BogdanProblem is a subreddit for GTA Online players to find partners to grind the Doomsday Act 2 heist with. All platforms are welcomed. Note that scamming will result in a ban. - A list of scammers is available in the sidebar and menu tab. - Also, NEW ACCOUNTS < 30 DAYS OLD HOST FIRST. This is to prevent potential scammers using alternative accounts.
[Video Games] The Rise and Fall and Rise Again and Fall Again of Lab Zero Games
The last drama post I did about Kuma Miko seemed to have gotten some praise, but some wished to see a Hobby Drama post that had consequences outside “people got angry over it”. So without any further delay, here’s a story about a studio that’s close to my heart, one that I’ve backed twice and seen die twice. Note: This is a fairly lengthy drama, so forgive me if I’m not able to provide all of my sources. Most of the front half of this comes from this video, which chronicles the first half of Lab Zero entirely in Russian. From Ahad to Mike Z Let’s start in the beginning. Alex Ahad is a freelance illustrator who, in between other work, had created character designs for a prospective fighting game. Mike Zaimont is a professional fighting game player best known for games like BlazBlue and Marvel Vs. Capcom, but since 1999 had been coding a custom engine in his free time, which he hoped could be used for a fighting game. The two met in 2008, and the two quickly realized that with each other’s help, their dream could come true. In 2010, the two joined the newly developed game studio Reverge Labs. Joining their team was Mariel “Kinuko” Cartwright, a friend of Ahad’s and daughter of a Disney animator who helped animate games such as Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Shantae; Peter Bartholow, who acted as CEO of Reverge as well as their PR arm; and an assortment of other animators and designers. Their goal: a fighting game in the style of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 with hand-drawn animation that they called Skullgirls. After obtaining publishers in Autumn Games and Konami (at the time of development the Microsoft required indie devs to have a retail publisher in order to bring their games to Xbox Live Arcade), the team got to work on Skullgirls. Initial impressions were favorful - people liked Ahad’s unique character designs, the fluid animation, and the solid engine Mike Z built - but upon release, there were some concerns. The time and money needed to develop each character meant a starting roster of only eight characters, a far cry from other fighting games (the original MvC had 15 characters in 1998), and due to the team trying to get the game out, there was no in-game move list. Some were also concerned that the cast, consisting entirely of women, was too fanservice-filled, although Bartholow said that the characters were just attractive women who could fight as opposed to characters using their sexuality in battle (Ahad said that sex wasn’t his main focus, he just wanted to have monster girls fight each other). The team at Reverge Labs stressed that they would continue to update the game, with plans to add DLC if the game sold well enough. Good thing nothing could go wro- Everything goes wrong Alongside publishing Skullgirls, Autumn Games and Konami had previously published a karaoke game called Def Jam RapStar. Unfortunately, around March 2012, the time Skullgirls released, both parties were at the end of several lawsuits made against them - one argued that Autumn and Konami did not get the rights to some of the songs used in the game, while another claimed that the game was funded with a bank loan which Autumn Games was unable to pay back. The result of these costly lawsuits was that Autumn was unable to pay Reverge the money made from Skullgirls - this led to the entire Reverge team being laid off around July, and the future of the game in the air. And so, the team decided on a whim to reconvene as a new development studio, Lab Zero Games. At a fundraiser for breast cancer research which included a fighting game tournament, Mike Z revealed the first DLC fighter and promised that new information about her and the team would be posted soon. This would turn out to be an Indiegogo fundraising campaign that asked for $150,000 to develop the first DLC fighter, with more characters promised if people backed enough. In the end, $829,829 was raised in the campaign, enough to fund five DLC characters, a bevy of stages and voice packs, and other features. It was quickly becoming a cult classic. The Skullgirls Curse And so work on Skullgirls DLC was underway. However, a variety of events happened to befall Lab Zero during development, some causing controversy and others just annoying the team. Some dubbed this “The Skullgirls Curse”. So let’s go over some of them:
Paypal Woes: During the Indiegogo DLC campaign, Lab Zero announced that Ahad had created around 30 prospective designs for DLC characters, and that there would be a vote to see which characters would be the two “mystery characters” teased in the Indiegogo campaign. As you would guess, this caused the Skullgirls fanbase to get heated, to the point where some stressed that they would ask Indiegogo for their money back if their character didn’t win. PayPal, who managed the funds for this campaign, was concerned about these threats and put nearly all of the money on hold. Bartholow tried to negotiate with PayPal, and was eventually able to get the funding - once PayPal was given a hefty sum as collateral.
Bad Juju - If you notice on the list of prospective DLC characters, one character is Juju, a character who was designed by Ahad from a fan’s suggestion on a Whiteboard Wednesday art stream. Ahad seemed to like the idea of the character, and kept building her up until she became a legit character in the game. The original fan made a joke on Facebook that he’d like to be compensated for the design, which led Lab Zero to negotiate obtaining the character rights from him. They eventually worked out a contract that would give them the rights to the character, but only if the original fan didn’t reveal it until Lab Zero announced it themselves. The fan then posted about it on the Skullgirls forum the very next day, breaking the NDA immediately and making it so that Lab Zero couldn’t use the character at all.
Don’t be (Red) Cross with me: One of the characters included in the base game of Skullgirls is Valentine. As you can tell, the two biggest features of her character are her being a nurse and a ninja - as such, her costume is decorated with red crosses. This was upsetting to the real Red Cross, which fights hard to prevent its trademark from being associated with violence - as such, when they came to the Skullgirls publisher demanding a change, all red crosses in the game had to be changed to magenta.
#FucKonami: In November 2013, due to Konami barely helping at all with the publishing process for Skullgirls (they refused to greenlight any patch or DLC until Lab Zero tested it itself on their own time and money, they didn’t help with Microsoft’s certification process for Xbox, etc), Lab Zero dissolved their publishing agreement. This led to a massive snafu where, due to the dissolution, the original Skullgirls was taken down on consoles, and Lab Zero had to scramble to get a new publisher on the consoles side and then reupload the game as Skullgirls: Encore. It was a tangled web of issues which the above YouTube video relays, but required certification from both console storefronts and even the Japan storefront, as their publisher there was also coincidentally being dissolved at the same time without Lab Zero knowing.
EVO 2014: During one of the largest fighting game tournaments of 2014, Skullgirls was promised a space for airing their tournament stream by controller distributor Madcatz. Lab Zero and Autumn provided a pot for the tourney, and everything was smooth sailing - until a multitude of delays made it so that the entire time Skullgirls had for streaming was replaced with Tekken tournaments. By the time these issues were fixed, only the final four matches were able to be shown.
What’s the worst kind of ship? Censor-SHIP!: In April 2015, one of the patches of Skullgirls altered the animation of some characters, which according to Lab Zero themselves was because of their own artistic values (while they admitted that panty shots in a fighting game comprised entirely of girls is unavoidable, they didn’t want to go out of their way to show them). As you might expect, this led to a massive onslaught of negative Steam reviews and caustic tweets from people who abhor censorship of any kind. Funnily enough, this brigade started around October, six months after the changes were made, and only via word of mouth - people didn’t even notice there was a change until someone told them about it.
Backer characters: As part of their Indiegogo campaign, some of the highest-paying backers could have their original characters put in the background of some custom stages. Lab Zero warned these backers that these stages would be a casino and a ballroom, respectively, so their OCs should ideally be designed with a formal flair. Some backers did follow this unspoken rule - ZONE, a notoriously NSFW Flash animator who helped work on the DLC characters, made a perfectly formal look for his mascot Zone-tan. As for the others, well...
SonicFox: This isn’t included in the compilation video mentioned above as this occurred way after all the initial Skullgirls drama. Basically, SonicFox is a five-time EVO champion and one of the best Skullgirls players in the world. In May 2020, after Skullgirls was mostly complete, they were given a cameo in Skullgirls’ training stage. Of note is that SonicFox is black, non-binary, and a furry, and the character added to the game was their fursona, who has a trans rights flag in the inside of their jacket you can only see for like one frame. People reacted as you would expect. Also, one of the original backers requested to change their character as they were now transitioning, which didn’t get as much flak, so that’s nice I guess.
So as you can see, Skullgirls had a menagerie of problems and issues during its dev time. However, their Skullgirls curse seemed to have faded away, as they had a new game in store. If I was Indivisible Indivisible was a new project of Lab Zero, announced in 2015 as Skullgirls DLC production was nearing an end. Billed as a platformer RPG similar to games like Valkyrie Profile, it would tell the story of Ajna, a young girl whose town is stricken by tragedy and she finds out that she’s a portion of the god of creation, who has grown discontent with the world and wishes to remake it anew. Its Indiegogo campaign focused on Incarnations, party members who came from a variety of cultures, religions, and demographics not usually represented in popular culture. And as you can see by the fact that it got over two million dollars in funding, people were excited to see what Lab Zero could do. They even got enough funding to get Studio Trigger, of anime fame, to create the opening for the game. Of course, it wouldn’t be Lab Zero without the occasional issue here and there. As shown above, some Incarnations were changed or scrapped during development, which irked some who backed because of that character specifically (not naming any names, but look in the incarnation list and see if you notice any). Backer characters were included again, and although there were more places to add them so they didn’t look out of place, you still had the occasional few that did. Critics liked the art and presentation of the game, but disliked some gameplay issues: the second half of the game became a cakewalk once you progressed far enough, it was a bit of a pain to go from one end of the map to another, especially for side quests, and a bunch of party members simply weren’t complete. Most egregiously of all, the Nintendo Switch version of the game was ported by a different company and released before Lab Zero was even aware of it - which forced them to scramble again to patch it up so it was on par with other consoles. Still, it was a better situation they were in than when Skullgirls started. They had a legit publisher in 505 Games, people were satisfied with the base game, and Mike Z mentioned how the base game would continue to be refined with gameplay changes, small additions, and guest incarnations from other indie games.NBC even announced that Indivisible would be adapted into a television program for their Peacock streaming service. Things were looking up for Lab Zero. Everything goes wrong... AGAIN During the production of Indivisible, Alex Ahad was let go by Lab Zero. Not much is mentioned about it except that he was growing increasingly hostile, making it difficult to work with him, and his art was not meeting the standards for the game. He left, tried to sue Lab Zero, and eventually agreed to a sizable settlement. Mariel became the lead artistic director in his stead, and the art team had to be rearranged to compensate. Now, as Lab Zero was preparing to transition from being employee-owned, Mike Z was made the temporary head of the studio. In June of 2020, Mike Z did an “I can’t breathe” joke during a Skullgirls livestream just days after George Floyd’s death - he later apologized for this, claiming he was trying to bring attention to the issue. Soon, more peopleprovided proof that Mike Z has had a history of sexual harassment. Kinuko chimes in as well, noting that while she tolerated inappropriate behavior for years, when she talked to Mike Z about it, he blamed her for his actions. She talked with others in the team, who came to the conclusion that Zaimont had treated all of them like this. Some Lab Zero employees resigned on their own, while others pushed for Zaimont to resign. However, as Mike was still head of the studio, he dissolved the studio board and laid off the rest of the staff. So where does that leave everyone?
Ahad is still doing art on his own, and gets by with commissions and his Patreon.
Kinuko, as well as the majority of Lab Zero, created a new studio called Future Club, which has promised to create new titles with the same art style they refined from Skullgirls and Indivisible.
Autumn Games still own the rights to Skullgirls, and with the help of some former Lab Zero devs, created a mobile version of the game. It’s surprisingly not bad, although it’s of course stuffed with microtransactions. However, they’ve apparently made enough to fund a completely new character for the game for both the mobile and console/PC versions.
After everything with Mike Z, 505 games put out a statement which signaled the end of all development of the game, leaving it unfinished. Mike Z has been suspended from Skullgirls streams and the like, making his future in the gaming world unclear.
There’s probably something I’ve missed in all of this, but yep. I backed them twice, both for Skullgirls and Indivisible. I don’t regret it, and I’m looking forward to whatever Future Club does, but I won’t lie - I’ll always miss what could have been.
