bagger just because it has great top line revenue growth, but if I am looking at a growth stock to hold for the long term, revenue growth is one of the first things I look at.
For DK, their means of making money is quite simple. I already went into detail above about DFS Contests and Sports Gambling. In DK’s latest 10-Q filing with the SEC (filed 11/13/20), revenue is broken out into two main streams: Online Gaming and Gaming Software.
Online Gaming (82% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
Online gaming is the true core business of DK and includes the aforementioned DFS Contests, Sports Gambling and additional gambling (non-sports) opportunities. DK refers to their additional gambling (non-sports) as “iGaming” or “online casino”.
For the 9 months ended 9/30/20, Online Gaming revenue totaled $239M, up 30% YoY from $184M in the same prior year period. Keep in mind, that this is an increase that happened during a COVID-19 global pandemic that delayed and shortened many professional sports seasons.
Online gaming revenue is earned in a few ways that are slightly different, but very similar overall. In order to enter a DFS contest, a customer must pay an entry fee. DFS revenue is generated from these entry fees collected, net of prize payouts and customer incentives awarded to users. In order to place a sports bet (sports gambling), a customer places a wager with a DK Sportsbook. The DK Sportsbook sets odds for each wager that builds in a theoretical margin allowing DK to profit. Sports gambling revenue is generated from wagers collected from customers, net of payouts and incentives awarded to winning customers. The last form of online gaming revenue is earned in similar fashion to a land-based casino, offering online versions of casino games such as blackjack, roulette, and slot machines.
Gaming Software (18% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
While the Online Gaming revenue stream mentioned above is a Business to Consumer (B2C) model, the Gaming Software revenue stream is a Business to Business (B2B) model. The Gaming Software side of the business was born out of the acquisition of SBTech, a company from the Isle of Man (near the UK) founded in 2007 that has 12+ years of experience providing online sports betting platforms to clients all over the world. The acquisition occurred as part of the SPAC driven IPO in April of 2020 that combined “the old DK company” with SBTech so that they now are “the new DK company” listed as DKNG on the NASDAQ. SBTech is a far more important part of the story than just being 18% of today’s revenue. The reason for this is because DK will eventually (planned mid-late 2021) be migrating all of their DFS and gambling offerings onto SBTech’s online platforms. Currently, for DFS, DK uses their own proprietary platform but that will move to SBTech with the migration. Currently, for online gambling, DK uses Kambi, the same online gambling platform that services Penn Gaming (PENN), a DK rival. But that’s enough about the software migration for now, back to the Gaming Software revenue.
The Gaming Software revenue stream for DK is essentially a continuation of SBTechs’ B2B business model. DK contracts with business customers to provide sports and casino betting software solutions. DK typically enters two different type of arrangements with B2B customers when selling the gaming software:

Direct Customer Contract Revenue: In this type of transaction, the software is sold directly to a business (casino for example) that wants to use the software for their own gambling operations. This revenue is generally calculated as a percentage of the wagering revenue generated by the business customer using DK’s software and is recognized in the periods in which those wagering and related activities conclude.
Reseller Arrangement Revenue: In this type of transaction, DK provides distributors with the right to resell DK’s software-as-a-service offering to their clients, using their own infrastructure. In reseller arrangements, revenue is generally calculated via a fixed monthly fee and an additional monthly fee which varies based on the number of gaming operators to whom each reseller sub-licenses DK’s software.

As mentioned above, SBTech was an international company based in the Isle of Man before being acquired by DK. Thus, the majority of their business in their first 12 years of operating independently has always been international and outside of the United States. This has helped DK, which has historically been US focused, expand it’s international reach.
A perfect example of expanding this international reach occurred recently during October (technically Q4) in which DK’s B2B technology (powered by SBTech) helped enable the launch of “PalaceBet”, a new mobile and online sportsbook offering from Peermont, a South Africa based resort and casino company. The deal was headed by DK’s new Chief International Officer, Shay Berka, who previously spent 10 years working for SBTech as CFO and General Manager. Mr. Berka took on the role of DK’s Chief International Officer upon the merger in April earlier this year. I think this deal shows that DK has integrated SBTech and it’s business very well into the larger business as a whole. They are not wasting any time using their newly acquired resources to expand their reach and bring in new sources of revenue.
This is the end of my first article about DK. My goal is to drop Part 2 later this week. The focus of Part 2 will be an in depth answer of the question – “Can we 10x from here?”
Disclosure: I am/we are long DKNG. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

TL:DR

This is Part 1 of my two part deep dive on DraftKings (Ticker: DKNG, I will refer to the company as “DK”)
This first part introduces you to (1) me, (2) the company, (3) my thesis on the company, and (4) digs into how they make money.
The second part (to be released later this week) will go in depth to explore the question “Can we 10x from here?”
DK is an exciting, disruptive company working to change how we experience watching sports and make it better.
I am not a financial advisor and this is not investment advice. These are just my opinions to help facilitate learning and discussion.

Direct Customer Contract Revenue: In this type of transaction, the software is sold directly to a business (casino for example) that wants to use the software for their own gambling operations. This revenue is generally calculated as a percentage of the wagering revenue generated by the business customer using DK’s software and is recognized in the periods in which those wagering and related activities conclude.
Reseller Arrangement Revenue: In this type of transaction, DK provides distributors with the right to resell DK’s software-as-a-service offering to their clients, using their own infrastructure. In reseller arrangements, revenue is generally calculated via a fixed monthly fee and an additional monthly fee which varies based on the number of gaming operators to whom each reseller sub-licenses DK’s software.

For many centuries now, people have been gambling for entertainment and/or profit. Gambling has been known as something that goes along with human nature; people like to gamble because it is entertaining and profitable. Today, gambling is more widespread and more accessible than ever before. From online gambling at home to live exotic gambling events, there are many avenues for people to take when it comes to gambling. This article will discuss the different types of gambling and what their typical definition is.
Horse Racing: This is perhaps the most well-known of all the forms of gambling. It is often integrated into a larger event such as the Olympics. It is a lotteries type of gambling, where a person bets on the winner(s) of a specific race, often based on public opinion or even the results of previous matches. As such, it can be very lucrative, but also dangerous. Therefore, it is best to only partake in horse racing with thorough knowledge of the rules and regulations.
Poker: Poker gambling involves betting on the outcome of a game, but with no clear outcome in sight. In this type of gambling, the person participating essentially wagers a fixed amount of money that they believe the other party will payoff. For this reason, it can be similar to betting on the likelihood of a football game. However, the stakes are typically higher in poker than in other gambling games, as they involve a lot more risk. For example, it is not uncommon for someone to bet hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single hand of poker. Therefore, understanding the game, as well as its jargon, is absolutely necessary before participating in it.
Online Gambling: Now, there are a variety of different sites where a person can participate in gambling online, from betting websites, to sportsbooks and poker rooms. Regardless of which specific gambling website one chooses to visit, it is important that they understand the risks involved with it. First, just like any form of gambling, people who gamble online put their money at a great risk. Second, as with most things in life, some individuals lose more often than others. Finally, because of the prevalence of illegal gambling websites, those who are unaware of the laws surrounding online gambling are put at risk. Therefore, it is important for people to become educated about the issue of online gambling, so as to avoid putting themselves at legal risks.
Lottery: One of the oldest forms of gambling, lotteries have gained in popularity over the years. However, it is usually illegal to participate in lotteries, due to the fact that gambling takes place in violation of the law. One of the most popular ways by which people gamble is through the lotteries, which are typically held in drawings for a monthly prize or some other monetary award. As with many things in life, those who participate in the lottery are typically those who are dedicated to the sport or hobby, as well as those who can afford to purchase the tickets.
Online Poker: This is perhaps one of the most commonly known and most widely practiced forms of gambling. While it is true that there are a variety of different sites where one can play poker, it should also be noted that those that participate in this form of gambling are typically individuals who frequent internet cafes, bars, or salons. For example, if you go to a bar or a coffee shop on a Saturday afternoon, chances are you will be able to find a few individuals sitting around a table drinking beer or wine, playing a variety of poker games. While it may seem unlikely, gambling games like blackjack or roulette may also be found here. If an individual can locate a casino, they may very well find that they can participate in live gambling games, or even bet on a variety of different horse racing or lottery games.

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Bitvest is a stage that acknowledges bit coins and cryptographic forms of money . Bit coins is a cyptocurrency-which alludes to a computerized type of cash that can be sent and gotten through the web. It takes into consideration the trading of money between individuals who may not really know one another. Bitvest permits its individuals to bet with bit coins, with an alternative to contribute on the stage as opposed to betting. The wagering stage offers various games for its players to appreciate. Players will utilize either bit vest bit coins or cryptos to put down their wagers. The quantity of games is five altogether. These are Roulette, Dice games, Slot games, Plinko, and Bet spin. Roulette is reasonable for the individuals who favor games while Bet spin is more appropriate as you just need to turn and the machines will decide if you have won or not. The Dice game allows you to money out large as your wager can be increased right around multiple times. You have the alternative to pick your ideal multiplier or pick a move target where you wager against a high or low number. The plan of the games accessible on Bitvest are all around spread out to guarantee you make some simple memories putting down your wagers. It additionally includes a slider that permits you to set your objectives without any problem. Rather than other bit coin betting destinations, Bitvest allows you to put away your money as opposed to putting down a wager. The profits on speculations made by any individual are significantly high, with every financial specialist procuring between 1.15 to 1.8333 percent of the complete estimation of wagers put. Any financial specialist is acquires dependent on the site's bankroll. This implies that every speculator is qualified for around 70% of the absolute benefits made by the wagering site. In contrast to other betting stages, Bitvest just permits Bitcoins or cryptos to put aside any installment or withdrawal. When setting aside an installment, you are needed to affirm prior to proceeding to bet with your equilibrium. Be that as it may, you can play with a token even as you hang tight for affirmation. This permits you to trade your Bitcoins with Tokens on condition that you have under 50 Tokens. Then again, making a withdrawal is similarly simple and quick. No confirmation is needed to do this and you can get your money in less time.
Betting with bitcoins, which is made conceivable by Bitvest, accompanies various advantages to clients. Coming up next are a portion of these advantages.
Quick: the way toward setting aside an installment or withdrawal is a lot of takes a brief timeframe. This is not normal for the customary strategy for utilizing credit or check cards, or the utilization of online cash processors like PayPal.
Rewards: Bitvest players are qualified for some sorts of rewards that come directly from when you join to the betting stage. This gives you some additional money to make the most of your number one games offered on the stage.
Security: You don't need to give your name and other significant subtleties when utilizing bitcoins. This gives you security while working a Bitvest account. Notwithstanding a few nations being restricted from betting, it is conceivable to exploit Bitcoins for individuals from such nations because of this. Nonetheless, we don't prescribe to do that for what it's worth illegal.
Made sure about: The measure of security you get by utilizing bitcoins is exceptional. However long you don't impart any of your data to anybody, you have no possibility of losing your bitcoins by programmers.
Betting with bitcoins additionally accompanies its own weaknesses. Coming up next are some of them.
Security: Despite the way that it is hard to take cash from your wallet, it is conceivable to take when you're trading them. It doesn't occur consistently, however.
Specialized: the utilization of bitcoins is somewhat specialized. This may prompt challenges in working the record for the individuals who are bad with specialized stuff.
Future isunknown: A great deal of governments have been attempting to manage bitcoins. This makes vulnerability later on bitcoins and its utilization. Bitvest is certainly an extraordinary stage that offers an interesting betting encounter. The utilization of Bitcoins, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Tokens to put down wagers is certifiably not a typical thing. Furthermore, there are a ton of advantages related with utilizing cryptos, some of which have been referenced in this audit. Aside from offering various games for speculators to appreciate, you can likewise contribute your cryptos and remain to get a portion of the benefits made by the site.