I've taught college-level investments classes, and I think a lot of you people would benefit from some of what we talk about in there. It's important for you to understand what exactly risk is, in the finance sense. Watch this video and think about how you would react in this scenario. The expected value (average value of all possible outcomes) of the case is $500,000.50. I have a feeling that if you sold that case on the market you'd find a market price below that; the difference between the expected value and the market price (assuming a fully liquid market) is the risk premium A central concept of finance and investments is this: the more risk you take, the more return you get. The safest thing you can do is convert your holdings to cash and stick it in your wallet, but you would get zero return (and lose purchasing power due to inflation over time). Technically, sticking money in a savings account is riskier, though interest rates on savings deposits is essentially zero these days and deposit insurance removes most of that risk. Any market play that gets you massive returns is putting a bunch of capital at risk (think about that WSB guy who put $700,000 into GME options; imagine what happens to the guy if the price doesn’t move). The reason the most common investment advice is to fire everything into low-cost index funds is because it’s low risk and low cost (active management of mutual funds rarely justifies the extra cost, but that’s a different discussion entirely). If you’re undertaking extra risk, you theoretically should be getting extra return to justify that risk. Think about a lottery ticket. If the jackpot is high enough, the expected value (the averaged return you get from all possible outcomes) of a lottery ticket is higher than the price you pay for it. However, given the limited set of outcomes that a lottery ticket gives you and the likelihood of the worst case scenario (you lose your entire investment), the risk is too high for most people to seriously invest in (and if you do “seriously” invest in the Powerball, you’re probably not having a good time). Another important consideration is liquidity. If you're selling a Stradivarius violin, you're going to have to spend a lot of time searching for a buyer who will pay full price OR you’ll have to sell it for less than it’s worth. In the market, this tends to be reflected in the bid/ask spread. We like to think about the market as a monolith, but in reality it’s just an aggregation of all the investors out there. That means liquidity isn’t a problem when it comes to most stocks on the NYSE and NASDAQ (eg. At the time of this writing the bid/ask spread on AAPL was $.01 for a price of $136.79), but when you head to OTC territory you might start seeing bid/ask spreads that can be up to 10% of the price for some of those real “no man’s land” stocks. That means that the price you pay (the ask price) and the price you can sell at (the bid price) can be wildly different. That also means that any “at current market price” order you send (especially in pre-market) may be filled at a price different than the price you think it’s going to be filled at. A third concept to think about is market efficiency. The central idea of market efficiency is that the price reflects all available information (different forms of efficiency consider private/public/historical info). A truly efficient market will react instantaneously and accurately to any new information that is created/released, eg. A firm releases earnings and beats expectations, therefore the price jumps up. If market efficiency is a product of investors discovering information and acting on it, that means your best opportunities are in places that are less visible to the aggregate investing public. That’s where pennystocks comes in. Do a search on most of the tickers listed here, and you’ll see a bunch of summary stock profiles and not much else. Do a search for any S&P 500 company and you’ll find an incredible amount of news, branding, and other information. If you’re looking for “good” penny stocks to buy up, you’re looking for an information advantage over the “average” investor. However, there is the hazard (that’s been around long before the internet) of bad or fake information. Remember that the market is an aggregate of all the investors out there, and those investors are subject to psychological biases, differences in personal attitude, and individual risk tolerance. That’s why you see some interesting reactions to events: remember when TSLA stock dropped because Elon Musk was smoking marijuana? There’s nothing about the CEO smoking marijuana that should change the fundamental value of the company, but investors collectively seemed to think this was a negative for the long term prospects of TSLA. A few common investor biases: • Losses are treated as more impactful than a gain. Think about if you buy into a stock and it immediately drops $.10. Compare this to how you react if you buy in and it immediately jumps $.10; the average investor is going to react more strongly to the former. • We all hate having made a “loser” trade. The effect is usually that investors hold on too long to a poorly performing stock in hopes that it will rebound. • Investors tend to anchor their perception of a stock’s performance based on their entry price. A $.10 drop in price hits worse if it takes you below your purchase price • Playing with “house money” (ie. your gains) is treated differently than your initial principal. In practice, this means that an investor that has done well recently is more risk-tolerant (and not always in a good way) • Investors are susceptible to "herding" behavior, where they follow what someone else is doing not because they know what that someone else is doing is good, but because they think that someone else knows something they don't. Stock prices are subject to the principles of supply and demand, ie. increased demand will raise the price, and people looking to sell more than buy will lower the price. This is especially important when it comes to momentum (the principle that an increasing stock price will continue to increase and a falling price will continue to fall). This is why you see overreactions to news items and a subsequent reversal; a news item creates a buying/selling frenzy that pushes the price until cooler heads walk in and say “maybe this price is wrong”. This is where swing traders try to profit: among other things, they look for stocks that have a drop that is unjustified in material info or in the degree of drop, buy up at “downward momentum” prices and sell after the reversal. Day traders also try to benefit by buying stocks with positive momentum and selling the second that momentum reverses. So what does this mean for us at pennystocks? A few considerations that are unique for penny stocks: 1) I already mentioned it, but liquidity is a big consideration: Bid/ask spreads may be larger than normal and many brokers either don’t let you trade below $.01 or make you pay a fee to do so. This also means that options covering penny stocks are either sparse or nonexistent. 2) Information coverage: information can be hard to find, and sifting through good and bad info can be a chore 3) Low market participation: The smaller number of traders means that it takes fewer people to influence the price in a material way. This is what makes penny stocks susceptible to pump and dump schemes: A bad actor just needs to convince a (relatively) small number to buy in to a stock to bump up the price, then the dump can crater the price leaving a bunch of bag holders in their wake. This also means that the price is subject to more psychological bias on the part of investors. 4) There are a lot of biotech firms in penny-stock land. The fortunes of these companies rest entirely on the outcomes of drug trials and/or acquisition by larger firms, which means you can see massive swings in price. This scene from The Wolf of Wall Street should be required viewing for anyone wanting to jump headfirst into penny stocks. The modernization of trading means that commissions are drastically reduced, but the lessons here still apply. I’m not saying “don’t invest” because there are some mighty gains to be had if you do it right. I’m saying “be cautious” and certainly don’t trade on emotion. Understand that what we’re doing here is speculation, and that many stocks with penny prices are trading at penny prices for a reason. Increased volatility in the penny stocks market is going to make you feel a lot of things, but it’s important to compartmentalize this emotion and trade logically. The moment you start treating it, consciously or unconsciously, like a casino, you’ll get casino-like returns (spoiler alert, the house always wins in the end) A few closing thoughts: • Like another recently popular post here said, don’t be afraid to walk away for a few days to cool off. • FOMO is the gains killer; there will always be a New Moon in terms of penny stocks. • Pay attention to the sector you’re buying in and understand how that might influence the volatility of the stock’s price. Be especially wary of anyone trying to sell you on a “sure thing” biotech firm. • MLFB to the moon! (Just kidding, don't rely on me to tell you what to buy) (EDIT: By Request 🚀🚀🚀) And finally • Do your own research! There are some legitimate DD threads on here, but you should do your own research and make sure they’re legit. Some threads here sound a lot like Jordan Belfort in the video above. Further reading: Wikipedia’s very long list of cognitive biases Efficient markets hypothesis Behavioral finance
My wife and I have each decided to take $100 and see what we can do with it in the stock market. We are going about this kind of like how we do with a casino, once it's gone thats it and if either of us do well then thats a huge bonus. Let me preface what I am about to post and say I am by no means an expert and I am not meaning this as advice in any way. I would really just like everyone's thoughts on if I am going about this at least rationally and if there is anything I have missed that may help me make a better informed decision. I have been going over a lot of posts on this subreddit and trying to do my own DD on everything I look up. Here are the 3 I am going to buy into tomorrow when eTrade finally releases my transfer for use. (3 day hold is a bit to long eTrade, my bank released the funds Tuesday)
200 Shares of POVERTY DIGNIFIED INC COM (PVDG). I have been looking over this and while they don't have a lot of news worthy activity I think what they do have going for the is going to continue to do well in the days to come, especially with the potential for the new strain of Covid supposedly coming this way. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/poverty-dignified-inc-closes-transaction-140000968.html They have also done very well with a steady climb over the last month with a much steeper increase in the last few days going from sub 1 cent to almost 3 cents a share. My only concern is their outstanding shares of 2.3B. That seems huge to me and I am a little hesitant that they are a pump and dump almost at the peak of the pump.
200 Shares of BRAZIL MINERALS INC COM NEW (BMIX). This one a came across in another post early after joining this subreddit and have been following ever since. They just sealed the deal on 2 new Lithium exploration contracts in Brazil. The soon to be focus in the US on clean energy ramping up with the new administration this seems like a great bet. They had been steady flat sub 1 cent until inauguration day and then have been on a steady climb to almost 5 cents a share. Even spiking at one point to 8 cents a share. Just like PVDG though they have an outstanding share amount of 2B and a market cap of $96M. They at least have legit news though that may be pushing their stock price up.
2 Shares of SPINNAKER ETF (THCX). I know its not a lot but this ETF covers quite a few cannabis players, 2 of which, are about to make a major merge to be the largest of their kind in the world TLRY and APHA. This also goes back to the new US administrations more pro stance on cannabis as a whole and a lot more states looking to legalize, especially for medicinal purposes. Their top ten holdings are GRWGVFFWEEDAPHACRONGWPHSMGTLRYAMRSFAF . One of these, forgive me I can't remember which one, is the largest player in cannabis product packaging. All of the ones I have looked into are headed on the way up.
Thank you all and thank you for any additional info. TLDR: I am buying PVDG, BMIX and THCX and just wanted to see if there in anything I have missed about these. Edit 1: As a result of al the replies to this thread I have changed up my strategy considerably. I bought 10shares this morning to a non-otc stock TTOO and am doing ok. Have already seen a little gain and a little loss but as a whole am pretty happy. I have a buy request for tptw but as of yet it hasn't dipped enough to meet my limit. I'm ok with this and it is only set for 1 day. If i get it cool if I don't that ok too. Thank you to all of you for all your support and information. This sub is awesome and hopefully I can post in the future the gains I have made with my purchases.
"Couples on Surviving Trauma and Loss: Five partners whose love has endured seismic changes, from refugees forced apart by war to a couple left with horrific injuries" The first two stories in the article are legit: a couple in a terrible car accident and a couple separated by the Sudanese civil war. Then things start going to hell and get worse and worse. All of the things that FDS warns against are here: codependency, gaslighting, lying, cheating, excuse-making, blame shifting, martyrdom. Women continue to be conditioned to accept sub-par treatment by these kinds of narratives. The ladies of FDS refuse to help relationships "survive trauma" that is LITERALLY CREATED BY THE MAN IN THE RELATIONSHIP AND HIS SELFISH AND OVERALL TERRIBLE DECISIONS.
‘I was in prison for 2,192 days; she wrote to me almost daily’
Laure, 58, and Jerry, 62, survived his jail sentence for causing death by dangerous driving. They live inAlabama, and now run a support network for the families of prisoners. Laure Jerry and I met in 1995 and married four months later. I tell him all the time I would marry him again, but faster. We’d both been married twice before and dating was the last thing I was looking for. But he ticked all the boxes. I had two daughters and he had one. We moved our family from Tennessee to Alabama, to raise them in the country. We were living the dream. But on 17 March 2003, it was shattered when Jerry caused a head-on car collision which killed a young mother. He had been driving drunk. I felt rage, betrayal. When we met, we were both recovering alcoholics, so I had only known him sober. Now a life had been lost. I didn’t want him dead, but I wanted him to hurt real bad. We lived in a small town, and I grieved for that family. I felt embarrassment. I had to get to the forgiveness part quickly so I could get through each day. Jerry spent 10 days in the ICU. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to six years in prison and 19 on probation. I was scared – emotionally, practically, financially, spiritually. I wanted to stay married but didn’t know how. I didn’t know what you do when someone you love is in prison.
His first year home, we argued all the time. I’d put my hand on his shoulder and he’d push it away
I wrote to him almost every night. I could afford one dollar-a-minute phone call a week and petrol for the 100-mile drive to visit every two weeks. I felt a lot of anger in those first years. I remember burying the cat, crying, saying, “This is a dad job.” I tried to experience the girls’ graduations for both of us. His first year home, we argued all the time. I’d put my hand on his shoulder and he’d push it away; he was still in survival mode. We’re grandparents now and enjoy our family immensely. We run a support network for prisoner families, called Extended Family. I started it six months into his sentence. Jerry will still say, “You stayed with me all those years,” but I don’t think of it that way. I’m not going to make him do the dishes for the rest of our lives. We spent six years without each other; we don’t want to spend another minute apart. Jerry On our first date, I took Laure and her daughters to see Cinderella at the theatre. When I got home, I wrote “She’s the one” on the back of the programme. We had a good life. I had a small engineering business, work grew busy, and we moved cities. But I was in a mess. I got into narcotics but hid it from my family. The night of the accident, I had stopped at a liquor store. I was in a blackout. Moments later, a young woman was dead and I was airlifted to hospital. I was shocked, remorseful, disheartened. My wife has a big and kind heart. I tried to protect her from the police investigation and the likelihood of prison. I didn’t want our girls walking around with the stigma of a dad who had killed someone. In Alabama, incarceration is uncontested grounds for divorce, but there was never a question of Laure leaving me. On an early prison visit, I told her I wouldn’t blame her if she wanted to leave. She looked at me and said, “I’d be more miserable than I am now.” I’ll never forget it. I was in prison for 2,192 days and she wrote to me almost daily. There were guys that got nothing. I felt blessed and honoured. She would arrive every two weeks and I would put on a smile. But I pitied myself; I felt useless, unable to provide for my family. When I came home, I was harsher than before. Meanwhile, this woman I loved had blossomed. I had to adjust. There’s a not a day that I don’t pay for my disastrous decision in some way, shape or form. We worked through the mess I made together, and we’re closer because of it.
‘It was a form of gaslighting. He led a double life’
Keith, 59, and Claire, 57, survived his gambling addiction. They live inSussex. Keith Claire and I had known each other in the 80s, and reconnected online 20 years later. Claire was living abroad, and I was on my way to broke. She’d make short trips to the UK, and we’d laugh through days out and long lunches. She was intelligent, full of life; a better person than I was. I first entered a casino at 16. By 18, I’d borrowed, conned and stolen from everyone I knew. I was an addict. Through adulthood, I’d made and lost small fortunes and entire businesses. I’d play Monopoly for real money, or sit in a room of the club I owned, drinking brandy, snorting as much cocaine as I could. I wasn’t a constant drug user or gambler. When Claire visited, I’d try to keep it together; but then I’d get desperate and make excuses to go to London for “work”. When she moved to the UK with her three kids in 2009, I’d disappear into a room of the home we shared for days, in a heady state of gambling, drugs and porn, too embarrassed to re-emerge. I had intermittent spells in Gambling Anonymous, but I found it hard to ask for help. Claire paid for the house and put food on the table. I never stole from her, but I’m still surprised she didn’t walk out. By 2014, I’d had a heart attack and was nursing my mother, who had cancer. I would drive her to the hospital every day, off my tits, bring her home, make her food, then shut myself in another room and gamble online. I couldn’t see myself in the mirror any more. I wanted to die. On 28 June 2014, I logged on to a website for people seeking affairs and used it for porn. That decision would almost end us: when Claire discovered the website in her search history, she sent me a Dear John letter. The next day, she drove me to residential rehab. The only rule I broke there was asking her to spend one night. I had to save the relationship. I’ve been clean for six years now; Claire is part of the reason why. People talk about languages of love. For me those are quality time, acts of service. Boy, were there acts of kindness and service from Claire. Without her, I could well be dead. Claire I was 18, and a poor student, when I first met Keith. He seemed glamorous, exciting, funny, intelligent. He was also a known gambler, but when we reconnected years later, that appeared to be in his past. Yet, with hindsight, nothing about the start of our relationship makes sense. When I visited, he’d urgently have work or disappear into a room for days at a time. I’d spend hours on edge, struggling to trust him, but he would rationalise his behaviour, omitting huge details, claiming he’d simply drunk too much. It was a form of gaslighting. He led a double life.
When Keith decided on residential rehab, I knew that if I didn’t support him, there was no future
The first time I confronted him, I’d found an empty drugs packet, but he lied his way out of it. I became scared to ask, although we both knew he needed help. When his mother was unwell, he had the perfect alibi. He was an addict but he was responsible – and he took exquisite care of her. I was fearful but I had to get on with life. Advertisement When Keith decided on residential rehab, I knew that if I didn’t support him, there was no future. I didn’t want significant time apart, but when an addict is serious about making changes, you have to put your own needs aside. The most soul-destroying moment came when I found the affairs website. I had been betrayed by gambling and drugs, but my belief in the purity of our love had kept me going. I wrote to him saying it was over. From rehab, Keith proved to me it was only curiosity (there was no activity on his account), and I was open enough to reconciliation to visit him. Emotionally, we’re more independent now, although we share bank accounts and he supports us financially. I’ve grown, too. I used to tell friends that Keith felt like an addiction to me. I’d waited years for a stable home life together: eventually, he walked the most difficult path in order to truly change.
‘Friends saw us as the perfect couple, but it was a lie’
Maryam, 31, and Amir, 33, survived his affair. They live in California. Maryam When Amir had an affair, I had a thousand reasons to leave but looked for the one to stay. Our relationship had started as an affair, too. We had been couple-friends in our previous marriages and used to hang out as a group of four. Then, in February 2017, Amir and his wife broke up and he came on a trip with my husband and me. One night, we were up late, talking, while my husband slept. Amir opened up about his marriage and I began to sense he had feelings for me. I had relationship problems, too, and we started an affair. I ended my marriage. Over the next 18 months, friends came to see us as the perfect couple. They would comment on how loving our relationship was. But I couldn’t forgive myself for how we’d started, and his divorce was a mess. He spent nights with his ex. I broke up with him several times. Things looked great on the surface but we both carried unresolved pain. By the end of 2019, I became suspicious of his relationship with a co-worker. She was too intimate at the Christmas party and he was jumpy when she called. Then I found a credit card charge to a cafe, clearly for two people.
I loved him deep down but anger overwhelmed me. He asked over and over for a chance to prove he could change
It took me 10 days to get the full details from him. It had been going on for months and they’d slept together six times. I couldn’t breathe; I felt stupid. Everything that had gone before felt like a lie. I left him. Amir telephoned non-stop and showed up at my parents’. I loved him deep down but anger overwhelmed me. He asked over and over for a chance to prove he could change. Eventually, I agreed to give him three months. We started individual and couples’ therapy and talked through every detail of our relationship. I couldn’t bear to sleep in the same room as him, but I could look at his face again. I agreed to more time. I see the consistency and changes Amir has made, his commitment. When I discovered his affair, I was ready to give up on our relationship, but we have both grown. No one knows what the future holds and I have my fears. But, right now, I love the way he loves me. Amir Maryam was the first time in my life I felt real love. But we were both married and I told myself it couldn’t happen. As time passed, my ex-wife had an affair and my marriage died. Maryam had problems, too, and I made my feelings known. I admired her looks, the way she thinks. This wasn’t a game that I’d started; it was coming from the bottom of my heart. I was born in the Middle East, in a war zone. As a child, I experienced sexual and physical abuse at the hands of my teacher, but told no one. The human psyche finds soothing mechanisms to alleviate pain. For me, that was sex. I was in the most loving relationship with Maryam. The sex was amazing. We bought a house, enjoyed travelling. But the foundations were shaky and I unconsciously sought more. When I got close to a co-worker, it turned into an affair, starting in May 2019 and lasting several months. It was pure sexual desire. This wasn’t someone I wanted to change the course of my life. We were opportunistic and, in those moments, I became blind to the consequences. When Maryam found out, I tried to lie. I was naive about how much I was going to hurt her. She wanted nothing to do with me. She blocked my calls and texts, and told our family and friends all the details. Everyone who loved me looked at me as a monster. For the first time in my life, I started to wake up. I made fixing myself and our relationship my only priority. I promised Maryam she would see a change, and started intense therapy, twice a week. I addressed my childhood trauma and sought support for sex addiction. I realised how much I was willing to do for Maryam. At the beginning, it was simply about keeping Maryam; but it transformed into strengthening our bond. She has made sacrifices for me, been my guide and love. Every day, I’m more appreciative. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jan/30/couples-on-surviving-trauma-and-loss
Replaying Chasing You: clues, thoughts and predictions 🕵
My fellow detective friends, I know that all of us are still very confused by the last episode. Because I'm way too invested in this story I took the time to replay S1 and S2 to see what we missed or if there even was anything to miss, haha. 😀 Let's start with the big twist none of us saw coming - no, I'm not talking about Edward being the deceiver, that was always a strong probability, cute hair or not. But him being there from the beginning is something that never crossed my mind. Oswald, the unseen butler, take the stage! S1E1: Oswald is mentioned by Martha Martha refers to Oswald but after choosing a room the narration cuts right to the part where he has already left. Not fair! Let's compare with what Agatha suddenly remembered in the last episode: S2E9: Oswald flashback I'm not saying that all of us would have recognized him later, but it would have been a nice surprise if we had the chance. But that's not enough, apparently Edward was also the reason why Agatha almost got busted by the watchmaker in Pateley Bridge: S1E4: The scene at the watchmaker's office No indication of her ever hearing something from outside the office. But later, by the great power of memory, she recalls the following: S2E9: Flashback to the watchmaker's office Apparently Edward stayed at Annette's manison for about 6 months and even managed to build a good enough relationship with Charles to successfully recommend the antipsychotic drug Risperidone to him. As I mentioned before I'm not a fan of the "evil mastermind who was there from the beginning" solution. The fact that all the 'hints' happened backstage still bothers me because we as the readers never got a chance to find the culprit on our own. I know it's Ursa's story but as a fan of classic detective fiction I can't help but feel at least a little bit cheated. What about Edward's motives? Is he really just out for revenge because of his father's accident and Annette's terrible indifference? We learned that Lucas Cadogan and Annette were selling stolen antiques together 20 years ago, but ever since Lucas' accident Annette's business has been clean. She only started her shemes again two years prior to S1, and it's said that she was planning to hit the Cadogan business (K.D. Gun Company) hard. Bold move, girl! What if Lucas is actually part of Edward's revenge team? S2E9: What happend after you snapped, Papa Cadogan? Loosening the chandelier was definitely an attempt to kill Agatha, but everything after that was more likely done to scare her: the stuff at the London hotel, kidnapping our friends, pushing her of the cliff (Brigitte said there were no stones underwater and Agatha couldn't have died)... Why so inconsistent? I'm still not sure if that was all just Edward's doing or if his father or his brother or their long-lost triplet might be involved, but we'll find out soon. Let's continue with all the other suspicious people. Criminal minds: Eve and Ellia Despite both of them still being shady mafia criminals, I guess we can trust them for now. Well, if we ignore the fact that they only started to get close to Agatha because their bosses/grandmothers told them to 😄 By the way, anyone else wondering why Eve's father is mentioned that often? In my replay I managed to get both of their support by taking all of their relationship improvements - 5 are enough for Eve if we're just counting the "Your relationship with Eve improved" prompts (be aware that there are other prompts as well), but not for Ellia 😅 I had to restart S2 AGAIN and managed to get him on my side with 7 pro-relationship choices (again, just counting the explicit prompts). Mother knows best: Olivia (and Gustav) I'm undecided about Olivia because Alexander was so angry at her in S1 and her intentions for getting him out of the country are still shady. As for Gustav, we can assume that he's a cop like Alexander's father Ulrik was and he's still close with Oliva after all those years. We know they sent Frederick to England to find out if Annette's business was legit, and in S2E9 we learned that Gustav called Anna and asked her about the sheme because he tried to bust her for two years. Why do they want to blow Annette's cover and what will Olivia do when Agatha inherits the business? Where did you go, Frederick? Well, he was never seen again after the ball in S2E1. He didn't pick up after a freaking chandelier fell on his protégé, and his phone was silent when our friends got kidnapped and Agatha needed help with her rescue mission. Does he even know that Eve and Anna deceived him? Why didn't he go back to Sweden with our gang? Neither Olivia nor Alexander mentioned him up until now, but I guess they'll have to talk about him if the subject of Alexander leaving Sweden ever comes up between mother and son. In S1E10 Frederick said that he owes Alexander's father his life and Ursa hinted that we will find out more about that eventually, so I guess he could be back in the S2 finale or in S3. Predictions for S2E10 and S3: My guess is that S3 revolves around Agatha claiming the inheritance and deciding the future of her aunt's business. I really hope that collecting all the business points (sometimes called entrepreneur points) will benefit in the end - so far I counted 6. Hopefully we'll get to choose who we want to work with and what kind of business we want to run (mafia or legit). I can see Agatha investing in good causes like the open-air museum in Sweden, but the option to go full gangster could be appealing to some people too. But first things first - will we even get the inheritance? S1E3: Annette's lawyer reads her last will Sidenote: I also noticed that the timeline is somehow off: S1 starts with Annette's birthday on April 21st and in S2E4 we're celebrating Walpurgis Night which is on April 30th. That means everything up to this point happend in just 9 days which is pretty crazy (and doesn't even add up if you count the days while playing the story, but let's ignore that). Talking about Anthony Harrison, Annette's lawyer: Has anyone checked up on him lately? In S2E7 the hot mean stranger in the car mentioned he visited Anthony and that the lawyer "wasn't eager to cooperate", but Agatha didn't mind, haha. She thinks of him again while making her first investment in S2E8, but still no worries about his well-being. Poor guy! We know that Dylan Boston, Ellia's friend and a dealer at the casino, is Annette's and Edgar's son and therefore the rightful heir. Ursa stated the following about him: "If everything goes according to plan, he will initiate a very interesting turn of events and will appear at the very same moment when everyone forgets about him". That's definitely a plotline for S3 and I can't wait to see how it'll play out! As for our kissing cousins, it's hinted that Dante and Eliza will only be back if we have a close relationship with them at the end of S1 - I think they could maybe supoort our claim regarding the inheritance, but they won't challenge the will. That leaves us with the the worst uncle of all time, Charles. I guess we will see him again for the sake of closure, and let's not forget that he was after something in the library safe. I hope he'll go to prison for his crimes. Even if Annette's death was an accident because he was under the influence of Risperidone, he still pushed Agatha into a well, colluded with Martha and the commissioner and then tried to kill Agatha again - these are not mistakes but absolutely intentional atrocities. Well, that's it for today! I know this may sound critical but let me assure you that I still love this messy and hilarious story to bits, I just like to play detective and over-analyze 😉 Please let me know what you think and how you want S3 to play out. TL;DR: Everyone is sus, the story is messy but I still adore CY so much and I can't wait for the next episodes!
I'll cut off my dick for the ability to use a regulated site. (Shit post FYI)
*Its been a few months.. and it's about that time that I make a shit post where I bitch about everything* To all my fellow US players getting fucked in the ass per usual... WHAT THE FUCK DO I HAVE TO DO TO USE A HONEST POKER SITE!? It's 2021 and it has been almost a decade since I have been able to use a worthy-poker-site such as Full Tilt, Stars, 888, Party Poker, and so on. I am starting to fall out of love with poker because I can't keep playing on these bullshit sites located in Panama and throughout the Caribbean. Here are a couple of my experiences from the past 8-ish months or so. ACWPN/BCP: - 2 to 4 months ago I received 2 PARTIAL refunds due to bots being at my table, in which one scenario was a final table. Didn't even get a full fucking refund. This also doesn't mention the other partial refunds I received earlier in 2020. - As you all well know, ACR has had multiple scandals going back to 2012, like the the 2018-2019 PLO/NL cash game bots and several people colluding together to take advantage of the late reg glitch. Nagy can eat a fat dick. - If you play at America's Cardroom in 2021 you're a fucking retard. (No offence) Betonline/BOL: - 6 months ago Betonline removed $1000 from my poker balance on my account and said that the money was transferred to my sportsbook balance at 4am PST and all of it was spent in the online casino. When I asked them to investigate they did nothing. So I asked their Fraud/IT Department to send me a list of all devices, MAC addresses, and IP addresses that signed into my account that day... They refused to cooperate... Customer service said it was against company policy to release that type of information, even though its MY OWN fucking account and personal information. ( I took a break from the site but eventually returned because US players have no options and I love MTTs.) - 2 months ago I deposited $50 of ETH to their sports book to bet on an NFL game. Blockchain.com confirmed that BOL's Etheruem address received my money, and I even sent customer service proof of the transaction THREE TIMES. They still refuse to issue me my $50 deposit to this day, stating "our system says the deposit is still pending". - 2 days ago I received a $5 refund from a Windfall Sit n Go because the 2 other two players at my table were bots :) :) :) I should just kill myself at this point. WHO THE FUCK HAS BOTS AT THE JACK POT SIT N GO. Bovada/Ignition: - Honestly, I haven't used them in like a year or two because they removed the chat box, make it a pain to utilize HUD software, and that fucking update they did to their software. That huge software update was so fucking horrible the sites damn near unplayable. I'm sure you guys remember the old canvas/layout that Bovada/Iggy use to utilize, it was way better. Anyways, I just don't know what to do anymore. I NEVER had any of these issues back in the Full Tilt days. I don't even want to play half the time because I'm sick of all the bullshit. I am also in Los Angeles, CA so the lockdown bullshit makes live poker a huge pain in the ass. Some casinos are open, some are closed, some are outside, some make you wear mask and sit in between plastic dividers, some allow you to order drinks but not food. It's all fucking stupid. I really want to use my VPN but I don't want to build up a bankroll on a legit site like PartyPoker and then have my funds frozen. Maybe I should just hang myself instead. (joking, just being a dramatic pussy) On a serious note, thank you for listening to me bitch and moan about my first world problems. I hope ya'll are happy, healthy and staying covid-free. Cheers to 2021, MAY THE POKER GODS BE IN YOUR FAVOR!
How you do react when a listing says it's in Hollywood, CA but the map shows it's in Commerce, CA?
I was looking to book a 2 week private room in Hollywood but the map shows it's in Commerce. If anything, the circle is directly over Commerce Casino. A CASINO! She's a superhost and this is her 2nd listing and it has zero reviews. Her first one looks legit and listing city matches that on the map. I communicated with the host. She suggested we communicate off the platform and spelt out her phone number. I asked her if it was in Hollywood or if it was in Commerce, no answer. She redirected and asked me what my budget was... Um... whatever the listing price says for those 2 weeks? I asked her a second time if it was in Hollywood or if it was in Commerce, and why the circle is directly over Commerce Casino. She said it's in Hollywood but doesn't disclose the correct area for "privacy and safety." Circling back to the top of my post, why is she not doing the same as her first listing? Why is she not concerned about privacy and safety? The distance between Hollywood and Commerce is 14 miles. https://imgur.com/a/uMAICZz
The garage glitch has to be one of the most overpowered and easiest glitches to be found ever since the casino glitch, and we all know what happened to the players who did that. If you don't know people got money wiped but also reset.There was a threshold for the casino chip glitch that determined whether you were to be money wiped or reset, it would go as the following; * Glitched under $1bn = No ban, money wipe that would pretty much wipe all your money even if you only glitched a hundred out of 125 mil. * Over $1bn glitched = Account reset, start from the beginning as if a new player. Game Over.
EDIT: After the glitch being found for some time now, it's obvious you SHOULD NOT GO OVER 100M, this will ensure (hopefully) that you don't get reset but possibly will be wiped. Your 2nd char is a haven for laundering allowing you to get up to 500Ms worth of Deluxos/PR4s, apologies for the initial prediction, it was very far fetched. Invest x3 and buy whatever you can before hitting a hundo.
If you'd like to stop doing the glitch, rid yourself of any glitched money and replace it with legit money, buy apartments in slots 6 and 7. This doesn't garuantee anything but then again, it's a precaution
This is the threshold you should be following with the Garage Glitch since this is such a destructive glitch for R* they will most likely be wiping and resetting.
You should be glitching with a 900mil cap and buying Deluxos as they are the most expensive sells ($1.9m) and R* do not wipe properties so, invest!
Just 3 office garages of Deluxos will make you $114m! Remember to max out you 2nd char with Deluxos if you don't have space on your 1st! If you take the proper precautions you'll be leaving this glitch with $600m+ in Deluxos within a day or so. Happy Glitching and hi to the employees reading this !p.s; if you want to check out the glitch
edit: Do remember this is just my assumption of the process, R* do have a lot of others ways of judging how they punish you including prior glitches done and how many times you've broke the sell limit. Take my assumption with a grain of salt. edit2: the threshold listed above is for a player who is clean and off R*s radar (prior warnings, bans, wipe) for a repeat offender I reccomended under $100m glitched to avoid a wipe and under $300m glitched to avoid wiping. This is again an assumption, there have been people who have been reset 100
Strategies for storing and laundering money to (try and) stay under the R* radar. [PSA]
There's no guaranteed method of not getting caught. You run risk no matter what. Just hoping this might reduce the risk and avoid wipes. Please dump any other good ideas you have for stashing money made through glitches. As a wise man once said; I’m pullin’ for ya, we’re all in this together. General Tips - What we know
Most vehicles return 60% of their value. Deluxos might be simplest as they're the highest dollar value overall. For storing large sums of money, this seems like the best option in terms of ease and scale. Sporadic reports on difficultly reselling these vehicles - Some people put a custom plate on them and others don't. Some aircraft can be sold, but not all. There are 18 aircraft models that are not Pegasus and require owning a hangar, selling them requires a hangar workshop. The Bombushka is the most expensive sellable vehicle in the game if you have not unlocked its trade price before buying it, and the hangar storage can hold 20 of them.
Casino chips present an alternative, but not great. You can buy $50k at a time with a cooldown period
Buy the things you want instead of holding cash.
Buy all businesses and upgrade fully if you actually want to "launder" the money.
A second account is nice for a whole lot of reasons, but it will not protect you in the event of an account or money wipe.
There's a lot of speculation around what works and what doesn't, here are some of the common tips that lack any real evidence. People have their own strategies and some suggest that the bans/wipes etc. are triggered by specific actions rather than the amount of cash in your bank, but again, nothing for sure.
No set bank account level for glitched money. Some say $100 mill, some more, some less. Less makes sense but nothing specific.
Lots of people report that they clear out all the glitch money from their banks and replace it with "legit money" from a quick mission or their safes. No evidence to say this is a sure thing, though. They can likely see all transactions, which would include glitch sources.