So, for those of you who are familiar with REALLY black hat affiliate marketing this wouldn't be a huge surprise, but still.
Basically, i think i found the ultimate way to promote online casinos as an affiliate and make huge amounts of money with it, and basically this is by turning lots of people into temporary (or not so temporary) gambling addicts.
Is this immoral? I'm a diagnosed sociopath and i couldn't care less, we're all adults and we're all responsible for our decisions. Is this illegal? No.
Basically, let's first analyze what a gambling addict is and HOW HE THINKS:
The key factor that distinguishes a gambling addict from an enthusiast is that the addict genuinely thinks he can beat the game, he thinks he knows what the next card coming out the deck is going to be, he thinks he knows that the next roll of the slot machine is going to be the one etc.
So, how do you turn random people into gamblers? You PROVE THEM you found an actual method to actually beat the game, and you prove it in an incontestable way just so that nobody can prove you wrong. This is going to cost you some money btw, let's say 500 bucks, but you'll make a lot more in a day so...
Basically, here's what you do:
1) You create a fake Baypal balance, just log into your Baypal account and select the values, right click, then "inspect". Now you can edit whatever you want and create a fake balance showing fake payments from whatever company you want (name of the casino, will explain later, but you have to put money in the casino, lose some, and then get it back on Baypal so that you know the exact name that will appear when you receive payments). This would only be illegal only if you were selling the method, but you're going to give it away for free (because it's not a method) so no worries.
2) Once you have the fake Baypal set up you record the screen and start talking, say stuff like "Hey everyone i'm recording this video to show you this INSANE method i just found to make money online, i wouldn't believe this because they told me it was a method to make a lot of money easily, but i tried it and wow, this is crazy. BLA BLA BLA. I'm a MATH graduate and i couldn't get a job anywhere, let alone a well paid job. BLA BLA BLA."
3) You then start talking about the money you made while moving your cursor ONTO the numbers so that people will see it's not a screenshot that you could've photoshopped because the page is interacting, because it's a real page, just edited. You basically just say stuff like “so you can see my balance now is 36k which is not all the money i made in this past month/month and a half, you can see i received these payments here, i was testing it first, made the first 221,64 bucks here, then 743,85 (remember not-so-perfect numbers have more impact), then i started doing this seriously and we got to 4k, 13k, and 28k today.”
4) You then keep talking for a bit about how crazy this is and it has changed your life, make sure the whole talk lasts about 3-4mins, then say “let’s not waste any time here, let me show you how this works”. And you stop recording. This will be the first part of the video just save it as it is, you’ll find out why later.
5) Open up whatever online casino you’re going to promote (will discuss on how to get your affiliate link later) on which you already loaded 50 euros or dollars, then start recording again, this will be the second part of the video, but people will not even notice the cut.
Say “this method works in online casinos. Okay i know what you’re thinking, don’t worry this is not one of those black-red tricks that don’t work, they’re scams and we all know that, this is a new method and works, as you saw on my Baypal, but i will show it to you live. Please remind most online casinos are not functional for this method because they will find a way to block you after you keep winning all the time, check the description for the link to this one that i’m using which is the very best. so, let’s go to the roulette section and pick french roulette. this is our workplace, i guess everyone knows how roulette works, but here we’re not trying to get lucky, we’re following a precise sequence which is this one *show sequence image at this point* (which is basically Red Black Red Red Black Black in cycles) and i’ll put a link for this too. Here’s how it works:”
So, you have to apply this cycle while placing your bets, this cycle actually kinda works, but it just makes your chances of winning slightly above 50%, it’s nothing special, but looks like it. What you do is you keep betting the colors of the cycle all the time, while explaining what you’re doing with confidence, betting 0,10€ at a time, saying this is exactly where you started from. If you win you place the minimum bet again, if you lose you double up, if you lose again you double up again, but you keep following the sequence as a cycle.
Explain that this is the classic double-up, but it’s very different because YOU HAVE A PRECISE SEQUENCE THAT CAN’T BE REVERSE-FOLLOWED ALL THE TIME, and thus is 100% winning, all of this while proving it, while still suggesting the more you bet the more money you make.
This might go very wrong and you’d end up wasting 50€, if that happens (took me 6 trys, 300€, to get the right one) record this part of the video from scratch and load 50 more euros, as i said this will cost you money. When you get the right shot and get to let’s say 51€, point out that you just made 1€ in a couple mins, starting from 0,10, which is A LOT, point that out clearly.
6) If step 4 went correctly now say “so, i think you’ve figured out how this works but let me prove you this works for real, i’ll set a stopwatch, do it for a while speeding up the video so that you see what i’m doing, and i’ll be right back” then proceed to activate a stopwatch, go back to the casino page for a couple seconds and CUT the video.
7) Now, in post-production, you’ll take the part where you explained the method and use that video while speeding it up very quickly.
8) Go back to the casino, try until you win one bet so that it will show (that’s really hard to edit), then edit your balance to around 56€. Start the stopwatch again from 0:00, and go back to the casino page.
9) When 5 mins or so have passed start recording FROM THE CASINO PAGE, go the the stopwatch, stop it, and say “so that was 5 mins”. Go back to the casino page and show you are now at 56€, say “we made 5 more euros, and that was 5 minutes, let’s calculate how much WE WOULD’VE MADE if i kept going for an hour.” Pull out whatever calculator you want and divide euros by minutes (in this case 5 divided by 5, could be different in your case depending on what you decide to do) in this case it will show 1€ a minute, multiply x60 and say “guys, 60€ an hour, i know people are getting jobs for like 7€ an hour or less, let’s see how much that’d be if i kept doing it for 8 hours, that’s 480€. In a few days that will be a month of salary, and that’s with 0,10 bets, can you imagine what that would be if we made 1€ bets? this is insane.”
10) Pull out a table you previously created, showing bets, expected earnings and SAFETY RATIOS (totally made up).
Basically, 0,10 lost bets doubling up 9 times (which will look very very rare if step 4 went correctly) will require a 51,20€ balance for ABSOLUTE certainty, 25,20€ for VERY GOOD CERTAINTY and 6,40€ for GOOD CERTAINTY, create the rest of the board according to other bet options. Then on a side of the board show hourly and monthly potential earnings working 2 hours a day, so let’s say 60€ an hour as in hour example (point out that you usually go faster than what you did during the chronometer) and this will result in 3.600€ a month with 2 hours a day.
Explain the table and talk about the great earnings you can achieve with just 0,10 bets or 0,20 bets with just 2 hours a day, and then talk about the earnings you can achieve with higher bets, that REQUIRE CERTAINTY. Say “How do you get certainty, with a higher balance, here’s what we have, for 0,10 bets 6,40€ is good certainty, 25,20 is very good certainty and 51,20 is absolute certainty”. Suggest people to do 1€ bets (that require 512€ for absolute certainty) because they will be able to make 36k a month with just 2 hours IF THEY DO THIS SLOWLY, one hour if they do it faster. Keep discussing the huge earnings they can achieve, and point out you achieved a lot more and that the table underestimates it, as they saw in your Baypal. do some small talk for a while, the whole videos should be 15-20mins long.
11) End the whole video by saying “guys, i’m not joking this is for real, you’ve seen my Baypal, you’ve seen me do this right in front of you, it works, you’ll see for yourself, i’ll put the WEBSITE LINK (avoid saying “go play now” or phrases that directly encourage gambling) and the FREE DOWNLOAD link for the sequence in the description, i changed my life and got my dream life and you can do this too, dreams are not dreams anymore, they’re goals that you can achieve, bye!”
So, this is how you create the gambler-maker video that will turn random people into real gamblers. The cool thing is that the lowest “absolute certainty” balance is 51,20 but they can’t deposit 51,20 because they will be able to deposit 50, so if they comment the video saying they lost their money say the didn’t listen to you and needed 51,20. They will then refill their balance. Lots of people will do the same with the 512 balance. Delete upset comments if they don’t take any “advice” and place some “this changed my life” and “1000€ in 2 hours easiest money of my life” comments with fake profiles during the first week or two.
Most online casinos will pay you a 20% commission on deposits when you’re first starting out as an affiliate and will go to even 300% CPA on deposits, meaning a 500 deposit will make you a 1.500€ commission, or something like that depending on the one you choose.
The problem with them is that they will be very upset if they found out you’re promoting their casino this way (but will enjoy the money) so before you apply for their affiliate program here’s what you do:
You go to Blu3host and purchase 2 domains and hosting for each, about 70 bucks for each (will last 1 year) call one something like “makethatdr3ammoneynow(DOT)c0m” and the other one “casinofunreviews(DOT)c0m”.
Use Blu3host because it has integrated wordpress.
Log into casinofunrevi3ws(DOT)c0m and log into wordpress, go to plugins and search for “pretty links” install that plugin (the logo is a start with blue lines behind it like a comet) what this plugin does is it CLOAKS your link, not for people, but for the casino, this is to make sure the casino thinks you’re promoting them in a legit way. Anyway, with the Prettylinks plugin you can create redirects like “casinofunr3views(DOT)c0m/casino” will immediately redirect to the casino with your affiliate link, you can figure this out very very easily when you have Prettylinks in front of you.
Now, you still don’t have your affiliate link so you’ll only do this when you get it, here’s what you do. Click on “add post” and write a post about a game like “book of ra” making a fake review saying it looks good and it fun to play overall and rate it 7/10 or something and bla bla bla, add a picture of it and that’s it. Do this for a couple more games always WITHOUT ENCOURAGING GAMBLING, they have to look like posts aimed at sunday-gamblers who do it for fun.
When you ask for your application as an affiliate they will ask you for an url, send them your perfectly legit friendly gambling blog (casinofunr3views(DOT)c0m) when they approve you and you get the link create the redirect like casinofunr3views(DOT)c0m/casino or something like that
Now go to your other domain (makethatdr3ammoneynow(DOT)c0m) and basically only write one post writing “link to the website” (create hyperlink to your redirect link, NOT YOUR AFFILIATE LINK, so that the text “link to the website” sends to casinofunr3views(DOT)c0m/casino) and “link to the sequence” that you will upload somewhere for free download and create an hyperlink for that too.
In the video description type “for the website link and download link click h3re: makethatdr3ammoneynow(DOT)c0m” and they will land on your website that just presents them the 2 hyperlinks and that’s it. Perfect.
Then go back to casinofunr3views(DOT)c0m and create a new post and talk about the casino you’re an affiliate of, review it and say it looks very good, good design and all and very fun games, and create an hyperlink for it in the post, right on their name, like, if the casino’s name is “bananacasinogummybear” you write “so, i’ve recently played some games on bananacasinogummybear…. bla bla bla” and the hyperlink sends to “casinofunr3views(DOT)c0m/casino” AGAIN.
The purpose of all this thing is that the casino will see where the new subscribers come from, if you put the redirect right on youtube they’d know you’re using youtube, and they would only have to google the link to find your video. If you do this like i explained to you they will see the traffic is coming from the super legit blog you showed them. THIS IS VERY VERY IMPORTANT.
So, this was my very black hat and highly manipulative way to make lots of money quickly af (just create a fake fb profile, search gambler-games-related pages and add a few people and post a status saying “i will post a video showing you a crazy method to makes lots of money, ask your dearest friends to add me” and keep adding people too, just spam a bit, it will go kinda viral very quickly (because the method kinda looks like it really works, but it doesn’t, so people will be sharing your video even after trying for themselves)
Make sure you make the youtube video “not listed” if you want to be really safe, because even thought this is legal it’s really immoral, and i suggest you to take it down after you made enough money to start a morally legit business, make sure the video doesn’t go super viral or you’ll be forever known in history as the scammer guy, trust me, you might end on tv sooner than you think, so make sure you take everything down if the views start getting out of hand, and my best advice is to take it down anyway after making 200k out of this, that’s enough money to start an insanely profitable online business very easily, a business that would make you 50k a month too, but morally.
I don’t care about morality, but being tagged as a scammer won’t be good for you, so avoid that at all costs.
Enjoy the money you’ll be making by tricking a casino into thinking you're just an amateur blogger who has fun playing games while in reality you're turning strangers into gambling addicts (even tho most people will quit after wasting a grand or so, sometimes less, a grand could be 3k commissions for you tho) and don’t start gambling yourself, the method doesn’t work, i can guarantee, just looks like it if you’re lucky enough to get it on video. it’s just like the dudeperfect videos or the yeahigotskills guy, those are not 1st try shots, but look like it.
ONE LAST THING: make sure you crop the video so that it doesn’t show the url of the casino so that even the smart guys will have to click on your link, when they get there they will just be too lazy and join through your affiliate link anyway.