The general consensus suggests that money wipes are the typical punishment for "non-extreme" cases and account wipes are for "extreme" cases. There's no agreement on what the measure of this is - Some say $1 billion in cash is an "extreme", but again, pure speculation.
Some people have mentioned a cap of $1 billion in your total money earned Stats. Some have said $1 billion from glitching, or $1 billion total auto flags Rockstar. I can find no clear evidence of an auto flag system or any set amount that would flag it.
I just stopped garage glitches for good and this was my strategy:
Glitch up to $15 mil MAX at a time. I never go having $15 mil cash in my bank account at a time.
Spend that money down all the way on buying weapons, research, upgrading business etc.
Now that I have all the vehicles and weapons I want, I just wrapped up moving all my businesses downtown to the best locations and fully upgraded them.
I glitched a while longer and dumped my money into a few Deluxos.
I replaced the garages I used for the glitch with two nice houses around the map.
I spent down 100% of the money made by the garage glitch and used my arcade and casino safe and ran a nightclub delivery to put only legit money in my bank.
Now my bank account sits at under $100k. With the few dozen Issi’s I have left from the vehicle dupe, that leaves me with all the stuff I want plus over $50 million left to keep enjoying the game.
Was googling random shit and suddenly this site popped up - https://gtaonline.com/ Don't know if it's legit or not tho, would make for a gr8 promo of 'The Diamond Casino Heist' XD
First off, power to those of you who can balance yourselves and play in a way that does not encroach on your other responsibilities. As for myself, after quitting, restarting again 4-5x, yet to quit again each time, I finally have the mental clarity to say goodbye to FFXI for good (maybe not given my track record! Ohohoho~). To make it seem a bit more cemented (something different for me this time around that hopefully seals the deal), I want to recap some of my better memories in FFXI as a final send-off:
Getting dizzy on my first log-in trying to play with the mouse and dodging crawler attacks by moving my character, dying from poison
"Goblin Smithy to zone!"
My first NM camp and drop: Spiny Spipi, I legit thought I would be rich after getting cape drop
Yagudo Neck farming in Giddeus and selling Utsu: Ichi to afford my Austere Robe
Being mistakenly invited to a Chinese gil farmer party camping Cassie in Fei Yin and warping the tank after claim
Dinging 70 at 4am when my parents were out of town and using Pred Claws for the first time on a gob in Battalia
Snoll soloing in Ulegrand as SMN
The master fisher 'Arial' who took me under his wing
Scam artist 'Torresia' who pretended to be a girl and whom I gave my ice staff to
RSE camping with LS friends
Developing a very intimate acquaintance with the looking for party flag
The legendary crafter on Kujata, 'Dorkmage' and the later /clap bot
Climbing to the top of Ulegrand for the hell of it and sitting on the snowy ledge talking to LS
Wiping in Dynamis, over and over and over and over again
Real EXP parties and camps: Incoming !
Polls in /P
/Random casinos and WHM teleport taxi
Climbing Promyvion as an alliance, splitting up at the top into parties for the BC
SMN burns in Korrokola
THF evasion tanking in Abyssea
That first time when you enter the Odin fight as an alliance, so cool
Zoolater hats for everyone! Hagun for no one!
Campaign battle with a few good friends, comparing our scores, getting slaughtered by NM's
To any others wondering why they keep going or feel worn down, kind reminder you can always logout for a few days, weeks, months, or even for good. Perhaps like me you are looking for the old days that are just quite out of reach...
A Cinematic Guide to The Weeknd: Pt 3. My Dear Melancholy and After Hours
My Dear Melancholy
Gaspar Noe/Cannes Film Festival The My Dear Melancholy era notable for being a time when The Weeknd was in proximity to a lot of serious directors. While he’s had a foot in Hollywood for awhile, 2017 through 2019 he was actively engaging with filmmakers like the Safdies Brothers, Gaspar Noe, and Claire Denis, amongst others. While he had been actively courting the Safdies since Good Time was released, he attended the 2018 Cannes Film Festival where he crossed paths Noe, whose film Climax took home a number awards at Cannes. Noe’s Enter the Void had previously served as an inspiration for Kiss Land, and for MDM (and later After Hours) seem to call back to Noe’s other films, like Irreversible and Love, which are both twisted depictions of heartbreak. On the other hand, Climax is about a French dance troupe who accidentally take LSD, and according to Noe is not a “message” movie. It is an audacious psychedelic technical exercise, with numerous long takes and highly choreographed set pieces. The idea for Noe, who had previously captured the feeling of drugs in previous films, was to do the opposite, and present the objectively reality of drugs, watching people high from a sober perspective. Noe is a rather strong advocate of film, and the opening scene of Climax features VHS boxes of a number of films that have influenced his filmmaking. Two of note are Schizophrenia, otherwise known as Angst, one of Noe’s favorite films which The Weeknd name checked to the Safdies, and Possession, which would go on to be an influence on After Hours (more on this later). He is also said to have sat next to Benicio Del Toro at Cannes, which means he likely caught some of the Un Certain Regard section, where Del Toro served as a jury member. Outside of that section, there were a few other films of interest such as The House That Jack Built from Lars Von Trier (The Weeknd has previously expressed affection for Von Trier’s Antichrist), Mandy from Pastos Costamos, and music video director Romain Gavras’s The World Is Yours, as well as a restoration of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which Noe has referred to as the film that got him into filmmaking. https://preview.redd.it/qga7a3l8ct261.png?width=910&format=png&auto=webp&s=371cf20d42ee8783cc23bfe7f2cfa16a0a927a0e Asian Cinema Later in 2018, The Weeknd continued his globetrotting with a tour of Asia. He once claimed in an interview that whenever visiting a foreign country he only watches films from there. I’ve previously written about the influence of Asian cinema on Kiss Land, and there’s not enough work from the MDM era to glean anything cinematically adjacent to this, but now would be a good time to mention that the "Call Out My Name" video was heavily inspired by the work of famed Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. The Asian tour poster seems to be a reference to Ichi the Killer, which leads us to Takashi Miike. Though he is notoriously prolific across a number of genres, his most popular works internationally are genre melding blends of horror, comedy and crime, most notably Audition, Ichi the Killer and Gozu. Another film worth mentioning is Perfect Blue, Satoshi Kon’s masterwork about a pop star’s mysterious stalker that The Weeknd posted about on Instagram before. Bloody and haunting, the film was a major influence on Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream. In Interviews he has also mentioned a number of Korean films, such as The Wailing, I Saw the Devil and Oldboy. While Wong Kar Wai was previously mentioned as an influence on Beauty Behind the Madness, also worth mentioning is the work of John Woo, specifically A Better Tomorrow, well known for the shot of smoking a cigar off money, and Infernal Affairs, Andrew Lau’s crime classic which served has the basis for Scorsese’s The Departed. https://preview.redd.it/fx7o9s2bct261.png?width=642&format=png&auto=webp&s=0fec2f841e9d3b09104238d0f89595daa6140faa https://preview.redd.it/n4x7fiy9ct261.png?width=1316&format=png&auto=webp&s=8a9650263272518216fc5f36913e80a10d2b0a8e
After Hours
Martin Scorsese While After Hours more so than any other Weeknd album is bursting at the seams with cinematic references, the influence of Martin Scorsese stands above all. Similar to The Weeknd’s body of work, many Scorsese’s are explorations of violence and masculinity, investigating them from a perspective that depending on who you ask (and how they’re feeling) glamorizes, condemns or just simply presents the reality of characters on the fringes of society. While there are direct references to a number of prominent Scorsese films, what’s interesting is that his influence also reverberates in other films/filmmakers that influence After Hours. Todd Phillips’s Joker is in effect an homage to Scorsese’s loner-centric New York films, and the Safdie Brothers have been putting their own millennial spin on the type of 70s gritty thriller that Scorsese trafficked in (Scorsese was also a producer on Uncut Gems). Specific Scorsese works will be discussed more in depth in the requisite sections, but it is worth mentioning upfront what a prominent role that Scorsese plays in the nucleus of After Hours. https://preview.redd.it/wcds9qpdct261.png?width=1196&format=png&auto=webp&s=246c560c72340782e26ad03b8ff63367999eaadd Urban HorroIsolation With After Hours, The Weeknd departs from the slicker sounds and influences that permeated Starboy and returns to the cinematic grittiness of Beauty Behind the Madness. While urban horror is a theme that permeates throughout The Weeknd as a project overall, there is a thorough line to be drawn here that follows a number of 70s and 80s cinematic and aesthetic references. For one thing, while the initial bandaged nose was a reference to Chinatown (previously, The Weeknd has a Kiss Land demo titled "Roman Polanski"), the full bandaged face that is so prominently featured throughout the After Hours era is a classic cinematic visual trope that was especially prominent throughout 60s and 80s, though it saw a slight re-emergence in the 2010s. The fully bandaged face is often used to remake someone in the image of another, usually against their will (The Skin I Live In, Eyes Without Face), or as a case of mistaken identity and doppelgängers (Good Night Mommy, Scalpel), themes present throughout much of After Hours. The "Too Late" video acknowledges these references, but instead presents the bandages on two Los Angeles models recovering from plastic surgery, in a nod to a famous Steven Meisel’s photoshoot for Vogue Italia. https://preview.redd.it/dtbxjc3ict261.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=66a98cc3cba73d502f8586a215a65cc41c5408a1 The “masks” people wear is another horror trope that is featured prominently on After Hours, and this is best seen in the red suit character. One important reference in the film is to Brian De Palma’s Dressed To Kill, where a serial killer is targeting the patients of a psychiatrist (any more on this film will veer towards spoiler territory). The Weeknd is on the record as saying Jim Carrey’s The Mask as being a large influence on the Red Suit character, it being one of the first film’s he watched in theaters. One of the more complex references would be to Joker. While it sort of an in-joke that the character of the Joker is commonly overanalyzed and misinterpreted, referencing Todd Phillips’s Joker is more nuanced because it is in essence a full on homage to Martin Scorsese’s New York films, most notably Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, which focus on eccentric loners, and can both be seen as cautionary tale of urban isolation, a theme explored perhaps in songs like "Faith." The King of Comedy revolves around a would be obsessive stand up Rupert Pupkin haggling his way to perform on late night TV, with The Weeknd’s talk show appearances being a prominent part of the early After Hours marketing, most notably in the “short film”. This idea of isolated and compressed urbanites recurs throughout After Hours and it’s films. https://preview.redd.it/egap17ttdt261.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=1aab204ac0845a7df74ceeff6d1f714274f9ace0 The idea of urban repression is in the subway scene of the After Hours short film. The entire film itself is something of a reference to the subway scene to Possession (another Gaspar Noe favorite), mimicking the (also subway set) scene in which Isabelle Adjani’s Anna convulses on the subway due to a miscarriage, as well as Jacob’s Ladder, a 90s cult classic horror film starring Tim Robbins as a Vietnam vet (like Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle) who is experiencing demonic hallucinations, encountering them in the subway and later at a party he attends, splitting the scene into two. https://preview.redd.it/g53copgmct261.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=9d29e368ae695d295b36039e86125ccfd7b4eb88 Las Vegas As always, The Weeknd once again grounds After Hours with a strong sense of place, this time setting the album against a nocturnal odyssey through Las Vegas. One of the most prominent films is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s book. This is directly referenced in the "Heartless" video, which sees The Weeknd and Metro Boomin in the Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro roles as they tumble through a Las Vegas casino. The Weeknd has gone on the record to state that the famous red suit character was influenced by Sammy Davis Jr.’s character in the film Poor Devil. However, similar red suit has also been sported by a number of Vegas characters, most notably Richard Pryor and Robert De Niro’s Sam Rothstein in Martin Scorsese’s Casino. With the red suit, The Weeknd seems to be playing with the idea of a devil-ish other, another side of his personality that emerges in Las Vegas. https://preview.redd.it/gjow6hq2dt261.png?width=1992&format=png&auto=webp&s=10a379bc26df54af88064bf64813d5cdd29775d9 While the city lights are the oft discussed part of part of Las Vegas, it should be noted that similar to Beauty Behind the Madness, the desert that surrounds Las Vegas is just as important to the juxtaposition of its beauty. The "Until I Bleed Out" video ends/"Snowchild" video in the desert, similar to the confrontation between Robert De Niro’s and Joe Pesci’s showdown in the desert in Casino, as well as Joe Pesci's death in Goodfellas. The idea of a hedonistic desert playground also bears semblance to Westworld, both the film and the TV show. The desert seems to represent some sort of freedom to The Weeknd, as the "Snowchild" video portrays the desert as a pensive location for reflection, as well as the "In Your Eyes" video showing the girl prominently dancing with the dismembered head out in the open, in reference to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, another prominent desert film. https://preview.redd.it/98ec10wxct261.png?width=1168&format=png&auto=webp&s=45e29aa361fa41ff74e2a6017e203015bdcbc6c3 New York/The Safdies Despite it’s Las Vegas setting, After Hours also takes a good amount from films set in New York, most notably Martin Scorsese’s 1983 film After Hours. Besides the title, After Hours is similarly about a twisting and turning nighttime odyssey. The film stars Griffin Dunne as Paul, a working class stiff who heads downtown to rendezvous with a woman he met at a diner earlier that night. Of course, things don’t turn out the way they should, chaos ensues, and Paul is set on a dangerous trek back uptown. Like the film, the album After Hours is set off by a woman (though the album takes more stock in romantic endeavors), seems to be set over a single night (or at least a condensed period of time), and involves similar chaos and misadventures (sirens at night at the end of Faith). Tonally, After Hours the film is more comedic perhaps than After Hours the album, however The Weeknd is on the record as having said that "Heartless" and "Blinding Lights" placement on the album is intended to be somewhat comedic, reflecting exaggerated machismo and ecstasy, respectively (to comedic effect). https://preview.redd.it/f3w7yz4pdt261.png?width=1346&format=png&auto=webp&s=fe7e4f003987fd843020a42a5b53f94092984267 Another of the most prominent filmmakers of After Hours are the Safdies, who featured The Weeknd in Uncut Gems. They also served as a link to Oneohtrix Point Never, who scored their last two films and later worked After Hours. I believe there are three major film tropes (not genres) that inspired After Hours, all of which the Safdies’s have engaged with. There is the one-long-night films, in which a character spends one-long-night on the run from whatever chaos and forces may be that they left in their path. This can be seen in the Good Time, as well as After Hours (the movie). Then, there is the descent-into-madness type, where a character slowly loses grip with reality and ends up in over their head (something like Scarface or Breaking Bad, but for our purposes Jacob’s Ladder can be categorized here as well), which the Safdies did with Uncut Gems. Lastly, but maybe most importantly, the Safdies also explored toxic romance (more on this later) in their less seen film Heaven Knows What, about two heroin addicts and the destructiveness their love brings out in each other, an idea that recurs throughout After Hours on songs like "Until I Bleed Out" and "Nothing Compares." A recurring song throughout Heaven Knows What is Isao Tomita’s synth version of Debussy’s "Claire De Lune", which is featured in some episodes of Memento Mori and bears some resemblance to the start of "Alone Again". https://preview.redd.it/em255b5qdt261.png?width=1344&format=png&auto=webp&s=a5226c9496d0ae5c14b6d6c05e16f5ea18678a9a Obsession/Toxic Romance While love and lust and the ups and downs with it have been a formative part of The Weeknd’s ideology and themes, I don’t think it would be remiss to say that After Hours is perhaps his most outwardly romantic album. Despite this, one of the major arcs of the album is toxicity that comes with it, which a number of already mentioned films deal with. While "In Your Eyes" is one of the more romantic and accessible songs on the album, a re-assessment of it Ala Sting’s “Every Breathe You Take” could frame it as lonely obsessing, such as Travis Bickle’s infatuation with Jodie Foster’s teenage prostitute Iris, Joker's fixation on Murray Franklin, Rupert Pupkin’s obsession with Jerry Langford. Casino also deals with toxic romance, another prominent theme in After Hours, best seen in the love triangle that forms between Sam, his partner Nicky and his wife Ginger, played by Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone respectively. https://preview.redd.it/eq1ioijvdt261.png?width=898&format=png&auto=webp&s=f9e4b781ee60762ae767c4dbd92066357ebc24b0 In almost all of the After Hours’s video content, The Weeknd seems to constantly meet his demise at the hands of women. Another interesting reference that may be something of a reach is to Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson’s film about Reynolds Woodcock, a couture dressmaker loosely based on Cristobal Balenciaga and his muse Alma, played by Daniel Day Lewis and Vicky Krieps, respectively. The film delves into their dysfunctional relationship, with Woodcock berating her and Alma poisoning his tea to keep him dependent on her. One of the highpoint of the film is a New Years Eve Party that bears strong resemblance to the "Until I Bleed Out" video. While the balloons may just be a callback to his earlier work, there is something about the color grading/temperature and the production design of the "Until I Bleed Out" video (as well as parts of the "Blinding Lights" video) that made me immediately think of Phantom Thread. A similar relationship is seen in the German horror film Der Fan, which The Weeknd has mentioned in a recent interview. In Der Fan, a young girl Simone spends her days obsessing over popstar R, until she finally encounters him outside his studio. The film is similar to the aforementioned Takashi Miike’s Audition in its exploration of obsession and idealization. In the film, an older man puts up a fake casting call to search for the perfect girlfriend. While Audition explores these themes from an Eastern perspective of societal pressure, Der Fan explores it through a Western lens of pop idolization and idealization. Both films deal with the idea that despite outward appearances, the perfect partner does not exist, and anyone that claims to be (or has the expectations put on them) is not who they seem. https://preview.redd.it/3m661q62et261.png?width=1342&format=png&auto=webp&s=c9377018cb53f67cf7ce95b24392afb471e4aec1 One film he has spoken at length about is Trouble Everyday, Claire Denis’s arthouse vampire movie. The film stars Vincent Gallo as Shane, a scientist who travels to Paris under the guise of his honeymoon to track down core, a woman who he was once obsessed with who has now become a vampire. Core is locked up in a basement but sometimes sneaks out to seduce and consume unwilling victims. This seems to be where some of the bloody face stuff comes from, but I believe it’s influence is a little more conceptual. To me, a good companion film to Trouble Everyday is American Psycho, which seems to also have been a thematic influence on After Hours. Both films concern idealized version of masculinity and femininity, both very sexual and physical, but hostile as well. American Psycho ends with Patrick Bateman confessing to the killing of a prostitute, but no one believe him. Trouble Everyday ends with Shane killing Core, but Shane is unable to arouse himself after that except through violence. Koji Wakamatsu, a former Yakuza turned prominent extreme Japanese filmmaker (and a major influence on Gaspar Noe) is quoted as saying “For me, violence, the body and sex are an integral part of life.” Despite being hollow, idealized impressions of the self, a vampire and as a banker (cold, seductive bloodsuckers = monsters), Patrick Bateman and Core represent the Frankenstein-ian relationship between sexuality and violence, which I believe is the main theme of After Hours. Truly, we hurt the ones we love. https://preview.redd.it/zfllbd83et261.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=9c048ee98d86d7bbb9db67fa8302d34c36214c4f
Postscript
To cap things off, I would just like to illuminate some key takeaways. As a filmmaker myself, this has been an extremely helpful exercise in understanding other artists process and ideas. Steeped in the history of the medium… It’s clear that The Weeknd is not your typical “I’m influenced by cinema” artist but an extremely legit film buff with serious credentials. The Weeknd’s film taste leans towards 70s-00s genre works, mostly horror, drama and thriller, and is well versed in the classics but also has the nose to sniff out deeper cuts and obscurities. The mantra of “good artists borrow, great artists steal” works even better if not many people know where you’re stealing from! What is impressive to me is that he is not just versed in “mainstream” obscurities, but also serious deep cuts. Films like Possession and Phantom of the Paradise may not stick out to the average person on the street but are well known in most film circles. Films like Inland Empire and New Rose Hotel (Der Fan was especially impressive to me, it is one of my favorite films) however are not as well known and it is very impressive to me that he can come across films like that, and really get enough out of it to bring into his own work. …is able to interpolate contemporary/mainstream films… This perhaps is one of the most impressive aspects of his integration of film into The Weeknd’s work. It is very easy for film buffs to get lost within their own obscure taste, living in a world where everyone is an idiot for not knowing who Shinya Tsukamoto. Trilogy and Kiss Land had a lot of contemporary obscurities, like Stalker, David Lynch etc., well known but they still existed as artifacts, not of the time we live in. However, perhaps picking something from his work on Fifty Shades of Grey, of late he has kept his finger on the zeitgeist and anticipated/integrated what the filmmakers of today are doing, such as his work on Black Panther and Game of Thrones, general appreciation of Tarantino, the works of Nicolas Winding Refn in Starboy, and his use of the Joker and Uncut Gems on After Hours, both of which came out just a few months before the album. It feels Jackson-esque, and I believe this is one thing that will help him further in his quest for pop stardom. …while also being fully in tune to the works of modern transgressive auteurs… In addition to keeping up with the mainstream is in touch with, The Weeknd also makes it a point to seek out and learn from the cutting edge filmmakers of today. While the Safdies were always going to blow up, I don’t doubt that a Weeknd co-sign accelerated their rise. Gaspar Noe is one thing, Enter the Void and Irreversible exist as masterpieces of the mainstream obscurities I’ve been mentioning, but he really truly tries to understand the heart of Noe’s work, even going so far back as to understand Noe’s influences (I sincerely hope he is tuned in to the work of Koji Wakamatsu). But most of all, to be a fan of Claire Denis is one thing, but to seek her out and make her an offer that she ACCEPTED is absolutely astounding to me. Just spitballing but it would be like if Michael Jackson shot a music video with Rainer Werner Fassbinder (who I’d bet good money that The Weeknd was put on to by Noe). We can only PRAY that one day we will be blessed with a David Lynch Weeknd video. --------------------------- …and that just about does it. Hope you enjoyed this and thanks for being patient with me. I got quite busy after the first two and had my own projects/work going that kept me occupied. As we’re still technically in the After Hours era, I also wanted to wait until a few more videos and interviews came out to aid me in my research. I also wanted to find enough time to make the Letterboxd for this. I personally don’t love Letterboxd culture, I find the popular culture surrounding the site a bit snobbish and exclusive, but I’ve gotten a number of requests for one and you gotta give the people what they want. Throughout the list are a few films that he hasn’t mentioned but are some of my personal favorites and I believe Weeknd fans will like, I encourage you to accidentally stumble upon things on it. Don't overthink, just pick something and watch! If you’d like to follow me further, you can find me on Instagram here, where I post about film reviews Letterboxd style. I prefer Instagram so that more average people see it instead of an echo chamber of film snobs. I am also a filmmaker myself, I just recently wrapped this short film and am currently in the process of putting together my next project. The main reason I did this however, besides a general appreciation of The Weeknd’s work, was to put more people on to the beautiful art form that is cinema. One thing I learned from Scorsese is that one must be an advocate and truly champion your medium. I hope that this encourages to check out more interesting movies than they wouldn’t normally come across, and I hope this will inspire more people to create more as well, whether it be to write, make films, music, anything. If even one person picks up a pencil, a camera or a keyboard because of these posts, I will be satisfied. Thanks all!
Whamoo Casino - free spins, no deposit bonus, promotion
Whamoo Casino Review & Free Bonus Sign up with Whamoo Casino and test slots in freeplay - No Deposit Required! Additionally, take advantage of 300 Free Spins and up to 600 EUUSD Welcome Bonus. Exclusive promo codes apply. Click on the link below and start playing for free! >>Get No Deposit Bonus Now<<
About Whamoo Casino [Full Review]
Whamoo is a brand new, fun-loving online casino that has recently opened its premises for gamblers from many countries around the world. It does however promise to be more than just an online casino, as Whamoo describes itself as a lifestyle and feeling. The rush you feel when the reels spin. The sound you make when that spin turns into a huge win. That’s Whamoo. Yet Whamoo is so much more than that. This online casino promises all you would expect from a reputable online casino – but then improved further. A massive game library? Check. Live casino? Check. Full mobile compatibility? Check. An entire VIP bonus programme for loyal customers? Check. Whamoo is a casino which comes with the entire package which players have come to expect of a casino provider. On paper Whamoo sounds like a great online casino. But being a newcomer on the scene, there are of course always some open questions. How reliable is Whamoo? What can you expect from this brand new casino when it comes to the available games? How cooperative is their online help desk? What kind of welcome bonuses are there for new players who wish to open an online account? In our extensive Whamoo review, we will try to answer all of the above questions and guide you through this brand new casino. So do read on and let’s explore this exciting new addition to the world of online gambling! >>Get No Deposit Bonus Now<<
A fully licenced online casino
Whamoo is a fully licenced online casino and a safe place for gamblers to put down their wagers. The website of whamoo.com is operated by DialMedia Ltd, a company registered by the Malta Business Registry with number C86642, on the registered address of Depiro Point, Block A2, Triq Mons G. Depiro, Sliema, Malta. As gambling operator, DialMedia Ltd. fully licensed and regulated by the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) under licence number MGA/B2C/542/2018 issued on 10/04/2019. What does this say about the reliability of Whamoo? The MGA licence is one of the better ones you can find in the online casino world as Malta is the major European nation when it comes to online gambling. It is home not only to most of the world’s top online casinos, but also to many software providers and other businesses providing auxiliary services in the gambling industry. A Malta Gaming Authority licence is not handed out with ease, as a company needs to fulfil many criteria before being granted one. The national gambling authorities of this Mediterranean island and EU member state check for example if all games which are made available are indeed fair and honest. They also check whether a company has enough cash reserves to pay out lucky winners of casino games and hold regular audits to ensure that there are no irregularities. If an online casino has a MGA licence, it means that all the important criteria when it comes to safety, honesty and reliability are fulfilled and that it is a safe place to gamble. For us, the online casino licence is always a first thing we check before we even would consider playing somewhere. With this crucial criteria being fulfilled, we can thus move forward in our Whamoo review and look at all the other things this casino has to offer. And to be honest, the whole Whamoo package looks quite promising! Three of the main selling points of the Whamoo online casino are:
Compile your own welcome bonus package and decide between free spins or a deposit bonus – or a combination of both.
Hundreds of games from top casino software developers, including an exciting live casino platform.
Recurring reload bonuses every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Whamoo clearly sounds like a promising casino when looking at the selling points, but do these points hold up when we test out the casino in real? Let’s continue our review of Whamoo with one of the most important aspects of every online casino: its game library. Which casino games can we find back in the Whamoo game collection? How honest and fair are these games? These are all legit questions which must be looked into before you can decide whether or not an online casino is suitable or not. >>Get No Deposit Bonus Now<<
Games from top software developers
When checking the list of Whamoo’s software providers you can only feel relieved as this brand new online casino only has games from the world’s top casino games developers. Especially for a newly opened online casino it is important to show to the public that you are talking serious – and you can only do that by adding the most popular games from the top software providers to your game library. It’s not only about fun. Sure, these top software developers are known for making some of the most fantastic video slots, stellar table games. They have the most exhilarating and professional live casino tables to which you can connect in just a few clicks. But it’s more than just playing fun, graphics and game design. By only having games from the top software companies, you are giving your players a clear message that you are only satisfied with the best quality games. Perhaps the most important aspect is game reliability, honesty and fairness. All games from the top software companies are fully tested and accredited by regulatory bodies. These gaming authorities check whether games indeed turn out completely random results and give gamblers a honest shot at winning. This is perhaps even more important than just a fantastically designed game, as in the end what matters most is reliability and honesty inside a casino.
RNG
The games which can be played at Whamoo Casino all have a piece of code called a Random Number Generator (RNG). With a random number generator, the outcome of every game is completely random and independent from previous results. It means that every card being dealt on the table, all dice which are thrown during a game, and every ball spinning around in the roulette wheel is never predetermined. Let’s put it this way: if you throw a single dice with the numbers 1 to 6 on it, you have indeed an exact 1 out of 6 chance that it will land on your predicted number. A random number generator is absolutely crucial when it comes to delivering fair game results and giving gamblers a honest chance at winning. By having games from the top software providers, Whamoo makes sure that you can trust the fairness of every casino game you play. The good thing is that not only are the game results subject to occasional audits by regulatory authorities, but that these software providers also pro-actively test their own games to ensure they fulfil the highest industry standards. They hire independent testing agencies such as eCOGRA to check their games, both in virtual simulations and real-time results. Let’s take a look at the software providers whose games have already been added to the Whamoo game library. As these are some of the best known software developers in the world, chances are that you have heard about some of these names before! >>Get No Deposit Bonus Now<<
NETENT GAMES
Also known by its full name of Net Entertainment, NetEnt is one of the largest casino game developers in the world. NetEnt is a Swedish company which was founded in 1996, which makes it one of the oldest companies in the relatively young world of online casino gaming. It is so big, that the company is even listed on the local NASDAQ stock exchange in Stockholm, Sweden! NetEnt is best known for its vast video slot portfolio, of which many games are also playable at Whamoo. Having NetEnt games in your casino game library is almost a must for every online casino, as besides Whamoo some 300 or so more online casinos have NetEnt games available, which tells you something about the popularity of this company. Just like Whamoo itself, NetEnt has a full gambling licence in the EU member state of Malta, which means that all games are subject to regulatory oversight and can be trusted for their fairness. NetEnt also works closely together with independent testing labs to ensure that their games meet the highest standards. Some popular NetEnt games which you can play at Whamoo are Jack and the Beanstalk, BerryBurst, Twin Spin, The Vikings, Wings of Riches, Aloha!, Fruit Shop, Jacks or Better, Gonzo’s Quest, Dazzle Me, Wild Bazaar and of course the eternal favourite of Starburst.
PRAGMATIC PLAY GAMES
Pragmatic Play is another major company in the online gaming world. The casino games of Pragmatic Play are always popular with the players, so it is no surprise that Whamoo has chosen to add quite a few Pragmatic Play games to its online collection. Pragmatic Play focuses mostly on online video slots, although they also make some exciting live casino games which are hosted in their own studios. Being only founded in 2015, Pragmatic Play is a relative newcomer within the game developing industry. Yet in those few years time, the company already managed to reach to top heights with Pragmatic Play being considered to rank among the top game providers. Quality and safety are of immense importance for Pragmatic Play. Therefore, all games are documented and tested by independent auditors and testing labs such as QUINEL, BMM and Gaming Labs. Popular Pragmatic Play games which can be played at Whamoo are John Hunter and the Aztec Treasure, Great Rhino Megaways, Leprechaun Song, Lucky Dragons, Mustang Gold, The Champions, Vegas Nights, Aztec Gems, Buffalo King, Starz Megaways, Triple Jokers, Magic Crystals, Sugar Rush, Beowulf and many more exciting video slots. Of course, many baccarat, blackjack and roulette variants are available in Whamoo’s Live Casino which is powered by Pragmatic Play software. You are connected by high resolution video feed to professional dealers and croupiers in one of the Pragmatic Play casino studios where you can experience the thrills of a real life casino behind your computer or mobile phone. It’s almost like you are standing in Vegas!