I'm a new DM and I'm starting a campaign soon where they start in drumroll a tavern. Since my players are also new to the game itself, I want the tavern to be already fleshed out and lively to set the tone for the game, as well as get them used to making skill checks and whatnot.
A general description of the games mechanics would be very much appreciated as well! I'd also like to use all the stats so the players can get a handle of what they're good at.

Spicy Hotdog Eating Competition. Five rounds of contested CON saves between competitors.
Dragon's Den (Card Game). Starting bet of 2 gp, roll 5d6, and add 5 sp to the pot for every reroll. Winner is determined by the second roll.
Drunkard's Roulette. Roll a d6. On a 1, you drink a tankard of something nasty. Make a CON save or become poisoned for 1d4 hours.
Ball and Cup Game. Contested Perception vs Sleight of Hand.
Trivia Night. Contested INT-based skill checks. Consider giving advantage if its about something the players have encountered before.
Arm-wrestling Contest. Contested STR checks.
Axe-throwing competition. DEX check. 3 tries/game. 1- 10 miss. 11 - 13 outer ring (1 point). 14 - 16 middle ring (2 points). 17 - 19 inner ring (3 points). 20 and above bullseye (5 points)
Boulder, Parchment, Shears. Each roll a d4. 1 beats 3, 3 beats 2, 2 beats 1, and 4 is a reroll.
Barrel Breaking Contest. Crush a barrel between your bare hands like a beer can. Five rounds and DC goes up each round. STR check.
The Riddle Master. An old man charges 1 sp per riddle, and offers 3 sp in return for a correct answer. He will only ask each person a single riddle and only pays out 2 sp if a person gets help in solving it. (idek_mannnn)
Good Old-fashioned Darts. Players roll 3d20 with DEX modifier (capped at a maximum roll of 20). and results are tallied. Highest score wins. In the event of a tie, each player is to throw a single dart blindfolded (d20 with no modifier). Highest wins. (idek_mannnn)
Busy Night. The tavern is bustling with patrons and the barkeep is visibly stressed. In a moment of desperation, they ask if anyone is able to assist in serving drinks, collecting tankards and flagons, and helping out in the kitchen. 1 gp for the night's work, but any player who accepts suffers a level of exhaustion. (idek_mannnn)
Mingling. CHA DC 15 or higher and someone will buy you a drink. WIS DC 15 or higher and you hear an interesting rumor. (idek_mannnn)
Open Stage Night. For a mere donation of 5 cp, anyone can perform an act on the tavern stage. The outcome of a Performance check can affect the reputation of the performer in the tavern, or even in the whole town on either end of the scale. (idek_mannnn)
Good Old-fashioned Tavern Brawl. No deadly damage allowed. Last man/party standing wins. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
A Sophisticated Session of Chess (or any tactical game). Contested INT or Knowledge checks.(Geschichtenerzaehler)
Stuff Stacking Challenge. Try to stack random objects on the head of a passed-out drunk. Sleight of Hand check starts at DC 5, increasing by 1 for each item. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Song Contest. Contested Performance checks, but the GM secretly writes down themes and modifiers to reflect the mood of the crowd ( ex: happy +2, sad -2, patriotic +1, naughty +5, epic +0). The participating players must announce what song they want to perform and the GM adds the modifier to the result. Smart players may want to make an Insight check to read the crowd before picking a song. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Halfling Toss. DC 12 STR check to lift the halfling, and every 1 above that is a foot of distance. Furthest distance wins. The area ahead is cushioned (as is the the halfling), but if they make a really high check, they may be able to get past the cushioned area. If anyone asks if this s inhumane, the answer should involve 'the event is sanctioned by the National Halfling Toss League'. (thirteeorphans)
Flirting. Characters can look for intimate company. First, the player describes what kind of person they're looking for. Next, the GM determines if someone with said profile is present, but also rolls if the PC has any chance with them at all. If not, all Persuasion checks will auto-fail. If they do have a chance with the NPC, the GM decides a difficulty and a number of secret modifiers regarding the worldview, mood, and preferences of the NPC. The player then tells the GM their flirting strategy and makes a persuasion check to which the GM adds all modifiers that apply. Multiple Persuasion checks may be needed to take things...further. Alternatively: if you all have fun with it, just wing and roleplay it. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Join the Regulars. A table is reserved for frequent patrons. They discuss certain topics or just have some things in common - sports teams, activism, crafts, etc. Examples: a) A group of elderly men and women, who all happen to be veterans. They share a common experience (a war a long time ago), but talk about all sorts of things. They may share some wisdom with strangers who buy them a round. b) The Rabbit Breeder table. These guys discuss everything about rabbits: best food, how to keep them away from foxes, upcoming contests, and etc. Characters may feign interest (CHA checks) and pick up some juicy gossip beyond rabbit-business. c) The Councilors. This table is usually reserved for the mayor, councilors, and guildmasters. News and politics are discussed here. A character with respectable appearance, manners, and a convincing reason to join them (Persuasion check w/ appropriate modifiers) may join. Being seated at this table may be useful to gather pertinent information or get to know important people. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Spot the Pickpocket. Perception VS thieves' Sleight of Hand. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Avoiding "Dangers". On a wild night, one may be in danger of slipping on a spilled drink (DC 8) or ducking under a thrown keg (DC 12). Acrobatics check. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Dance-off!. Participants must make a series of skill or ability checks (let them RP which ones make sense for their character, but make it a different one each round) with one or two participants eliminated each round. (ken_NT)
2-4-24 (Dice Game). Played with 6d6. A player rolls the dice and has to keep at least one die every roll. At the end, they must have a 2, a 4, and the remaining dice must add up to a max. of 24. Not having a 2 or a 4 disqualifies the player. More Info#Variant_game) (ken_NT)
Stab between the Fingers Game. More Info. DEX check, PCs choose DC. Fastest one (highest DC chosen and beat) wins. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Listen to a story. Occasionally a patron may feel like sharing an anecdote, a joke, a creepy legend etc. Example: An old sailor tells how he lost his leg in a fight against an undead pirate. An insight check may provide some information about the truthfulness of the story told. Besides this, an NPC telling a story at the bar allows the GM to set the mood for an adventure, to establish background info on the game world and adding flavor. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Checking the Bulletin board. The tavern may feature a bulletin board, which has job offers and requests, lost and found notes, public announcements, etc. Even (side-)quests are an option, if the GM wants to.
Sidenote: An illiterate NPC may ask a PC to read them the job offers. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Trying the 'good stuff'. Characters with enough coin may want to taste the best or most interesting the house has to offer. Examples:
a) A great local brew, that gives the one who consumes it, +1 temporary hitpoints.
b)A greenish drink called the "Mad Alchemist". Sends the drinker on a trip where he perceives the world in exaggerated shapes and colors.
c) The "Victory Bottle". This high quality whisky was bottled in the year of the glorious victory ... . A super pricey treat for special occasions.
The GM may rule (depending on a CON save), that the PCs experience positive or negative side effects.
Eating a special meal. There may be something interesting (and pricey) beyond the usual on the menu tonight. Examples:
a) A hunter has brought in something rare or unusual.
b) The house has a secret recipe, that tastes extraordinarily well.
c) An exotic dish made from insects. A real dare.
The GM may rule (depending on a CON save), that the PCs experience positive or negative side effects. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Buy from a peddler. A poor looking man, woman or child walks from table to table with a vendor's tray, to sell small cheap goods to patrons. Examples: Flowers, pouches, dice, socks, caps, leather grease (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Take up a service offer. Similar to above, a poor looking man, woman or child walks from table to table, but in this case makes a service offer, like polishing shoes and boots, sharpening blades, making small repairs (via sewing) etc. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Inspect the trophies. The walls of the tavern may be decorated with hunting or sports or contest trophies. It tells the PCs something about what to expect in the wilderness or about the community. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Go outside. The PCs may decide to step outside for a moment. Here they might go to the loo, encounter drug dealers, couples making out, a fight, prostitutes or just people who want to take a little fresh air before heading back in. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Explore the Backroom. This area is usually off limits, but sneaking in there might be possible (Stealth vs. Perception of whoever watches the door). Secret societies, criminals meeting, illegal games and deals? Or just people who want some privacy? Maybe it's just a boring storage room? The GM is free to decide whatever interesting or not so interesting thing might happen there. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Debate. Some NPC may start a debate on basically any topic and the PCs are free to join in and share their opinion. This shouldn't end in something as dramatic as a brawl, but it can win over NPCs, hurt feelings, establish standpoints, relationships or rivalries. It's basically an attempt to incite roleplay and create future opportunities for the GM to pick up. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Explore the basement. Besides the classical "slay the rats down there"-quest, the tavern basement may have an interesting encounter or feature that ties in with the world's lore or a future plot. Examples:
a) The winecellar is haunted. A ghost scares the bar maids and the PCs have to find out how to put it to rest.
b) The basement is older than the tavern and features a clue to a long forgotten cult on a wall behind a barrel
c) There is a secret passage to another building in the city.
d) Some kind of vermin or aggressive animal or non-intelligent monster has gotten in. XP for brave adventurers. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Take in the scene. A careful observer might just learn something about the people and the place sitting back quietly and watching his or her surroundings. Examples:
a) A table falls quiet as a patrol of the guard enters for a routine visit.
b) A rich merchant who wears a wedding rings, shows more than just a little interest in a certain barmaid.
c) Igrim, a young server is definitly distracted or worried by something. He's been making a lot of mistakes this evening.
d) Two women acknowledged each others presence shortly, but avoided eye contact ever since.
Perception or Insight checks, DC by GM's decision. (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Cooking Contest. Unhappy with the food? Think you can do better? Challenge the tavern's cook to a contest! Contesting skill checks ("profession cook" or whatever it is in your edition). (Geschichtenerzaehler)
Singing Wine Glasses. A tavernmaid was finishing up washing some wine glasses and was making them sing by sliding a wet finger along the rim and using different glasses filled at various levels to make different tunes. She is more than willing to say that her brother used to make songs with wine glasses, but he’s been adventuring for a while and she’d give anything just to recreate that familial feeling again. She describes different types of feelings that the songs elicited and asks the players what type of song they will try to play., where different moods will correspond to different skill checks : a) Sad - Deception, b) Happy - Performance, c) Love - Persuasion, and d) Creepy - Intimidation. DC 15 for a trinket that belonged to the brother who we learn is actually deceased. (Diamondwolf)
Tankard Pong. Played exactly like beer pong. Make DEX checks starting at DC 10 working up as tankards are removed from the playfield. PCs must also make CON saves with an increasing DC as they drink to not get drunk.
Tall Tales or Piss Taking. You have to give a very impossibly possible story where you did something to a collection of bullshitters. If someone calls you out, you must defend your plotline with another point whether factual or bullshit. (Th3R3493r)
Card Stab. A sacrificial set of cards and knife for each player are needed and all players must have blood in their hand. The point of the game is to stab into cards as they rest on a hand and take the most amount of cards without stabbing through all of them and drawing your own blood. The one with the most speared cards on the knife without blood on the tip wins. (Th3R3493r)
Coin Bounce. There are three forms of the game for each type of coin. The price of competing is coin you bounce. The coin must bounced into a mug of water and a straight shot will mean you forfeit the match. The first one to get the coin in wins unless the other side manages to double bounce the coin in on their next throw. Double bouncing the coin on the first try means the other side has already lost. (Th3R3493r)
Screaming Match. Just as it is advertised. The one who screams the loudest wins. The word or sound does not matter. So, far the loudest thing yelled was "QUIET!!!" by a elderly school teacher who came in for a pint and was heard in places over a country over who unknowingly won. (Th3R3493r)
Slap. Both sides just slap the other side once as hard as possible until they yield or pass out. Claw use and punching is outlawed and as long as they stand and can get up in a slow count of 5, they are still in. (Th3R3493r)
Skee-ball. 3 gp to play, 3 balls. DEX check. Up to you to decide DC, but outer ring gets you 5 sp, inner ring gets you 1 gp, center gets you 2 gp.
A Magician. An old wizard is using illusions to preform tricks to entertain the crowd. (Nerdypie12345)
Sack Toss. Same rules as sack toss, players toss a sack into a ramp with a hole some distance away. Players may choose to compete in pairs or alone. DC 10 STR check to lift the sack and throw it, but DEX check to aim for the hole. Allows for fun scenarios where a high STR check but a low DEX, like missing the hole completely and throwing a hole through the tavern wall, or hitting an important NPC as a way of meeting them.