STAKELOGIC GAMES
Stakelogic is another popular software developer which has added its games to the Whamoo game library. As one of the best-known developers in the software industry, it is always a good sign that Stakelogic games are available to play given that this company has made some exciting video slots. Using HTML5, Stakelogic games are of course fully mobile compatible, which means you can play them on your smartphone as well. The company has also made some exciting new 3D slots which are not only gorgeous to look at but also wild fun to play. As an off-shoot company from gaming giants Novomatic, Stakelogic certainly is a reputable software developer which can be trusted when it comes to fairness and reliability. Popular Stakelogic games are Epic Slam, Wild Stallion, Magic Wheel, Super Wild Arcade, Fruit Spinner, Lucky Gems Deluxe, Hot Fruits, Grand Slam Deluxe, Runner Runner, Turbo 4 Player Jackpot, Dragons and Magic, Big 5 Jungle Jackpot, Mariachi and The Big Cash Game. >>Get No Deposit Bonus Now<<
High limit gaming options
Whamoo is an online casino which is not only suitable for gamblers on a tight budget, but also for the true high rollers. You can place bets as low as a few cents, or as high as several thousands of euros or dollars at this online casino. Depending on your game of choice, whether its a jackpot video slot or classic table game, there are countless of options to bet big for maximum excitement and chances of winning top prizes. Further down in this Whamoo review, we will discuss some of the high limit games which are available. Highrollers should also note that Whamoo comes with its own VIP programme in which you can quickly work yourself to the top category if you bet big. You can get instant access to your own dedicated casino manager and will get invites to high stakes tournaments. There are special weekly cashback bonuses as well for the true high roller gamblers at Whamoo. We will discuss the VIP program more in depth a bit further down this Whamoo review. For now, let’s take a look at all the high roller games which are available at Whamoo Online Casino!
Endless rows of jackpot video slots
If you are a real lover of video slots you will be glad to hear that Whamoo has several hundreds of online video slots available. Although some of these slots are more suitable for beginning players or those on a tight budget, there are plenty of slots available where you can bet up to 100 euro/dollar per spin. This makes for some exhilarating and thrilling slot game action which will please any high stakes gambler out there! Of course, Whamoo also has its share of jackpot slots where you have a shot at winning the progressive jackpot which can run well above a million euro or dollar! These premium slots, such as those using the famous Megaways system, offer countless of opportunities to place maximum bets at your video slot of choice. Check the Whamoo game library whether or not your favourite slot is available as well, or try one of the many exciting new game additions! It is easy to browse through the Whamoo website. You can sort slots by software provider, or use the search function to check for your beloved title.
Join for some high stakes blackjack action
Blackjack has always been one of the most popular games among high rollers and the reasons why are quite clear. You can often bet high amounts of money on a single play and you can as a player slightly influence the outcome of a game as you need to decide whether you want to stand or hit another card. At Whamoo, there is plenty of high stakes blackjack action. There are both normal blackjack games such as American Blackjack and multihand Blackjack, as well as blackjack tables in the live casino. In the live casino, which is powered by Pragmatic Play software, you can play several blackjack variants. Bets of up to several hundreds of euros or dollars, or even higher for the real VIPs, are possible. Beat the hand of the dealer and hit that score of 21. Maybe it will be your lucky day playing blackjack at Whamoo Online Casino!
Grab a seat at the roulette table
There is plenty of roulette action at Whamoo as well. You can choose between virtual roulette versions, or opt for a seat at a roulette table in the live casino, where you are connected to a real-time croupier by video feed. Especially in the live casino high bets of up to a thousand dollar or more are possible, making roulette a big favourite among the real high stake gamblers. Of course, Whamoo Casino has all of the the standard roulette versions of American Roulette, French Roulette and European Roulette. Most of these games are developed by software giants NetEnt. In the live casino, there is also Roulette Macao Live, where you will be connected to a gaming environment which makes you feel like you are playing in the famous casinos of this Chinese gambling mecca. Live Speed Roulette, Live Roulette Auto and Roulette Azure are popular Pragmatic Play live casino versions of roulette which are available to Whamoo players. >>Get No Deposit Bonus Now<<
Whamoo's unique bonus package
One area in which Whamoo stands out as online casino is its great bonus package. Of course, there is a great welcome bonus for newly registered users. But the fun doesn’t stop there! At Whamoo casino, it is bonus day almost every single day of the week. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays the casino has recurring bonus offers if you reload you bankroll on one of those days. This makes Whamoo not only an attractive casino at the moment you sign up, but also at all those moments when you come back to play again. 300 free spins or a €200 deposit bonus
The Whamoo welcome bonus
We start of discussing the Whamoo welcome bonus which is called the “Welcombo” bonus by the casino. On a picture the Welcombo might not look too appealing as its packed in a carton takeaway box you might get at a certain fast food restaurant, but trust us on this: its contents are truly fantastic. The Welcombo box contains a combination of goodies you get with your very first deposit at Whamoo. And what is best of all? You can decide what combo you want to receive! If you sign up at Whamoo for a free online casino account, you can determine your own bonus by adjusting the slide until you have found a combination which matches your idea of a perfect bonus. This is a great option as it allows people to choose the bonus which best suits them. You can choose between free spins and a deposit bonus – or a combination of both. If you are an avid video slot gamer and do not care much about table games, you may want to slide all the way to the maximum free spins bonus. In that case, you will receive 300 free spins, but your deposit bonus will be 0%. The free spins in the Welcombo package are valid on the popular Amatic Industries slot Book of Fortune. On the other hand, if you only care about table games and are not really interested in free spins and playing video slots, you want to adjust the slide to the maximum deposit bonus. This is a 100% deposit bonus of up to 200 euro. This means that if you deposit 200 euro of your own money to your newly created online casino account, Whamoo will top this up by another 200 euro from the house! If you select the full 100% deposit bonus, you will however not receive any free spins at all. Of course, you can also opt for a mix between free spins and a deposit bonus. If you leave the slider in the middle, you will get 150 free spins and a 50% deposit bonus, for example. You can tweak this in any direction you want, for example to a 70% deposit bonus and 90 free spins. The higher your deposit bonus, the less free spins you receive. Want more free spins? Then your deposit bonus will decrease.
Welcombo bonus terms and conditions
Only one bonus is allowed per household and/or per player account. Do note that Whamoo’s bonuses remain valid until seven days after the required deposit has been made. Once this period ends, the bonus is automatically flagged as expired by the system and can no longer be released. The expired bonus funds are then automatically removed from the player’s account. Of course, there is a wagering requirement which must be met in order to withdraw your bonus money and any winnings which may derive from it. Real money balance is used prior to bonus balance. The bonus balance will only be used when there is no real money available in your account. Only real money funds and released bonus funds can contribute towards the wagering requirement of the bonus. The wagering requirement for the Welcombo deposit bonus and free spins is thirty times (30x) the deposit + bonus. Do note that players that deposit money using Paysafecard, Skrill or Neteller are not eligible for the Welcombo. To assure fair gaming and prevent fraud, Whamoo has placed a maximum cap on bonus money wagers, which are limited to a maximum per round/bet of €5 or its equivalent in other currencies. You should also be aware that certain games cannot be played using bonus money. There is a full overview of these games on the Whamoo bonus page. Bets placed in certain games might not contribute fully to the wagering requirements.
Bets placed on video slots count for 100%
Bets placed on scratch cards count for 100%
Bets placed on blackjack count for 10%
Bets placed on video poker count for 10%
Bets placed on poker count for 10%
Bets placed on roulette, baccarat, sic-bo and craps do not count
Bets placed on live casino games do not count
Recurring bonuses at Whamoo
The bonus fun does not stop at the welcome bonus when you play at Whamoo! You can count on a constant stream of promotional campaigns and bonus offers. The casino has recurring promo offers every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If you deposit some extra money to your online casino bankroll on one of those days, you are eligible for a bonus. It therefore pays off to wait for these days before you decide to reload your online funds. On Monday it is Pick ‘n’ Play day to start off the week with some good vibes. On this day, the casino basically tops up your deposited money You can:
Turn your €20 into €25 with the code 100024;
turn your €50 into €65 with the code 100025, and/or
turn your €100 into €135 with the code 100026.
It is even possible to combine these bonuses if you want to deposit a larger sum! Alternatively, you can use the bonus codes of WHPICK5, WHPICK15 and WHPICK35 by putting these into the promo code field on the cashier page every Monday.
Whoa Wednesday
Wednesday is for many a difficult day in the week, it being right in the middle of another long week of work. To spice up things, Whamoo has come with an unusual bonus which it calls “Whoa Wednesday”. Every Wednesday you get to uncover your secret gift – for free, no strings attached. The casino will add this gift to your next deposit. This can be a bonus, a set of free spins, or even both. You’ll get all the details once you’ve pulled off the cover and logged into your account. You will receive the bonus details and promotional code, which you can use in the promo field at the payment page to receive your hard-earned Wednesday bonus.
Freeday bonus
Friday is the favourite day of the week for many people – and the reason why is quite obvious. It marks the end of another working week and the start of some well-deserved weekend R&R! For many people this involves paying a visit to a land-based or online casino to get their kicks at their favourite game, whether it is a card game, roulette or video slot. Whamoo knows that many people cannot wait for the days off work to start and therefore has come up with a special Friday bonus to welcome in the weekend! This bonus day is called ‘Freeday’ by Whamoo. The casino basically hands you a bunch of free spins if you are a regular customer. For every weekday from the previous week (Friday through Thursday) that you’ve deposited 30 euro or more, you get 10 free spins. For every weekend day you even get 20 Free Spins! That means up to 90 Free Spins are yours to play with. That’s a great start to a weekend full of partying and fun!
Wagering requirements
Do note that wagering requirements do apply to all daily promo offers. These are more or less the same as we outlined above in the description of the welcome package, but do take a look at the bonus terms and conditions page on the Whamoo website to know precisely what you can expect! As always, it is important to read the small print in order not to face any surprises later on. >>Get No Deposit Bonus Now<<
A fully mobile compatible casino
As a brand new online casino, Whamoo knows that already a majority of gamblers nowadays play on their mobile phones rather than on computers. Because of this, the Whamoo casino is fully compatible with mobile devices and tablets. If you load the Whamoo website on your smartphone, it looks just as good as on your laptop of computer. It’s equally accessible and orderly too! The mobile website is a breeze to browse through and you can easily access all the important pages such as the game library and payment page. The same counts for the actual games themselves. Whamoo only works with software providers which are known to offer full mobile gaming support. These games are made in code such as HTML5, which means that the games can simply be played in your (mobile) internet browser. There is no download or special app required to play these games. Whether you are playing on your computer, tablet or smartphone, you simply surf to Whamoo.com and select your favourite game from the library. This game will then open in your internet browser – and you can play instantly. It does not matter whether your phone runs on Android or is an iPhone, nor does it matter whether you have Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari or any other internet browser. Whamoo will function just fine! This is absolutely great as you can now play at Whamoo wherever you are, whenever you want. Want to put down some wagers on the roulette table while you are sitting in public transport on your way to work? That’s easily doable! Just take out your smartphone on the train or bus, and surf to Whamoo.com to play at your favourite roulette table. Are you sitting on your couch at home and want to play a few hands of blackjack before going to sleep? Just take out your laptop, tablet or phone and within seconds you can have some of the most exhilarating blackjack fun on your screen.
The Whamoo Live Casino
Whamoo’s live casino is powered by Pragmatic Play and NetEnt software – which are two of the biggest, most reputable software providers in the world. This is great news for the players, as you can access high quality tables in just a few clicks. In the live casino, you are connected with a live video feed to a real-time casino table in one of the casino studios of these software providers. You can play games like baccarat, blackjack and roulette like you are standing in a real land-based casino in Vegas or Monaco! Thanks to the high definition video stream, you have a great overview of all the action which unfolds on and around the table. All table games are led by experienced, professional croupiers and dealers who are not only well-trained, but entertaining as well. By all means, feel free to open your microphone or the chat window to have a talk with them, or even with other players from around the world. This is what makes the live casino such a great invention. Even though you might be sitting at home in front of your laptop or computer, it does almost feel like you are standing in a casino for real! Especially for high rollers the live casino is a worthwhile addition as table limits are often much higher than in regular games. Of course, if you are on a tight budget there will definitely be live casino tables where low minimum bets are allowed too – no worries there. But it is the experienced, high stakes gambler who probably feels most at home in the live casino. There are multiple baccarat, blackjack and roulette variants which you can play. For roulette, there is American Roulette, European Roulette, French Roulette, Speed Roulette, Live Roulette Auto and Roulette Macao Live. If you prefer the casino classic of blackjack, you will find plenty of different tables all with slightly different betting limits. Baccarat is perhaps the game with the highest betting limit. Besides the regular version, there are also Speed Baccarat tables. A fourth casino game which can be played live at the Whamoo Live Casino is Sic Bo. Just browse through the list of live casino games, or use the search function to find your favourite table! >>Get No Deposit Bonus Now<<
Whamoo Casino 50 free spins bonus no deposit required
Whamoo Casino Gratis Spins and Promotions Claim 50 No Deposit Free Spins to Whamoo Casino! Open your gaming account here via a special landing page and play to win. In addition, they have to offer 300 gratis spins and 100% up to 200 EUR bonus money. And, there's also a second and third deposit bonus with bonus chips and free spins. >>Click Here for Exclusive Bonus<<
Whamoo Casino Review
The first thing you might want to learn about Whamoo Casino is that the site has been opened in December 2020. So, this is one of the latest online casino sites out there. However, there is so much more you should know about them. In our review and analysis, we will tell you all the secret details. Keep reading to find out about their owners, licenses, bonuses, promotion, gaming portfolio, payment methods, and more!
Licenses and Operators – Who Owns Whamoo Casino?
The site is registered and run under MGA, the Malta Gaming Authority. It is one of the most prestigious online gambling licenses. The best sites are secured with MGA’s online gaming permission. However, the MGA license is not the only guarantee that proves Whamoo Casino’s trustworthiness. DialMedia Ltd owns and operates Whamoo Casino. Long story short, they are responsible for all the gaming services at the site. And their name makes sure you will enjoy your winnings here. They also run Omni Slots Casino and Fruits4Real Casino. If you know online gambling sites, you know those sites, come on!
Privacy, Safety & Security – Is it a Safe and Legit Online Casino Site?
As we mentioned above, Whamoo Casino is registered under the laws of the Malta Gambling Authority. In addition, the site owners also put a high pressure on protecting their customers’ privacy. The site uses a 128-bit, high-rated encryption technology. It makes sure that all your data will be safely protected. You have no reason to worry about third parties taking advantage of your activities at this site. The MGA license makes sure that you will get the money that you win while playing here. The site follows all GDPR regulations. Based on all these, I believe it is only fair to name them a safe and trustworthy online casino site. >>Click Here for Exclusive Bonus<<
About Whamoo Casino Bonuses – Claim up to €600 Extra Money
Not that you know about the owners, licenses, and privacy measurements of the site, maybe it’s time to register. Opening a new account at the site is worth it now. Sign up through GamingZion. We will help you claim €600 upon your first three deposits. In the Welcome Package, you can claim a 75% third deposit bonus up to €200 + 40 free spins, a 50% second deposit bonus up to €200 + 30 free spins, and a 100% first deposit bonus up to €200. So, you will get extra money upon your first three deposits. Not bad, is it? And other daily offers are also there for you…
About Whamoo Casino Promotions – Win New Prizes Every Day
If you have registered your new account at Whamoo Casino and took your welcome package of €600, that’s good. However, your treats aren’t over just yet. Navigate yourself to the Promotions section in the top menu bar. You will not be disappointed, we guarantee that! You can immediately see the promotions calendar for the current and the upcoming months. And you will see that there is something basically every day… Claim weekly free spins and daily match bonuses, or other prizes. You can see whichever you like the most. You will also find the best offers in our online gambling promotions directory. >>Click Here for Exclusive Bonus<<
Available Games – Play your Favourite Online Casino Slots
Now you know about the bonuses and the promotions. However, the impressive and outstanding features of the site are still not over. We must talk about the gaming portfolio as well! Is there any type of online gambling game that you’re specifically looking for? Start searching for it here, chances are, you will easily find it. Slots, jackpots, table games, video poker, bingo, keno… They are all there, and they are all waiting just for you to finally start playing. Will you?