Kennedy and Heidi: Vicarious Patricide as Tony’s Decompensation

At the risk of needless redundancy, I think it’s helpful to summarize Tony’s state of mind going into the episode Kennedy and Heidi. His consciousness is teeming with ancient but recently-agitated memories showcasing his father’s violence and toxic influence, like Johnny shooting a hole through Livia’s hairdo and baptizing him in the act of murder. He’s unable to shake stories of parental neglect leading to tragic outcomes for children. He’s painfully aware of Christopher’s hatred of him and desire for murderous revenge, feelings ultimately rooted in the fact that Tony guided him into the same corrupt existence into which he himself had been led by Johnny, Junior, and company, suggesting a reciprocal, if unconscious, rage by Tony towards those men. His subconscious mind is under constant assault from hats and movie posters and coffee mugs bearing the image of a bloody meat cleaver, an emblem of his own lost childhood innocence and inculcation by his father into his brutal, ugly vocation. He is racked with acute but intense guilt over the role he thinks his life’s example has played in shaping his son’s values and poor sense of self-worth. And he is still repressing a mountain of hurt over the fact that his uncle and second father tried not once but twice to kill him, a repression Melfi warned would someday result in a total collapse of his defense mechanisms, that is, a collapse of his paternal hero-worship and related quest for the macho validation that has prevented him from critically examining his father, uncle, and the men upon whom he modeled his life.
Now consider the circumstances immediately before the crash. Tony and Chris are on a routine drive back from business in Christopher’s new black Cadillac SUV (the first Cadillac Chris has ever owned, incidentally.) The conversation turns to life priorities. Chris, conspicuously clad in a Cleaver hat, specifically mentions how Kaitlyn has changed his priorities, and Tony mentions the “shit with Junior”. So the context is immediately pregnant with the fact that Junior shot and nearly killed Tony within the past year and with the fact that Chris is in a new place of responsibility, a position where he is, for the first time, truly the custodian and trustee for another life.
In a perfectly-timed illustration of just how ill-equipped Chris is to live up to those responsibilities, he nervously and repeatedly fiddles with the car stereo, fidgets, and widens his eyes, telegraphing to Tony that he is high as a kite on drugs. “Comfortably Numb” swells on the sound system as Tony stares at him, the lyrics underscoring that, in that moment, he does not see Chris as a youngster, as the “adorable kid” he once road around in the basket of his bicycle, but as a grown man:
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse Out of the corner of my eye I turned to look but it was gone I cannot put my finger on it now The child is grown, the dream is gone
Chris swerves, and the crash happens seconds later.

Tony as the Child in the Carseat

It’s critical to note that Tony initially manifests every intention of helping Chris, even as he’s fighting his own injuries. “I’m comin’,” he says as Chris asks for help. His expression and demeanor only change when he realizes what Chris means by “help”. “I’ll never pass a drug test,” Chris moans. “What?” Tony asks incredulously as Chris is inhaling his own blood. Almost simultaneously, Tony turns towards the back and sees that a tree limb has penetrated the passenger compartment, lodging in Kaitlyn’s car seat like a spear. While Tony would somewhat exaggerate the size of the branch in later narrations of the event, there’s no question that it was large enough to have impaled or seriously injured an infant.
Even after this warning shot over the bow, Tony apparently intends to help Chris, coming over to the driver’s side and breaking the window when he couldn’t get the door open. He draws his cell phone to call for help but stops when Chris again mentions being doped up, which suggests that Chris is more concerned about the legal consequences of his intoxication than about the fact that he is drowning in his own blood, completely belying his claim to a life newly ordered around the lofty priority of fatherhood.
That’s the moment when Tony forms a genuine murderous intent, an intent that has little to do with Christopher’s animosity towards him or the danger that he might flip. Those are conscious, background motives that help Tony rationalize and make sense of his actions later. But the factor impelling him to end Christopher’s life is his own, fundamental identification with the child who might just as easily have been killed or seriously harmed in that carseat.
To objectify this point, there is a slow pan of the limb sticking through the seat as Tony performs the suffocation, clearly not a shot representing Tony’s vision or gaze at that moment but objectively corroborating the earlier angle when Tony glances back and we see the seat from his point of view. The juxtaposition of these shots – subjective and objective – tells me the carseat is not just a convenient excuse for Tony. This is what he’s really feeling. In this moment, he is the phantom child in that carseat, a child whose safety and well-being come second to his father’s corrupt values and reckless self-indulgence, a child whose soul and humanity are metaphorically impaled by riding in and being taught to drive his father’s black Cadillac.
The exclamation point on the symbolism is provided by Christopher’s hat. Incredibly, it remains on his head throughout the crash and suffocation, its bloody cleaver logo pointing towards Tony when the car comes to rest. As Tony acts consciously on behalf of an innocent child, the symbol of his own lost childhood innocence is directly before him. And, for good measure, the cap and logo stare back at him in the hospital from the gurney laden with Christopher’s bloody clothing and the black bag containing his dead body. (The logo antagonizes Tony a final time from his coffee mug the next morning before he angrily tosses the mug into his backyard woods.)
Several points about the suffocation itself are remarkable. First was the look of absolute depravity on Tony’s face as he watched Christopher struggle to breathe. This look was unlike any ever seen on Tony’s face at any other moment in the series. Even when committing other personal and deadly acts of violence, his face and demeanor had always betrayed a commensurate level of animus, an active, passionate intent. In contrast, he reached through the window and pinched Christopher’s nose – and maintained that hold – with remarkable calm. His face and eyes throughout the suffocation were paradoxically both incredibly intense and completely devoid of human emotion, a look far more disturbing than any look of mere rage he’d ever worn before.
Second, although this act was, in my judgment, clearly about the release of Tony’s pent up rage towards his father figures, the method of killing evokes Livia. Besides her conspiracy with Junior to kill Tony (which she rationalized was for his own good) and general obsession with stories of child deaths, she had once threatened to “smother [her children] with a pillow” to save them from a fate she deemed even worse. Tony grabbed a pillow intending to smother her in the season one finale before nursing home personnel intervened. In Members Only, Tony spoke of being smothered with a pillow as a suitable form of euthanasia. Its functional equivalent at the scene of the crash had a definite vibe of putting Chris out of his own – and everyone’s – misery. So, in killing his “father”, Tony was also paradoxically suffocating his “son”, thereby channeling Livia’s filicidal urges and concept of mercy killing.
The most spine-tingling resonance with the scene comes from two season four episodes where Tony’s deep identification with “innocents” – be they children or animals – once again comes to the fore, as does his appreciation for the consequences of Chris continuing to use drugs. In Whoever Did This, Tony warns Christopher that he “can’t be high on heroine and raise kids.” And in The Strong, Silent Type, after learning that a doped-up Chris accidentally smothered and suffocated Adriana’s dog, Tony ominously snaps, “You suffocated little Cossette? I oughta suffocate you, you prick!” It’s such perfect foreshadowing that the earlier episodes seem to have been written with the outcome of Kennedy and Heidi in mind.