Whamoo Live Casino – Enjoy The Real-Life Gambling Experience
We’ve already talked about the gaming portfolio, but we haven’t talked about the live casino section yet. It’s time. We must mention it because it has quite an impressive selection when it comes to roulette, baccarat, and blackjack games. You can find many types of those games, with many different dealers. You can pick whichever you like the most – and you can easily try all those games. Unfortunately, there are still ways to improve the live casino selection, nevertheless. For example, live poker slots are definitely missing for now. Probably they are coming soon! >>Click Here for Exclusive Bonus<<
Whamoo Mobile Casino – Play Mobile Slots on iOS & Android
There is no Whamoo Casino mobile app just yet. Which can be interpreted as bad news as well as good news. It could be bad because apps make it easier to play. However, it’s rather good. You don’t need to spend time trying to find the Whamoo mobile application. You don’t need to visit shady sites, download an unknown apk file, and hope for the best. You just need to open your browser on your phone and access the site. It’s totally responsive, so it doesn’t matter which divice you use, you will definitely be able to access the page, log in to your account, and play your favourite slots. Android, iOS, and other operating systems’ users can all play here!
About Whamoo Casino Payment Methods – How to Deposit & Withdraw Money
We also need to talk about the available payment methods at Whamoo Casino as well. There are certain limitations: if you wish to deposit money, you must make a deposit of at least €10. You can deposit up to €1,000 and no more! There are many available banking methods. These vary whether you’d like to deposit or withdraw your money. Please scroll lower to our Banking section. That’s where we list all the available depositing and withdrawal methods at Whamoo Casino. >>Click Here for Exclusive Bonus<<
Rules and Restrictions – Who can Register and Play?
This is probably the only negative part of Whamoo Casino. While the site has the prestigious MGA license, unfortunately, as of today, they have not captured a license from the UK Gambling Committee. So, they cannot operate their services in the United Kingdom. In addition, Whamoo Casino is also not accessible from the USA. There are a few other restricted countries. You can see the full list if you scroll a bit lower to our Restricted Countries section. If your country of residence is not listed, then you should probably sign up for a new account at Whamoo Casino. You won’t regret it!
Overall Verdict
2020 hasn’t really been an easy year for any of us. We have suffered plenty, many of us have lost several loved ones, the Earth has been attacked by numerous natural catastrophes in the past few months. However, we cannot stop believing that better things are coming. All these might start with the launching and finding of our new favourite online gaming site – Whamoo Casino. Their impressive gaming selection will definitely help us ease the pain we got from last year’s traumatic experiences. Let’s hope for the best. Let’s be optimistic. Let’s win! >>Click Here for Exclusive Bonus<<
BetWinner is one of the world’s largest online betting sites, and they offer everything, from an online sportsbook to an online casino. They’re known for offering an extensive selection of markets and also have unrivaled customer support. Their bonuses are also great, and you’ll be able to find great BetWinner promo code offers available to new customers. In this BetWinnerreview, we’re going to be giving you an impartial, honest and in-depth look into this popular bookmaker – and what they have to offer when it comes to esports. For example, we’ll cover the BetWinner app, BetWinner esports markets, payment options and more. Let’s kick things off with a look at our editor’s review of the site, following by looking at the main BetWinner bonus offer, available to all new customers.
EDITOR’S REVIEW
BETWINNER
Esports Offered
Customer Service
Deposit Options
Player Value
Summary BetWinner is a major name in the eSports betting industry and for good reason. They offer a vast selection of markets, but it’s not just their eSports that make them so desirable. They also offer a substantial number of other sporting markets and events, with coverage all over the world. They offer more than 140 different payment methods (so there’s something for everyone), and their well-made, secure and reliable website makes betting easy. They also have a mobile app, which we’ll talk about later. 3.9
A major part of writing this BetWinner review was taking a look at their esports betting markets. BetWinner offers a fantastic selection to choose from, and you’ll find everything from WarCraft III, PUBG, CS:GO, Dota 2, King of Glory and Rainbow Six. Many BetWinner esports markets also offer a comprehensive selection of betting markets for you to choose from. For example, let’s take a look at one of their events: CS:GO. ESL One Road to Tio – Winstrike vs Syman. Of course, you’ll find yourself able to bet on the overall match winner, but there’s a plethora of other markets available too. For example, you can attempt to guess the correct score – with lucrative payouts if you manage to do so. There’s a “Total Maps” market, and a “Total Maps Handicap” market. You’ll also find a “Total Maps Even/Odd” market providing even more betting options. You can also put esports bets into other types of bet, including accumulators, system and chain bets. You’ll often see “recommended” bets further down the betting page when you enter a specific event page. One of the things we really like about BetWinner is that they make it really easy to view even odds. For example, when they’re running lol events, you can easily and quickly view lol betting odds right from the main “esports” page. You can then click on a specific event to view a more comprehensive breakdown of the specific bet types which are available for that event.
HOW TO OPEN AN ACCOUNT WITH BETWINNER?
BetWinner makes it very easy to open an account. They have a one-click registration process for players from certain countries. You can also press the “Registration” button to open your account using a phone number.
Step 1: Choose your country, currency and enter a promo code if you have one.
Step 2: You will then receive your username and password.
Step 3: Add your email address and you’re ready to bet!
BETWINNER MOBILE APP
A big part of writing this BetWinner review was looking at the BetWinner app. It’s designed to let you place esports bets while on the move and is available to download – free of charge – on all iOS and Android devices. The BetWinner app is smooth, well-made and easy-to-use. There’s a handy navigation menu positioned in the upper right-hand-corner of the screen, and this lets you work your way around. It’s possible to register an account directly from the app if you’re a new customer. If you already have a BetWinner account, you can log into the app using TouchID once you’ve entered your username and password once. We tested out the app extensively while writing this BetWinner review. We really like the way you can search directly for events. Esports are far from being the most popular betting market offered at bookies today, so you won’t usually see them featured on the home page. Thankfully, using the app, you can search directly for the markets you want. Placing bets is also simple, and once you’ve added selections to your bet slip it’s a one-click process to confirm the bet amount and place it. We should also point out that you don’t have to download BetWinner’s mobile app if you prefer not to. They also have a fully-functional mobile-optimized website, which allows you to place bets through your mobile device’s internet browser. It’s worth keeping an eye on their mobile promotions too, as there are sometimes special BetWinner bonus offers for mobile.
IS BETWINNER LEGIT?
In our opinion, BetWinner is one of the most trustworthy and reliable esports betting sites. For the purpose of writing this BetWinner review, we wanted to find out more about their licensing – and who actually regulates them. BetWinner holds a valid online gambling license from the Government of Curacao. This ensures the bookie adheres to strict rules and regulations and allows them to offer their services to customers all over the world. This sportsbook website is also very secure. They use the latest HTTPS technology alongside state-of-the-art encryption. Not only does this make the overall betting experience faster, smoother and more reliable – it also ensures that your personal information/sensitive details are safe and secure.
Explanation of the terms in the Iceberg of Final Fantasy XIV secrets and conspiracies.
Greetings my fellows Final Fantasy XIV players. My name is Sirocco "Shameless Flirter" Occoris, and I have been playing FF14 since the first day of 2.0 Early Access (so almost 7 years) and never actually stopped playing. My /playtime is 1253 days and with the permission of u/papayatulus to use his iceberg picture as the reference I will try to explain all the terms that are on that. His original thread is here https://www.reddit.com/ffxiv/comments/hs0fi5/the_iceberg_of_final_fantasy_14_secrets_and/. A user https://old.reddit.com/ffxiv/comments/hs0fi5/the_iceberg_of_final_fantasy_14_secrets_and/fy9ag14/ wishes someone to explain all to them so I'm here to fulfill that request. Please feel free to let me know if I have anything wrong. This post will be full of spoilers big and small, so please read at your own risks.
Original Viera Voice 7: With the release of Shadowbringer came a new race, Viera. As with many other races players can choose one set among a certain amount of voice sets when they create/fantasia their characters. Viera Voice 7 as of 5.0 is like this https://youtu.be/Lo2XtnYpnIg , but since 5.1 it has been changed completely. The old sounds were bugged and appeared to be that of an old woman having an orgasm.
Hornbill is Emet-Selch: Hornbill (actually Shoebill) is a bird that makes cameo in some Shadowbringer Main Scenario Quests. It looks like this: http://imgur.com/gallery/lmh9uwW. Many players consider it to be condescending/have a condescending look. Sometimes it also appears out of place, and this theory is first theorised in this thread https://www.reddit.com/ffxiv/comments/ca2cgt/shoebill_theory/
Ixalis are Allagans: Ixal is one of many beast tribes in the game, those feathered winged creatures with a talent for crafting, science and technology. You can find more details in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/ffxiv/comments/3czoo3/spoilers_regarding_allagans_and_ixali/ that the civilisation of Allag actually created the Ixali.
Pixel Dodge: This is how most MMOs work, that our character's model is actually "compressed" in one single point/pixel. Not "compressed" in the literal meaning, "compressed" as in "only that single pixel matters when considering hitboxes". This is very relevant in dodging AOE, sometimes you can see parts of your body being inside the telegraphed marker, but you don't get hit. As long as that single point is out of the danger zones, you will be fine.
Beardless Cid: Cid is a prominent character in the MSQ, he is often depicted as a technological genius, hard-working individual with a marvellous white beard http://imgur.com/gallery/Be7p269 However prior to 2.0, he was actually... beardless and looked like... this http://imgur.com/gallery/VeC7RJK
Clip onto Cliffhanger: Cliffhanger is a GATE in the Gold Saucer, in the Round Square, that requires you to do a mini jump puzzle to get to the top of the mountain. When the GATE pops, you would need to talk to the NPC and get teleported to the startpoint. The thing is, you can actually get on top of the mountain whenever you want, without having to initialise the GATE or even have the GATE present. From here https://imgur.com/a/ldTj0Ls, you can actually jump to here https://imgur.com/a/JlOVSa4. You might not get it on the first try but if you keep trying and jumping, you'll eventually get it.
Edda's Ghost: Edda is a character in the Tam-tara Deepcroft Hard questline. The story is tragic and gruesome. You can find a full summary of the story of said questline here https://www.reddit.com/ffxiv/comments/2a9wji/tamtara_lore_welcome_to_creepsville_spoilers_all/ When you complete Tam-tara Hard, there is a 1%(?) 0.1%(?) (I don't remember the actual probability, I just know that it is small) chance that Edda will spawn (for you only) in one of the main three cities. This is a known feature. The myth is that some players claimed that they saw Edda's ghost without completing the Tam-tara Hard questline. Edda also appears in Palace of The Dead as a boss once you reach a certain floor.
Gold Saucer visible: The Gold Saucer is visible in the background of Southern Thanalan, like the way Idyllshire is visible from Hinterlands and Eulmore is visible from Kholusia.
Comfort Misery: The debuff status "Misery" can actually be cleansed using /comfort on the affected target. It first appeared in the LV50 dungeon The Lost City of Amdapor. There are gremlin mobs in said dungeon that cast "Foul Mouth" it will apply a "Misery" debuff on you. It cannot be cleansed with Esuna, but it can be cleansed with /comfort. This is a known feature. It DOES NOT work on yourselves though, it has to be from another player so if you wanna test it make sure to have at least 2 people.
Retainers in Overworld: Retainers can actually be seen in the overworld, gathering resources. Like Edda, they also have a chance of appearing. They appear as untargettable NPCs, like the other untargettable NPCs you can see in many other places. This is a known feature.
GM Jail: It is a place where you get pulled in by a GM. Apparently it is actually not instanced, and most of your actions are disabled, including teleport and return. The only thing that appears on your screen is the chatbox. This effectively serves as an in-game jail, where players who committed misconducts are pulled in there and get a warning/a strike/a temporary ban/a perma ban from a GM. When you are released, you will not be released to where you got pulled from, you will be released to the aetheryte that you set as your return point (so probably Limsa).
Crystarium 2005 Tech Demo: The original video itself is from 2005, but this video from 2007 pretty much sums it up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgtZvn5c4e4 It is a Tech Demo from two thousand and five, fifteen years ago that depicts a city with a striking resemblance to the Crystarium.
Cloud Strife Dialogue: It is an easter-egg in game that you can find under System > Character Configuration > Log Window Settings > General then click on one of the 4 Log Filters. It looks like this https://imgur.com/a/Se7IiHB. Each line in each tab of the filters has its own Cloud line.
Open air wedding chapel: Wedding, referred to in-game as "Eternal Bond" or simply "EB", is a ceremony between two players where they get "married". The ceremony is in the Ivory Chapel in East Shroud, many of you might already be very familiar with it. The wedding concept in FF14 however started with an open-air wedding style instead of indoor, unfortunately I can't seem to find the reference picture.
Hidden Gilgamesh in OST: Way back in 2.3/2.4 there was one of the many FFXIV OST albums was released for purchase. One of the tweet from the FF14 twitter after the release of said album was this https://imgur.com/a/PdnnUF8 it referred to a locked file within the album that contains the track "Battle of the Big Bridge". The password to unlock said file is "gilgamesh".
Yugiri is a Miqo'te: Yugiri is an Auri character in the MSQ, she first appeared in 2.4, that is before the release of Heavensward. Throughout all of her ARR appearance, she was always seen wearing a mask that covered her entire head except for her eyes. We were only able to see her actual face with the release of 2.5. Masked Yugiri is indeed a cat, having the Miqo'te model. You can find the details in this comment https://www.reddit.com/ffxiv/comments/hskzt7/explanation_of_the_terms_in_the_iceberg_of_final/fycc0un/. Thank you u/MagpieInBlack
Back masking in Tam-tara Hard theme: Backmasking is a recording technique in which a sound or message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. Backmasking is a deliberate process, whereas a message found through phonetic reversal may be unintentional. This is probably related to Edda and her creepy questline.
Housing Void: There is a glitch in FFXIV where you can go out of bound in a house. With a certain specific set up, consisting of Troupe Stages and certain beds, you can see what it's like "outside" of a house. It's a square box with non-smooth texture within a completely dark background, if you fall into it you'll fall forever.
Meol is just bread: Meol is the food given by Vauthry to the poor people living in Kholusia. It is actually made of sin eaters, so if one eats that, one to an extent "is" a sin eater. Vauthry has the ability to control sin eaters, that's why he does that. This is probably a meme related to this, in line with the saying "x did nothing wrong".