Righteous Retribution as the Explanation for Tony’s Lack of Sorrow

As previously noted, the most troubling aspect of the episode from the standpoint of character consistency and plausibility was not the fact that Tony murdered Chris. It was his vacuous expression during the killing and the fact that he never betrayed a moment’s genuine sorrow or regret afterwards. He remained, in fact, defiantly happy and unconflicted about it, especially to Melfi, and was sincerely troubled that neither she nor anyone else could see how Christopher’s death rescued Kaitlyn from a lifetime of risks and harm that she would naturally suffer as the daughter of a drug addict (and mob captain).
In his therapy scenes with Melfi, real and dream, Tony even makes the very contrast I raise, noting that he’s never felt this way after murdering any other person close to him. He alludes to his sorrow over Pussy and specifically allows that murdering Tony B left him “prostate [sic] with grief.” In effect, Tony himself is revealing that this killing feels righteous and justified to him on an instinctive level and is therefore not one about which he can feel guilt or sorrow.
That sentiment makes no sense if his dominant motives were those he talked about in therapy: Christopher’s animosity and resentment towards him after the Adriana hit and his drug-use and consequent risk to flip. Whatever weight those factors carry in justifying murder in the corrupt “ethics” of the mob (which, in any case, is less than the weight of the transgressions by Pussy and Tony B), they carry absolutely no legitimate moral weight outside it and could not sustain in Tony the sense of just triumph that he felt in response to Christopher’s death. What could inspire that sense of triumph is the perceived liberation of a child from a dangerous and toxic father, experienced subconsciously as vicarious retribution for the abuse and harm he himself suffered at the hands of his own father and uncle.

Significance of the Names “Kennedy” and “Heidi”

“Kennedy” and “Heidi” are the names of the young passenger and driver, respectively, in the car that sideswipes Christopher’s SUV before the fateful crash. The girls are barely onscreen a few seconds, just long enough to (somewhat artificially) learn their names in the following exchange:
Kennedy: Maybe we should go back, Heidi! Heidi: Kennedy, I’m on my learner’s permit after dark!
Much forum debate after the first airing of the episode centered around the significance, if any, of these names. I propose a related but even more basic question: why are the girls present in the scene at all?
Tony’s windfall opportunity to murder Chris and pass it off as death from accidental injury was entirely dependent upon being unobserved by others after the crash. Given Christopher’s intoxicated state and inattention to the curvy road while he fiddled with radio controls, a mere swerve and over-correction or swerve to avoid an animal (Tony’s crash with Adriana, anyone?) would have easily sufficed to trigger the accident but without the problematic involvement of another car, the driver of which would have to be made to flee the scene illegally and in contravention of the ethics and instincts of at least 95% of the motorists on the road. So the very fact that another car is involved, complicating both the story and the filming, suggests some symbolic or subtextual design to the involvement related specifically to the momentous event occurring right after the crash.
One aspect of that design is revealed and amplified when a grieving Kelly shows up at Christopher’s wake with dark hair framing her face and large, dark sunglasses covering her eyes. A member of the crew remarks, “Look at her. Like a movie star.” An odd look immediately crosses Tony’s face as he spontaneously responds, “Jackie Kennedy”, noting Kelly’s resemblance to the widow of John F. Kennedy.
In my mind, this striking moment in the episode can have only one purpose, and that’s to evoke Johnny Boy in relation to Christopher via a kind of symbolic math. If Kelly = Jackie Kennedy, then Chris = JFK = Johnny Boy since JFK was the explicit parallel figure for Johnny in In Camelot, the first episode of the series depicting cracks in the foundation of Tony’s paternal hero worship. When that foundation completely crumbles inside Tony’s subconscious a season and a half later, it’s entirely fitting that the JFK/Johnny parallel is renewed.
As for the name “Heidi”, most folks around these parts felt it was meant to evoke the idea of “orphan” because of the famous Swiss orphan tale of the same name and because Kaitlyn (and Paulie) both lost parents in the episode. That’s an entirely plausible analysis that requires no expansion, although I’m inclined to think there’s more to it than that, starting with the analogy of Tony himself to “Heidi”. No, Tony was never technically orphaned, though he arguably suffered more as the son of Johnny and Livia than if he had been. He was certainly deprived of real parental love and guidance, on both sides, and that roughly equates to the definition of “orphan”.
Before discussing this episode for the first time, I never knew that Heidi was the story of an orphan, only that it was some kind of tale for children. And I knew that only because of the epic 1968 football game between Joe Namath’s Jets and the Oakland Raiders, the climactic ending of which (an improbable comeback by the Raiders) was cut off abruptly for television viewers at the end of its scheduled broadcast slot so that a movie version of Heidi could begin airing on time. I was only four at the time of this debacle but recall my parents talking about it – and the considerable chaos it caused at NBC and at telephone switchboards around the country – for years afterwards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Game
It wouldn’t become clear until the end of Made In America, but there’s an obvious parallel to the Heidi phenomenon in the wind-up of The Sopranos. Consider that, like the Heidi Game broadcast, Made in America featured an abrupt, unexpected termination of excruciatingly tense action at a penultimate moment, pre-empting audience experience of what appeared to be an imminent and momentous climax. The Sopranos ending may not have disabled an entire telephone network, but it certainly generated an enormous amount of controversy that, for better or worse, persists to this day.
Beyond that, there were enough other football references in the final Sopranos episodes, and especially Jets references, to warrant further consideration of this football connotation for “Heidi”. In Remember When, Tony’s betting losses on Jets football games prompt his call to Hesh for a bridge loan. Later that same episode, Paulie annoys Tony and company with yet another old tale, this one relating how, after witnessing Joe Namath stagger drunk into a bar the night before a game, he bet a load of cash the following day on the Jets’ opponent. In Chasing It, Tony gets inside information on a Jets football game and is irate when Carmela refuses to bet money on it. The episode features a closeup of a large newspaper headline, “Jets Bomb Chargers”.
In Blue Comet, then-current coach of the Jets, Eric Mangini, makes a cameo appearance in Vesuvio, with Artie informing a suitably-impressed Tony so the two can go over and shake hands. News articles at the time clarified that the cameo wasn’t Mangini’s idea but the idea of Sopranos producers, who contacted him months in advance and made accommodations in the shooting schedule around his availability. So this seemed more than a casual desire to have some generic celebrity show up.
That especially seems true considering Mangini was given no dialog and that his meeting with Tony and Artie was only depicted in the silent background of a conversation between Charmaine and Carmela. Mangini’s only purpose on set was apparently to show his face briefly and to have the fact of his identity (Tony has to tell a bewildered Carm that Mangini is the head coach of the Jets) permeate the minds of the audience and the subtext of the scene, which is ultimately about chickens coming home to roost on Tony and Carmela because of the lives they chose.
As alter egos for Tony and Carmela throughout the series, folks who took the proverbial “other path” in life, Artie and (especially) Charmaine engage in subtle gloating in the scene. Football coaching was firmly established as Tony’s “road not taken” in Test Dream, so having an actual football coach present in the episode where the unsavory and downright deadly consequences of his chosen vocation are crashing in all around him provides dramatic ballast. All the better to have the coach in the scene be the coach of the team involved in the Heidi game in view of the ending planned for the following episode.
And speaking again of that ending, the wall behind Tony in Holsten’s is consumed with four large murals specifically brought in by the production crew for the shoot. The largest and most centered depicts a huge, light-colored building with lots of windows, somewhat reminiscent of the Inn at the Oaks in Tony’s coma dream. It’s apparently a high school, however, as it is flanked on either side by images of football players in full uniform with what appear to be names and year of graduation engraved at the bottom. To the side and extreme left is a mural of a tiger and the caption “Class of 1973” at the bottom. The tiger is presumably the mascot for the team and school represented in the other murals. So there is a strong symbolic presence of “football” in the last scene of the series, particularly of high school football from roughly the era when Tony would have entered high school.
Finally, though it may be completely insignificant, when Tony tells Carm about the accident from his hospital stretcher in Kennedy and Heidi, he mentions that he re-injured his knee, “the one from high school.” That certainly sounds like a reference to an old high school football injury.
If these loose strands from multiple episodes are indeed intended to connote football in relation to the name “Heidi”, what does that actually mean in the context of the episode Kennedy and Heidi? What does football have to do with Tony killing Chris or, more precisely, with him killing his father in the guise of Chris?
The linchpin in that symbolism, it seems to me, is Tony’s old high school football coach, the guy who would have been his coach when he originally injured his knee, the guy Tony dreamt repeatedly of trying to silence or kill, the guy whose puzzling duality in Test Dream suddenly makes sense when he’s viewed as a classic, Freudian composite of opposites, specifically a composite of Tony’s opposing father figures with Johnny dressed in the physiognomy of Coach Molinaro by Tony’s subconscious in order to render acceptable imagery of his latent, patricidal feelings.
If you further allow, as I do, that the Johnny look-alike shooting at Tony with a scoped rifle (ala Oswald/”Kennedy”) in that same dream is yet another Freudian “reversal into the opposite” by Tony’s subconscious to disguise his repressed paternal rage, then the Kennedy/Heidi connection is pretty clear. The names are presented proximate to the crash to connote that, in killing Chris, Tony has finally acted out the Test Dream imagery that haunted him for years: he has (symbolically) killed his father, the “Kennedy” and “Heidi” of his dream.