Dun Scaith Ultima: The 24 man raid Dun Scaith, when first released, had a completely different third boss, the Succubus. After a certain FanFest (I forgot which FanFest) where players who attended got to do a fight with the Proto Ultima, they decided to change Dun Scaith's third boss to Proto Ultima. There is actually still a way for you to fight the original third boss, the Succubus, whereas ALL 24 players in that instance must not have accepted the Proto Ultima questline. As long as ONE of the 24 players in Dun Scaith has accepted the Proto Ultima questline, you will get Proto Ultima as the third boss.
0:00 Titan clear: Titan is one of the more notorious primals in FFXIV. This is probably a meme referring to a bug/glitch that would give you an instant win over one of the Titan fights.
King Moogle self-kill: Thornmarch and Thornmarch EX, are primal fights released in 2.2, so like... 6 years ago. In the Extreme version you would fight King Moogle and his 8 lackeys. Unlike most other fights, this one does not have a hard enrage. You are supposed to reduce the lackeys' HP to very low, but not zero, then kill one, the king would then refill all of the lackeys' HP to full at the cost of his own HP. You can only do this twice before the "enrage". Basically you damage the main boss by damaging the adds. If you just kill one lackey for example, the main boss would only lose a little of his HP, compared to a big chunk if you have all 8 at very low HP then kill one. After the second time of doing that, King Moogle will cast his Enrage, dealing a fix amount of... 30000 damage. The cast is super long, like 15-20 seconds. In 2.2, that is more than enough to kill everyone. But in 5.2 where everyone has 120k HP and the tanks have like 170k HP, if you do this fight unsync, no one would do it the legit way. They would just quickly kill 2 lackeys, then the main boss because unlike other hard enrages where it just outright kills you regardless of how much HP you have, this fight's enrage is fixed at... 30k damage per cast. Non healers can survive 5-8 casts, healer can survive infinite casts, so there is no point of doing this the correct way when unsync.
Urth's Fount (Extreme): This is a primal fight release in 2.5, where you fight Odin. This fight does not actually have an Extreme version, only a normal version. This is one of the few primal fights to not have an Extreme version. Urth's Fount Extreme is probably a meme related to this.
Koji Fox Vocals: Koji Fox is the lead of the English localisation team for FFXIV. He is famous for the plethora of pop culture references within the game, and also a lot of sexual innuendos. He is also a member of the FFXIV band along with Soken and other members, where he actually is the lead vocal. Some of the in-game OSTs are actually Koji's singing, namely "Locus" (Seeking the peace of reason, Sheep in a peaceless season...)
Warrior of Light is a primal: This is theorised long before, where... we the WOL, is a primal.
Y'shtola aethersight is killing her: After using her kaboom ultimate to escape in the conclusion of 2.5, she got lost in the Lifestream and became blind. She is now "seeing" with aethersight instead of her eyes, and it is theorised that if she keeps on doing this she will die.
Zenos died in Ala Mhigo: Zeno died in the conclusion of 4.0 after we fought him, he then body hopped to a resistance soldier then later body hopped back to his actual body, thanks to the artificial echo. This is a meme related to that.
Crowd Noise Lalafell: If you go to a crowded city and turn off all the sound excepts for the "Ambient Sound", you will hear a lot of chatters with occasion laughter and shouting. The lalafell noise definitely replays over and over along with the "UGHHH" sound right after. This is automatic and is part of the game even if no players are actually emoting. It's specifically Lalafell /happy voice 1.
Corpse Drifting: Happens when you died and DC'd under certain circumstances. I actually have a video of it myself, recorded by myself. A video from 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgi47TzhwSg
Chocobo Summoning in House: A Chocobo as a mount and a choboco as a companion, under normal circumstances cannot be summoned in a house. There is probably a glitch that allows it, but I don't know about said glitch. It might also just be a meme.
Note: From this point onward (the third row), there appears to be less and less known features and more memes.
Desynthing Minion: Minion cannot be desynthesized. There might be a glitch that allows it, but I don't know about it. This is probably a meme.
Nanamo really died: Nanamo got "poisoned" in 2.5, we all thought she died back then but it turned out that she is still alive. It might be theorised that the current Nanamo we see is not real and the actual Nanamo actually died. This one is in the same line as the Zenos one. This one probably might just be a meme.
Miqo'te hidden human ear: Miqo'te have cat ears on top of their head instead of on the side. Probably just a meme.
Totorak Hard mode theme: Many of the old dungeons get a Hard mode version in later patches. Totorak is considered by many players to be long and tedious, especially if you get it in a leveling roulette. There is no Totorak Hard dungeon in the game, so this is probably a meme related to that.
Fattest Cat: Fat Cat is a minion. Fatter Cat is a mount. "Fattest Cat" is an easter egg found in the second boss of the LV70 dungeon "The Drowned City of Skalla", released in 4.1. You can see it here https://youtu.be/d6bUC9_Vy6M?t=132 This is actually an old FFXIV standard of naming skills, and some of it are still present to this day (Straight Shot -> Straighter Shot for example). Fattest Cat is probably a meme referring to that.
Midgardsormr blood in Mor Dhona: It is said that the blood of said dragon can be seen in Mor Dhona, but I think this is probably just a meme.
West Shroud: La Noscea has both Western La Noscea nad Eastern La Noscea, Thanalan has both Western Thanalan and Eastern Thanalan. The Black Shroud used to have both West Shroud and East Shroud in 1.x, West Shroud got removed in 2.0. Many players want the zone back.
A8S Temporal Loop: In A8S (The raid "The Burden of the Son" released in 3.2) if you ignore the mechanics for the 4 robots, it’s normally a party wipe. If you do it unsync, the wipe is actually possible to survive, but it’ll reset the fight to the beginning by respawning the first enemy robot if it detects any surviving players. The 3.x raid series/The Alexandre raid series also featured some time traveling elements, most notably in A12/A12S, where there is a mechanic that makes us go back in time to save ourselves in A11/A11S. The fights A11/A11S themselves have some foreshadowing to this too. This is probably a meme related to that.
Thancred still possessed: Thancred was possessed by Lahabrea back in ARR. He is now not possessed anymore so this is probably a meme saying that he is still possessed.
Lyhe Ghiah Door pattern: When doing treasure maps, sometimes you come across a portal that leads you to an instanced "dungeon". Within this place after you clear each floor you will get rewarded with gil and items, and the further you go, the more gil and the more valued items you would get, up to the very last floor. However between each floor you must choose between 2 to 3 doors. Choose right and you proceed to the next floor, choose wrong and you get booted out. The door choosing doesn't actually matter, it's just there for show, you have a set probability of success/failure regardless of which door you've chosen. Some people claimed that they can get the "correct" door every time by examining the patterns on the doors.
Estinien bathing scene: Apparently Estinien was wearing his blood-covered armour for like half of Heavensward, meaning he didn't take a bath for that much time periods. This is probably a meme related to that.
Zenos Sahagin theory: The MSQ part in 2.3, we came across a Sahagin Chef that can hop bodies with the help of the echoes. Zenos also did the same thing. This is probably a meme related to this.
Crystal Tower upside down: I don't actually know anything about this one but I guess it has something to do with the Mor Dhona's Crystal Tower and the Crystarium's Crystal Tower having different visuals.
Gold Saucer Ambient sound: If you teleport to the Gold Saucer and turn off all the sound except for the ambient sound, what you hear can be quite eerie/creepy, ironic to a supposed jovial-casino-themed establishment.
FFXIV engine developed in Roblox: Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system that allows users to program games and play games created by other users. An obvious meme.
Apartment 91: There are only 90 apartments in any given Ward/Subward https://imgur.com/a/U9fg8ks. An obvious meme.
Hunger Bar: Hunger Bar is a reference to Minecraft where players have a bar displayed as drumsticks which regulates the player's certain abilities. In FFXIV we can have a meal, but we are not required to have a meal to function properly. This is a meme related to that.
Mahjong Fifth player: Mahjong is a 4-player game that was added in 4.4. So first I read this comment https://old.reddit.com/ffxiv/comments/hs0fi5/the_iceberg_of_final_fantasy_14_secrets_and/fy8292l/ but coincidentally, I am actually a semi-pro Mahjong player IRL. I have actually reached the highest rank (10th Dan) 8 months ago in November 2019, and I currently am the first and only 10th Dan player in FFXIV. I also have a really high rating. https://imgur.com/a/DTe2bNo This one I can personally confirm that there is no such thing as Gonma or 5th Mahjong player or any additional Mahjong questline in FFXIV. This is an obvious meme.
Unique Scylla Robe: The "Scylla's Robe of Casting" and "Scylla's Robe of Healing" are drops from the 24-man raid Syrcus Tower. Their similarity in visual between the 2 robes are probably what made this meme.
Powerman 5000 copied Soken: First appeared in this thread https://www.reddit.com/ffxiv/comments/47dbl5/soken_vs_powerman_5000/ (The video in the thread was actually taken down) but it is somewhat of a controversy where certain Soken's tracks are similar to those of Powerman 5000, another composer.
All Namazu are Lalafell: Obvious meme.
Reflection Texture: Mirrors exist in the FFXIV universe. Some housing items are actually mirrors, like this makeup set https://imgur.com/a/6l2BVWT, but as you can see it is always deliberately covered, because reflection texture in game would probably be too much, hence this meme.
Exarch clone: Probably a meme related to the many Crystal Exarch clones running amok, and one we've seen in the 2019 Halloween event.
Dress up Flash game on Mog station: Probably a meme related to Fantasia.
Triple Triad empty card: A glitch occurred in a Triple Triad game in which you have an empty card. There was actually a thread and a video about this glitch, but I cannot find it right now. I will update this post when I find it.
Note: Most of the terms in the bottom row are memes.
Dialectics of the Baldesion Arsenal: Baldesion Arsenal or simply BA, is a 54-man dungeon released in 4.55 with the latest installment of Eureka, Hydatos. Eureka itself is kinda like a totally different world compared to the rest of the game (both literally and metaphorically). When Eureka was in its prime, instances were often full, and if you zoned in a Eureka instance you would find things on /shout chat like: "Is Louhi up?", "LFG NM prep", "lfg train", "Please rez at (x;y)". BA probably has the same kind of abbreviations referring to strategies, probably even more obscure that led to the birth of this meme.
Stone Sea Sky Numerology: Stone Sea Sky or simply SSS is a featured first released in 3.0, which "mimics" certain fights (often Extreme Primal and High-End Savage Raids), in the form of a dummy with a set amount of HP. This amount changes depending on which job you are. It is supposed to be a personal DPS check to see whether you have the DPS to clear the encounter, it might or might not be accurate. This is a meme related to that.
Thancred Infertile: Probably a meme related to Thancred's inability of having children.
Black Parse: Parsing is the act of using ACT (heh) or Advanced Combat Tracker, a 3rd party tool to calculate one's DPS. A parse can also be called a "log", and said log can be uploaded to a website called "FFlogs", which ranks players based on those logs. Each fight and job has their own percentile of DPS, and each percentile tier has a colour associated with it, with 0-25 being grey, 26-49 being green, 50-74 being blue, 75-94 being purple, 95-99 being orange and 100 being gold, hence terms like "Grey parse", "Orange parse". There is no percentile that has the colour black, so this is a meme related to that.
Lord of Verminion Tournament: Lord of Verminion is a mini game added way back in 3.1, you can go to the Gold Saucer upper floor and play with another player. It's basically a MOBA where you control your minions to defeat your opponent's. The game is actually quite fun, I enjoy it from time to time, but there are not many people playing it. There is also a bi-weekly tournament of this game, but the number of participants can be so low that you might see the same names on the leaderboard every time.
PoTD RNG sampling uses number stations: PoTD or Palace of the Dead is a rogue-like randomised dungeon where you must kill monsters on a floor to proceed to the next floor. The layout of each floor is completely random. A numbers station is a shortwave radio station characterized by broadcasts of formatted numbers, which are believed to be addressed to intelligence officers operating in foreign countries. An obvious meme.
Roulette Synchronicity: If you queue for a Duty Roulette, you cannot get a dungeon that has the ilevel surpassing your current ilevel. Many players abused this to get the dungeons they desire, preferably a quick and easy one.
Guildhest parallel universe: Guildhests are... instanced duties like other instanced duties in the game, but less prominent. Some are actually required to progress with the MSQ, but there were no new Guildhests since 2.0. Probably a meme related to that.
Simultaneous Aurum Vale: Aurum Vale is a LV47 dungeon and is notorious because of the jump in difficulty compared to many preceding dungeons. Players suddenly kinda have to know what they are doing and play at least moderately decently, and a small mistake can easily lead to a wipe. Many players express grudge against this particular dungeon. This is probably a meme related to that.
Thank you all if I use any of the threads that you started. Edit 1: Thank you very much for the medal! Edit 2: I was able to clarify a few terms and make some adjustments thanks to the people commenting below.
Casino.com Review. This is a flashy online casino that will bring back memories of the Vegas Strip. There are lots of bright colours, lights, and the lure of jackpots to keep you coming back for more. As part of the ONISAC group, Casino.com runs its games exclusively on the Playtech platform, so fans of this company will really be in luck here. In its current format, Casino.com has been in operation since 2008 (it was a casino software website before the URL was sold). The casino is owned and operated by Mansion Gaming, a huge Asian corporation that has been in the land-based and online casino business for over 2 decades. While some of their other brands are focused on Asian players, they use Casino.com to attract a more global audience; this is not shocking given the URL is so easily searched. Welcome to El Royale Casino ️ Enjoy a wide range of online casino games Play on any device 24/7 Support Secure Payments ⚡Join now! What makes Bitcoincasino USA truly legit is the fact that it is highly protected with strong encryption codes for secure cryptocurrency transactions and data transmissions. In fact, the online casino is associated with some of the best bitcoin casino game providers that are known to be fair. Some of the gaming software providers associated with Bitcoin casino USA are BetSoft Gaming, Belatra ... Casino.com is an online casino that offers hundreds of video slots and casino games by different providers, including Microgaming, Playtech and many others. The casino is committed to giving its players a fair and exciting gaming experience and monitors their Random Number Generator closely. Available in multiple languages, Casino.com is an entity of Mansion Casino Limited and is governed by ... Stay away from casino.com, mansion casino, slots heaven they are all same. It’s been two weeks to verify my account every time they make excuses every time they ask for new documents. Now they block all my three accounts. And ask for proof of deposit that I give them but still don’t accepted and they have no reason why they don’t accept it. Absolutely scam they hold my more then £1000 ... Slots 7 Casino Promotions. Welcome free chip of $100 with a cashout eligible upto $100. Welcome deposit bonus of 350% which will make your account more than 3X. Get upto 1100% deposit bonus with our bonus package. Come back to catch our most recent reload bonuses ; Check our emails for exclusive promotions and free chips. OVER 200 3D CASINO GAMES. We've got over 200 3D slots and games from ... Is Casino Legit reviews is a website that reviews all online casinos to know if they are legit or scam. And also recommends the genuine ones to play on. Casino.com Überprüfung mit Promo-Code im Jahr 2021: Legit oder Betrug? Aktualisiert am 24/12/2020 von Leo Coleman. 146 Bewertungen. Der Vorteil 100% Match Bonus bis zu $ 400! Free Spins Erhalten Sie 200 Freispiele als Einzahlungsbonus. Übersicht. Online seit: 2008; Minute Kaution: 10 $ (20 $ für Boni) Auszahlungsgeschwindigkeit: 3-5 Werktagen; Spieltypen: Blackjack, Roulette, Slots, Live ... Welcome to Luxury Casino A place where your gaming experience is our priority.With over 550 state-of-the-art games, we pride ourselves on offering razor-sharp graphics, exciting promotions and quality service whenever you might need us.. For us, luxury is not optional but essential to all our players and that’s why we only offer the best services possible.