“He’s Dead”

In my judgment, this explains Tony’s otherwise puzzling, peyote-induced insight when he proclaims, “He’s dead,” after winning at roulette on 3 successive spins, prompting him to fall to the floor in spectacular and uncontrollable laughter. What other, real death could have inspired such a euphoric and epiphanic reaction? What real death could Tony only have appreciated while in a drug-induced, altered state of consciousness?
Many felt the line referred to Christopher because he’d just died, obviously, and because Tony’s gambling luck suddenly changed afterward. That analysis never made sense to me.
First, Tony plays roulette at the casino while sober when he first arrives in Vegas and loses every round. Chris was already dead at that time, as Tony well knew and accepted. Indeed, Tony was never in any state of denial about Christopher’s death (or about having killed him.) He embraced it, both consciously and in his dream therapy session with Melfi after the crash.
The “he’s dead” insight occurs only after Tony takes peyote and notices a sudden and complete about-face in gambling luck. Why would he need psychedelic drugs to suddenly realize what he already knew and accepted about Chris? And why would Christopher’s death be tied in his mind to his own gambling luck anyway? No prior connection between those two things had ever been suggested.
On the other hand, Tony’s sudden escalation in gambling, which coincided with the agitation and intensification of his latent rage towards his father(s), could easily be seen as a subconscious rebellion against the stern, anti-gambling lecture Johnny imparted the night Tony witnessed the cleaver incident. To the extent that the rebellion results in huge financial losses and self destruction, it obviously fails. His father retains ultimate power and authority. To the extent the rebellion results in huge winnings, it succeeds, and Tony vanquishes his father.
That conquest was the ineffable and elusive “high” that Tony was subconsciously pursuing in Chasing It but which he could not articulate to Melfi. Thus the sudden change in gambling fortune on his Vegas trip is easily tied in Tony’s drug-altered psyche to a euphoric realization that he has conquered or symbolically killed his father, none of which Tony could appreciate without a vastly altered state of consciousness.
And that leads to why he went to Vegas in the first place. He asks that question out loud to the Vegas prostitute, Sonia, immediately before admitting that Christopher once mentioned taking peyote with her. Tony then confesses to having always wanted to try the drug.
Clearly, then, he didn’t just happen to pick Vegas and didn’t just happen to make contact with this girl. His subconscious was pushing him to that venue because he craved the enlightenment of a peyote experience. So while Tony’s real motives for the murder, and for his otherwise inexplicable jubilance afterward, were completely closed off to his conscious mind, somehow he sensed their existence and yearned to unlock and understand them. However his peyote revelations didn’t stop with simply understanding why he killed Chris.

“I Get It. I Get It!”

Tony’s desert epiphany is a bookend to his near-death coma experience and, I believe, can only be fully understood in relation to it. Yet exploring that relationship is a journey all unto itself, calling not only for consideration of the coma episodes and Kennedy and Heidi but the meaning of the cut to black that ends the series. While exploring the religious and spiritual underpinnings of those episodes is of even more weight and interest to me personally than the issue of Tony’s motives in killing Christopher, it deserves and demands its own, dedicated discussion. For now, I’d simply like to posit what I strongly believe Tony’s epiphany to have been with only minimal argumentation as to why I hold that belief.
The epiphany is presaged when Tony enters the casino on his peyote trip and notes that the roulette wheel is built on the same principle as the solar system. The ball spins round and round the center or “sun” of the wheel because of two delicately-balanced but largely opposing phenomena: the momentum of the ball (which, without the wheel, would carry the ball away in a straight line) and the centripetal force of the wheel (applied by the rim, which continuously pulls the ball towards the center even as the ball’s momentum continuously pulls it on a path perpendicular to the centripetal force.) The antagonism (or cooperation, if you prefer) of the forces gives rise to a unified system: an orbit.
If this sounds a bit like the Bell Labs scientist’s explanation of how two tornadoes are in fact just facets of one, unified system of wind, it’s likely no mere coincidence. As Hal Holbrook’s character argued, separateness is a mirage. The universe, and everything in it, is one big soup of molecules interacting in cause/effect fashion according to laws, making it one whole, not a bunch of discrete parts. “Everything is everything,” as the black rapper reduced it.
That was the philosophy that really made an impression on Tony in the days and weeks following his coma. The principles of quantum physics articulated by Holbrook’s character are likely as close as you can get to a scientific codification of Bhuddism and therefore reinforced much of what the Bhuddist monks conveyed to Tony in his coma. The monks laughed when Tony claimed he wasn’t Finnerty and explained that there really is no “you” and “me, that death would bring an obliteration of individuality. Separate consciousness – and the consciousness of separateness – is an illusion of the living.
So all this laid the philosophical groundwork for Tony’s Las Vegas trip. In that trip, Tony seeks out a girl with whom Chris had slept, then sleeps with her himself. He mentions having refrained from a longstanding desire to try peyote because he always felt the weight of his responsibilities, an implied contrast to Christopher, who always indulged in drugs despite his responsibilities. The idea that Tony was seeking to almost live life in Christopher’s skin in the Las Vegas portion of the episode was something several posters mentioned in first discussions after Kennedy and Heidi aired. Even the girl, Sonia, remarks how similar Tony and Chris are, a somewhat dubious observation that somehow offends Tony but which also helps define his impending epiphany.
That epiphany is spurred when the rising sun flares at him over the desert mountain vista. This recalls Tony’s earlier comparison of the roulette wheel to the solar system. It also resonates completely with the fact that Kevin Finnerty was a solar heating salesman from Kingman, Arizona, a town which, not coincidentally, lies 95 miles southeast of Las Vegas and shares the same desert landscape. Also not coincidental, IMO, is the fact that in the prior episode, Christopher spoke of the perks of joining witness protection and of “living large” in Arizona.
So I believe that, in that desert sunrise on the cusp of Arizona, in fulfillment of his identity as Kevin Finnerty, solar heating salesman, Tony saw his “son” – Christopher – “rise” and realized that, in murdering him days before, he (Tony) was really “rising” as a “son” against Johnny Boy. And in that linkage, he suddenly realized that “everything is [indeed] everything.” He is both Chris and Johnny Boy, both abused and misguided son and abusing, misguiding father. He is murdering uncle and would-be murdered nephew. He is both the mother that sees suffocation as mercy killing and the son who is suffocated. Christopher is both his son and his father. Johnny Boy is Coach Molinaro. “Kennedy” is “Heidi”. Opposites are really two sides of the same coin. In that fleeting moment of insight, Tony was truly feeling “one” with the universe.

The Second Coming

The episode following Kennedy and Heidi is titled The Second Coming after the Yeats poem that grips AJ in the English lit class he’s auditing. While the poem speaks to the bleakness of his depression and outlook on life at that particular time, there’s little doubt that – like everything of substantial weight in the Sopranos universe – it ultimately relates, first and foremost, to Tony. First referenced in the Cold Cuts therapy session dealing with pent-up rage where Tony’s deep shame from the cleaver incident is finally revealed, the poem seems the veritable inspiration for the storyline (as interpreted in this article) that culminates in Christopher’s murder:
The Second Coming By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The widening gyre, the orbit that breaks down when the center can no longer hold, is clearly a parallel to the decompensation of which Melfi warned, the point at which Tony’s defenses after Junior’s second murder attempt could no longer hold and the underlying pathological rage at his fathers would take over. True to the poem, a “blood-dimmed tide was loosed”, inspired by a perverse compassion for the “innocent”. While “the best” all mourned Christopher and thought his death a tragedy, Tony, “the worst”, was full of passionate intensity and could not understand why no one else saw the greater good in Christopher’s death.
The “revelation” occurs in a “waste of desert sand”, imagery easily compatible with Tony’s “I get it” moment in the Nevada/Arizona desert. The uniquely depraved look on his face as he suffocated Christopher is evoked by the line describing a “gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun”. “Twenty years of stony sleep” refers to the decades of denial Tony maintained, the defense mechanisms that kept him all his life from confronting and admitting that, in some very real ways, he hated his father. It’s a figurative sleep that was suggested literally in the noted fact that so many episodes in season 6B started with Tony in a deep sleep. Somnolence was suggested even in the choice of the song “Comfortably Numb” as soundtrack in the moments immediately preceding the crash, the moments right before the hour of the “rough beast” finally arrived. Even the incidentals are perfect allusions, as with the image of “stony sleep” being turned into a nightmare by a “rocking cradle”, or, in this case, by a car seat with a branch sticking through it.
I’m intrigued by the line describing the emerging beast as having “lion body”. It may mean absolutely nothing. But among the story points worth considering in relation to it are the tiger on the wall in Holsten’s and the enigmatic cat in Made In America.
More obscure is the fact that in Remember When, the single episode most explicitly dealing with the violent release of stifled paternal rage, Carter Chong described his grandfather as a “lion” and noted that his father owned “Grumman” stock. (Grumman manufactured a number of high-profile fighter military aircraft, most of them named for some kind of cat, e.g., Panther, Jaguar, Tomcat, Tigercat.) Carter was reviewing these facts to himself in the scene immediately preceding his vicious attack on Junior, suggesting that, in acting out on his stifled paternal hatred, he was adopting the predatory, aggressive characteristics of a wild cat. Notably, when Junior, the paternal surrogate who modeled this kind of aggressive behavior to Carter, was seen at the end of that episode bruised and literally defanged, his sunken mouth void of false teeth, he was stroking a harmless little housecat on his lap. Once a lion, the former mob boss was a lion no more.

Asbestos Dumping as a Metaphor for Tony’s Toxic Spill of Rage

Kennedy and Heidi opens with a controversy between Tony and Phil Leotardo over asbestos disposal. One of Tony’s contractors was removing asbestos from old buildings, while following none of the strict (and expensive) asbestos-handling laws regulating worker and public safety, and was seeking to dump completely uncontained truck-fulls at waste stations controlled by Phil. Phil’s guys were denying the trucks the right to dump. As a consequence, huge, openly-smoking asbestos mounds were building up at job sites.
After Christopher’s death, Tony was doing little to find a solution, skipping town to gamble, get laid, and get high and leaving the contractor high and dry. Finally, near the very end of the episode, the contractor dumps heaps of asbestos at dawn in an open marsh area resembling the New Jersey Meadowlands.
Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral that gained widespread use in the 19th and 20th centuries as an ingredient in various building industry materials – including wall compounds, insulation, and roofing materials – primarily because of its extreme insulative properties and resistance to heat and fire. In the last 40 years, it’s become better-known for its cancer-causing and toxic effects on those mining and working with it in manufacturing, demolition/remodeling, or other “raw” environments.
Both the heat resistance and toxicity of asbestos make the shoddy removal/dumping storyline a compelling metaphor for Tony’s equally shoddy “dumping” in Kennedy and Heidi. The smoldering heat and flames from his hatred towards his father and uncle were contained beneath his consciousness by an insulating firewall of denial and repression. In essence, this denial and repression was Tony’s psychological asbestos, and it (more or less) contained the heat and fire within him for 47 years.
But it finally broke down, allowing the flames to rage and do damage and necessitating a messy disposal. Unfortunately the breakdown didn’t happen where it should have, in his therapist’s office as the result of honest introspection and dialog about little things like his uncle trying to kill him twice and his father indoctrinating him to murder at 22. That would have been the equivalent of careful, legally-compliant asbestos removal. Instead the breakdown occurred in a roadside ravine and the resulting “waste [in the] desert sand” was every bit as toxic as the smoking piles illegally dumped in the Meadowlands immediately before the desert epiphany and which we saw reprised in the very first shot of the following episode.
Think about that for a moment. Tony’s “I get it” moment was literally sandwiched between shots of noxious mounds of asbestos blowing in the New Jersey wind, a significant clue that some other kind of perversely cathartic disposal was in the middle of that sandwich.

The Orbit of the ‘Blue Comet’: Long Journey to Nowhere

It’s fair to ask: if the broad strokes of my interpretation are valid, what impact did the epiphany have on Tony going forward? After the drugs wore off, did he actually retain any specific understanding of his subconscious motives for killing Chris? Was he left only with the impression that he had enjoyed a very brief moment of enlightenment but without intellectual distillation of the enlightenment itself?
Because the insight was founded upon the secret that he had murdered Chris, even if Tony had retained it, he couldn’t overtly share it with anyone. Still, I lean toward the interpretation that the specifics (at least the ones I proffered) were lost to him when the altered state of consciousness ceased. When he tried to describe the magic of what he experienced in the desert to his crew, he could only come up with the most mundane, inadequate words: “The sun . . . came up.” They all looked at him like he was half retarded.
He was slightly more specific with Melfi, offering that he saw “for pretty certain” that this reality is not all there is. He couldn’t define the alternative but was still convinced there was “something else”.
He did speak in therapy of appreciating a balance and unity in opposites that he hadn’t appreciated before, a “ying” [sic] and “yang”. And he offered that “mothers are like buses . . . the vehicle that gets us here,” but that, once here, we are all on our own, individual journeys (mothers included.) So, to the extent his epiphany comported with what he revealed in therapy, it seems to have had little to do with fathers and with Christopher’s murder and more to do with letting go (finally) of some of his issues with his mother.
But perhaps the best clue to his residual state of understanding came when he indicated that some of what he thought he had grasped in the desert now eluded him. “You think you know, you think you learn something . . . like when I got shot,” he begins. Then, speaking specifically about the peyote experience, he reports that the insight gained is “kinda hard to describe. . . . You know, you have these thoughts, and you almost grab it . . . and then . . . ftt.” He flicks his fingers away from his chin as if to indicate “nothing”. So, to paraphrase Edna St. Vincent Millay, a fragment of what he knew remains, but, apparently, the best is lost.
It wouldn’t take long for all of it to be lost. By the time Tony sits with AJ’s female therapist in Made In America, “going about in pity” for himself because of who his mother was, he has come full circle, essentially back to where he was to start the series. Like a “blue comet”, his orbit was highly elliptical, if not erratic, and carried with it the potential of veering off into deep space or crashing into the sun. But despite killing his own nephew, having a near-death experience himself, and saving his son from an act of suicide, the orbit held. The sober breakthrough never came. The repudiation of his father and of his way of life never took hold in his consciousness. And so, by series’ end, we, like Tony, were exhausted from a long journey that ultimately took us nowhere.
Part 1
Part 2
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Part 4
Part 5

I look up bills in my state every once in a while for things I am interested in just to stay informed. After seeing poker lumped in as a "games of chance" like bingo and slot machines I wrote a bit of a rant to my representatives. Thought I would share what I wrote incase anyone here wanted to use it.
I know it's COVID and there are bigger issues. But even more the reason to allow online play. You might want to remove my reference to the Washington States Senate bill, but I'm sure something similar exists for you. For the most part, these emails are actually read. So it's not a waste of time to change what I have a little email it to a few people.
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Find your reps: https://www.commoncause.org/find-your-representative/add
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Hello, my name is [Name] and I live in [State] District [your disctrict number]. I am writing to you to voice my support for online poker and explain why it should be legalized. I was prompted to write this email after skimming a few senate bills, one of which (S-1558.1) read this:
"An affirmative vote of sixty percent of both houses of the legislature is required before offering any game allowing or requiring a player to become eligible for a prize or to otherwise play any portion of the game by interacting with any device or terminal involving digital, video, or other electronic representations of any game of chance, including scratch tickets, pull-tabs, bingo, poker or other cards, dice, roulette, keno, or slot machines. Approval of the legislature shall be required before entering any agreement with other state lotteries to conduct shared games;"
The part of this bill that is particularly inaccurate is classifying poker as a "game of chance". A game of chance would imply a fixed probability of a person winning or losing. Rolling dice has a 1:5 chance of hitting the number you want, Slot Machines are a programmed payout %, and all other games listed here fit in that category. But Poker does not. But the defining characteristic I think you should pay attention to here is that in the world of gambling the house has this fixed edge using probabilities. So no matter what a person does the house will always have a 3-20% edge. For example, if you are playing roulette, no matter what you do you have a ~47% chance of winning. Meaning the house has a 6% edge.
Yes, there are scenarios in poker where you can get lucky, but that is with any game or sport. The chance of it raining, the chance of twisting your ankle, the chance of sneezing. But aside from that, Poker it is far from a game of chance. This is most easily proven by the mere existence of professional poker players. People who are skilled at poker, win way more often than they lose on average.
The house has no edge in poker, individuals have an edge, but only based on their skill level. Skills include, but are not limited to:

Knowing the value of your hand compared to the possible value of your opponents hands given the cards on the board.
Knowing the probability of improving of your hand (If I need a heart, there is a 25% chance of that coming. If I need a King after the flop I have ~16% chance of winning)
Knowing how to bet (and how much to bet), or call, or fold based on the value of your hand and the odds of it improving.

These are all skills that a person can possess to have an edge over other people. However, there is no edge for the house. This dynamic exists in many games, there is no difference in playing poker for money than there is in entering a singing contest for money. They both mostly involve the skill of the person vs their opponents, the only difference is that odds of getting a heart on the next card or getting a King after the flop are perfectly predictable opportunities of chance in poker, therefore more noticeable. But the luck involved in singing like humidity that day, technical issues, or getting sick are much hard to measure, therefore less noticeable.
Finally, I want to compare poker to something that is legal, truly a game of chance, and damaging to low income populations–the lottery. Online poker can easily be regulated and will mostly be played by higher income earners. Yes, it is possible for people to be addicted, but people can be addicted to anything. Being online vs in person does not make a difference as to how an addict will behave. However, the lottery is more addictive and specifically targets low income areas. The fact that the lottery is legal and people can pay $10 - $100 a week on a game that they have a near 0 chance of "winning", but cannot play online poker with that same money and improve their chances overtime just does not make any logical sense.
If someone is addicted to poker, they will play poker. The only difference is that you are forcing them into playing in person where the cheapest game is $300 to buy in. But the advantage of online poker is, those same people can get their fix buying in for $10. By making online poker illegal, you are hurting the very people you say you are protecting even worse. Poker was made famous in America with online poker, now we are the one of the only countries beside Iran and North Korea where it is illegal. If [State] truly is a progressing place, you will reconsider your stance in online poker and make it legal and regulated the same way New Jersey, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Delaware have.
Thank you for taking the time to read my position.

Mobile gambling
If you plan to develop an app with the ability to deposit and withdraw real money, then such a product automatically falls into the category of gambling and you will need to license your business for successful operation.
Mobile and Web Based Apps
So let’s talk about the different kinds of online gambling apps available on web and mobile. We’ll be covering both free-play gaming apps and real money casino app games you can find for iOS, Android devices and web browsers.
Mobile gambling is more common for poker, casino, bingo, and skill games. They have advantages in terms of a low barrier to enter the market, instant liquidity, product knowledge, and marketing expertise, minimal infrastructure costs, and the ability to bring a brand to the market quickly. Consequently, this form of gambling does not sit neatly with jurisdictional boundaries. Multiple gambling opportunities are available, including betting on various events and markets, in a relatively simple format. Gambling products can also be integrated into betting on television shows or virtual racing and sports games as well as offering lotteries, bingo, poker and casino games.
Most Popular Gambling Apps
Sports betting, casino, poker and lotteries are the most popular forms of online gambling. However, other forms are available too. These include the following: Bingo, slot machines, different card games, roulette and other game of chance. One of the best things about online gambling and betting apps is the number of choices you have.

Sports Betting

Betting means making or accepting a bet on the outcome of a race, competition, or other event or process, the likelihood of anything occurring or not occurring, or whether anything is or is not true. Today most sports betting is done via mobile-friendly sites and apps.

Today most sports betting is done via mobile-friendly sites and apps.

The introduction of live betting for sports like soccer and tennis means that bettors who are sitting inside stadiums watching games can now pick up their mobile devices and find real-time betting value with the best sports gambling apps. This has really unlocked a door to the future of sports gambling and the popularity of online gambling apps.

Poker

Many sites offer free poker, where no real money is wagered, although in some cases players can accumulate credits that can be exchanged for prizes. This is the case why people are going to play for real money. There is an ongoing debate over whether poker should be classified as a game of chance or skill. The parameters of legal poker playing are still unclear and differ between jurisdictions. Since you are not gambling with money, I’m pretty sure under the law it’s just a video game for now.

Blackjack

Blackjack is the game of choice to many high-rollers and do you know why? Because blackjack is a challenging, logic and skill-based game where your thinking, strategy, and calculations determine the outcome of the game.

Bingo

Bingo is one of the most popular and socially accepted games in the world. Bingo is a traditional form of gambling that has seen considerable innovation in recent years. It is also the only form of gambling recognized in the Gambling Act that does not have a specific statutory definition, the Act providing simply that “bingo” means “any version of that game, irrespective of by what name it is described”. Bingo must be played as an equal chance game. For game to be classed as “bingo” it must meet the Act’s definition of “equal chance gaming” (as opposed to casino gaming). Thus, it: must not involve playing or staking against a bank, and must be a game in which the chances are equally favorable to all participants in the sense that each ticket or chance has the same probability of success as any other.
Licensed bingo is a well-regulated and socially responsible form of gambling that takes place in a safe environment. Many sites offer multiple forms of bingo with different features, types of games, and costs of play. These sites often cater specifically for women and some research suggests that they may appeal to markets who would not typically engage in traditional forms of gambling.

Slots

Slot machine is one of the most beloved game among the gambling community and it has been a part of the industry for a long time. They provide fun and entertainment and their simplicity allows gamers to start playing at once. This can play out in different ways depending on the machine you’re playing. For instance, there’s Pick a Fortune, a five-reel, 20 line game that puts players right in the studio of a television game show, including the potential to play a Deal or No Deal-style bonus round. A super trend over the past few years is mobile-friendly slot games. These apps and websites were developed to enable players to enjoy their favorite games on their smartphones at any time. Another dominant slot trend is licensed branded slots that are based on popular movies, television, and musicians.
Virtual Money vs Real Money
Let’s find out the difference between social gambling and real money gambling, as well as the differences between gambling through apps and gambling through a web browser. It can be quite confusing trawling through all the casinos, slots, and lotteries available, both through your mobile web browser as well as through mobile app stores, in the form of downloadable apps.

Virtual money

The main difference between virtual money and real money gambling is that the in-game virtual currency in social games and gambling-type games is used only like credits that are not paid out as winnings or anything given to player in cash, making these games exempt from gambling regulations.

Virtual money is loaded on user game accounts via in-app purchases in mobile applications or the game balance funding from a card via web based applications.

Real money gambling

Real money gambling via your mobile device is only allowed in countries where laws have been passed that allow for this type of gambling online, or there are no laws in place that prevent it. The payment systems are the legal way of services payment in the gambling app, performing as the intermediary between the gambling facility and the client. With their help, users replenish deposits and withdraw funds to personal accounts in financial institutions. If the application uses the payment system of a well-known brand, that gives players additional confidence in the resource. Nowadays, there is a wide range of payment systems, some of which operate all over the world, other systems are oriented towards the citizens of one or several countries. A number of services accept money of different world currencies, while others allow currency transactions of one state only.
What is an Online Gambling Licensing
The internet has a global audience, there’s no single piece of legislation that covers the legality of online gambling for the entire world. Mobile gambling doesn’t typically accept customers from every single country in the world. It often focuses on certain specific regions.

Instead, most countries have their own local laws that deal with the relevant legal and regulatory issues.

Ultimately, questions of legality all go back to the location of the casino or where the website operates out of. In closed regulatory systems, such as Italy, France, and the Netherlands, licenses, and advertising rights are limited to domestic providers, which must be located within their country’s geographical boundaries and these are only permitted to offer some types of products. Some jurisdictions, for example, Norway, Sweden, and Canada legalize and regulate online gambling, but this is limited to a single site that is owned by the government. Under such an approach, the government becomes the operator and regulator and all revenues are returned to the government.
Remote gambling is generally permitted. That means that an operator that is licensed may provide gambling services to citizens in the country via all forms of remote communication (and using equipment that may be located in the country or abroad). Equally, a remote operator may be licensed to offer gambling services to citizens in any jurisdiction in the world using equipment located in the country. The law provides that, for each type of gambling (betting, gaming, and participating in a lottery), there will be two forms of license available: remote and non-remote forms (land-based). If you provide facilities for remote gambling, online or through other means, and advertise to consumers you will need a license from the licensing jurisdictions or local licensing authorities. Before an online gambling site signs up its first customer, before it accepts its first bet before the first card is dealt, it must be licensed by a recognized governmental entity.

Certain regions in the world have specific legislation in place that allows them to license and regulate companies that operate online gambling sites or provide industry services (such as the supply of gaming software). These regions are referred to as online gambling jurisdictions or licensing jurisdictions.

Depending on what type of entertainment you are going to implement in your internet establishment, you will have to apply for the corresponding permissions. Online gambling laws in Europe vary from one country to the next. The industry is well regulated in some countries and less so in others. There are several online gambling jurisdictions located in Europe. Some of these are members of the European Union (EU), and thus subject to the various rules and regulations of that body, while others are independent. Each of these jurisdictions has an authority that’s responsible for approving gambling sites for licenses that enable them to offer their services legally. They also regulate their licensees.
Countries that Provide Gambling Licensing
Today there are lots of licensing jurisdictions located all over the world and offering different terms for their customers. Depending on the country, licenses can be local, international (distributed in several countries), have a different set of documents for registration, costs of registration and further support, various operating conditions and other special details.

Which gambling license is both internationally recognized?

The government of Ireland offers casino operators, software, and service providers in the gambling industry, with a gambling license that allows gambling operators to conduct business related to casino, lotto, and other gaming-related activities. Ireland Gambling License is one of the most popular license for online casinos worldwide. Ireland has long been recognized as one of the preferred locations for Online Gambling operators to base their operations. This success has been due to a combination of factors, such as a progressive legislative system, political stability, first-rate telecommunications facilities, and a well established financial services industry. A wide range of gambling sites operates out of Ireland including sports betting, casino sites, poker, bingo, and more.
In stark contrast, the UK is the largest regulated market for online gambling in the world, and corporations are already comfortable exploiting the intersections of gambling and gaming, betting in-play, social gaming, Bitcoin, financial trading and spread betting, betting exchanges, e-sports and, most profitably, mobile gambling. 40% and 60% of online gambling in the UK took place in Gibraltar.

International licensing

Europe is home to the following online gambling jurisdictions: Alderney, Gibraltar, Isle of Man, Malta. Malta is currently the country that is most accommodating to gambling companies, and the license offers whitelisted online gambling in sports and casino games in many European territories. But takes an extreme amount of time in paperwork and background checks. Also, you pay 5% of all your gross profit to the EU.

Among countries offering gambling licensing services, the attention should be paid to Curaçao jurisdiction, which is considered to be one of the most promising for the online gaming business.

Curaçao Internet Gaming Association (also known as Curaçao eGaming) is both a regulator and a licensor, and its licensing works worldwide except Curaçao itself, USA, France and Netherlands. Using Curacao as an example, let us examine in detail the process of obtaining a license, the necessary documents and expenses.
How to get a License on Curaçao

Documents necessary for company registration:
criminal record;
passport scans;
bank account confirmation;
documents proving payments for utility services.

After the company is registered, an operator can apply for the license providing the following documents:

a document certifying the right of domain possession;
description of games planned to be used in the project;
a list indicating countries of potential operation;
illustration of server locations to be used in the project;
a copy of the agreement with a software provider.

Gambling license cost:

Bank account opening $1000
Company registration $3600
Company management per year $3600
Application processing fee $1000
License fee per year $4800
Equipment/software fee starting from $1500
Server maintenance per year $6000

Apart from that pay for technical support and maintenance every year. The entire license issuing process takes between 2-4 weeks. Curacao Internet Gaming Association (CIGA) also has the power to review a license and, if it finds that an operator has breached a license condition, has the power to impose a range of sanctions including revocation of the license.
Apple and Google Gambling Rules
You’ll be surprised at the limited number of real money gambling app options available on the AppStore and Google Play Store. Most real money casino gaming is done through gambler’s mobile web browsers and not through mobile gambling apps that you’ll find for iPhone and Android phones. Apple allows online gambling applications in a few forms, and not just in places where it is explicitly permitted. They do not allow any payments through the applications – those have to be done on the websites. Apple has far stricter developer guidelines for iOS apps than Google does for Android apps, so it’s fine to assume that whatever you choose to download from iTunes is usually safe, secure, and meets a certain standard.

Any real money casino in the iTunes app is required to have proper licensing and permissions before Apple will approve the app for use or downloads. While Google Play is technically regulated, it is much more loose in what can be hosted.

Apple Store

Gambling, gaming, and lotteries can be tricky to manage and tend to be one of the most-regulated offerings on the App Store. Apple has rules for apps that support real money wagering, including sports betting and poker. Those apps and lotteries must have necessary licensing and permissions in the locations where the App is used, must be geo-restricted to those locations, and must be free on the App Store, and Apple rate even simulated gambling apps as appropriate only for users 17-years-old and up.

Play Store

Google keeps the reigns tight. To be able to successfully upload apps to the Google Play store, developers need to have a valid license for the specific countries they are targeting and comply with their regulations. The app must be free to download and must prevent under-age users from gambling in the app. As a final precaution, all gambling apps are required to display prominent information regarding responsible gambling practices. This brings its policy in line with the Apple App Store.
Countries where gambling is illegal
It is also important to remember that while gambling is growing rapidly in many places, in others it is totally or partially prohibited. As well as in the majority of the US, sports betting is illegal in India, Pakistan, and China, three of the largest gambling markets in the world. Most countries have rules against gambling. Almost all Islamic countries prohibit gambling of every kind, but many turn a blind eye to online gambling or simply do not have regulations in place for this grey area.
In the United Arab Emirates, however, any kind of gambling is prosecuted. National lotteries are the only legal forms of wagering on the Asian country’s mainland. Cambodia, North Korea strictly forbids online and offline gambling amongst its own citizens but allows tourists to participate in these activities.
Qatar is the strictest country of all when it comes to gambling laws. All forms of gambling activities are considered illegal, and even sports betting is not permissible.
Starting your own gambling product
Numerous online casino platforms in the market offer fantastic casino games like bingo, poker, roulette, and many more.

If you have an idea, but don’t know where to start, we advise you begin with a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) to pilot your proof of concept for investors. MVP spotlights your core features and lets your investors know there are bigger and better things to come.

For MVP you do not need a large team, just a few people are enough to create a fully functioning prototype. In the case of successful numbers of your prototype, the further development of a full-fledged product will require more team, resources and time, however you will be sure that your development and your costs will pay off.

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