Lump on. That is what the Football Association would like you to believe Kieran Trippier told his friends shortly before his move to Atletico Madrid. It implies a ring, a sting and big, big rewards, hence his 10-week ban. It was nothing of the sort.
Transcripts reveal a more earthbound reality. The circle trying to win a few quid, the player trying to be a pal. One of Trippier's mates asks if he should 'lump on' — the first time the phrase is used — and gets the reply: 'Can do mate.' Later, pressed, Trippier adopts the same turn of phrase. 'Lump on if you want mate,' he advises. It is the tamest of endorsements.
Yet, as the friends swiftly discover, lumping on really isn't an option. Bookmakers don't want anyone lumping on a transfer bet because the only person who would enter such an unpredictable market with cash and confidence is in the know. Nobody is betting big money on a hunch.
So it's a win-win. If the move collapses the bookmakers keep the cash, and if it delivers they have the safety net of football's governing body to do their dirty work, if betting patterns indicate prior knowledge. So one of Trippier's friends had his stake 'massively restricted', and another got £300 on, but only at odds of 1-6, giving bookmakers a liability of £50 and a red flashing light.
Some of the other bets were laughable: £8.75 at 1-2, liability £4.37; £20 at 1-2, liability £10; £20 at 1-3, liability £6.66; £25 at 8-13, liability £15.38. The biggest bets were undermined by short odds: £100 at 5-6, liability £83.33; £120 at 5-6, liability £100. Another bet of £300 at 4-11 gave the winner £109.09, while £80.34 was wagered at 3-10, a return of £24.10.
The significant numbers here are not being made off book-makers. 'Levy just wants £500,000 more,' Trippier told his acolytes at one stage. According to FA evidence, the fee was finally agreed with Tottenham for £25m, which rather puts that £4.37 into perspective, or even the big hit, £109.09. As does the £482m Denise Coates was paid as chief executive of Bet365 across two years between 2017 and 2019.
And, yes, it's the principle that counts, not the profit. Trippier should not have been sharing privileged information with people he must have reasonably assumed were using it for gambling purposes.
Yet, why, exactly? This isn't a match. He isn't affecting the outcome and therefore the integrity of a competition. Bookmakers have chosen to make a market on his life, and in doing so have placed him in jeopardy.
Who makes significant career decisions without discussing it with family or friends, without taking counsel, or offering progress reports? Trippier did not ask for this book to be opened, and receives no revenue from it. Maybe that is what should change.
The only way these bans and fines would be fair is if book-makers had to seek permission from the individuals involved, who would receive a cut of the revenue as part of their image rights. Then, if a player was found to be manipulating the market, or offering the inside track, it would be fraud and he could be penalised accordingly.
This is just the FA acting as bookies' muscle. If they didn't pursue cases against players such as Trippier and Daniel Sturridge, the gambling houses would soon tire of losing and the problem would go away. It is the FA that facilitates this by acting as enforcer — as if the grubby charade is any of their business.
This is now being tested. Atletico Madrid have challenged the ban which is suspended, pending appeal. The club will go to FIFA and then the Court of Arbitration for Sport if unsuccessful.
Their case is simple. They bought a player. They had nothing to do with a betting scandal that took place when he was still under contract to Spurs, or a punishment handed down from a different country. Had Trippier served it as administered, he would have missed 13 Atletico matches including the home Champions League fixture with Chelsea. As he would not even be allowed inside the training ground before March 1 — or to attend a game — his place in the Madrid derby scheduled for March 7 would have been in jeopardy, too.
And this is a huge season for Atletico. They top the table with a two-point lead and games in hand on Spain's big two. They could win LaLiga for only the second time since 1996 — and Trippier is their first-choice right back.
Certainly, it did not escape Atletico's attention that his ban did not impinge on any international fixtures, leaving the FA and English football unscathed. Atletico protested and FIFA listened. It could mean, if the punishment is delayed but upheld, that Trippier misses the European Championship. That leaked this week as if the FA were trying to put the frighteners on.
Yet, so what? It's their trumped-up ban. Given the friend-of-the-right-back's-cousin's-best-mate's-cleaning-lady source of transfer gossip is such a familiar trope, how preposterous is it that the FA make passing information a crime? Equally, why are they prioritising protecting the sanctity of an artificial betting market created to separate mugs from their money?
Unless some mug knows somebody, of course. Then, they'll refuse to pay, turn the source over to the beaks, and the FA will prosecute as if they've cracked the crime of the century. Strange, isn't it, that they're so fascinated by £4.37 — but rarely with the part where the real money gets made?
link if you want give click to the dm

to keep on pushing.
Many people visit this sub and post after a bad loss. I’ve been there ... we all have. What’s going to happen is after 5-10-20-50 days of not gambling you’re going to feel so accomplished that you’ll have the urge to reward yourself by playing a few hands or betting a couple bucks (or thousands) on the Super Bowl. You need to remind yourself why you are here.
Take control of your future and your finances. When you are gambling the difference between $1 and $1000 means nothing as you are so numb to monetary value. “What’s another $1000 bet considering I have already lost 40 times that?” is something I would say to myself before unloading on another game. I am not a financial advisor, but I have experience in economics, finance, and life and feel I can provide some insight as a recovering addict.
My situation is a bit different so I will give some insight and feel it’s best to explain my situation.
I’m 25 years old and live at home (COVID). I have lived on my own in the Big Apple and have seen both sides of life. One where your parents cover everything and one where you have daily and monthly expenses like rent, utilities, and food. Currently I’m lucky enough where I don’t have expenses, but being the dumbass I was, my expense was paying the bookie. I know many people don’t have the same luxury as I, but it doesn’t mean you can’t still save. I’ve given up the last 2 years of saving and instead gave into this disease.
1) first thing first, personal ban yourself from casinos or online sites. My vice was sports and I had a chat with my bookie and let him know I was struggling. We were able to settle the debt for about half of what I owed. Just ask, it can’t hurt.
2) before you can save you need to pay off whatever outstanding debt you have. Credit cards and fees will continue to build. Once these are at or near $0 you can begin the rebuild. I have (thankfully) never been in debt, but this is certainly where I would start if I was.
3) create a budget. A tight one, to the dollar. Mortgage? Phone? Car? Food? High level looking at the entire month, decide what you can spend and what you can save.
4) CONGRATS!!!! You are debt free. For whats it worth, I will consider phone bills and car payments for what they are, monthly expenses. Factor these into a budget. For some, this step might take 1 month or 10 years. Patience is key.
5) the first exciting part of this whole thing is quitting, the next is clearing of any debts, and now for the grand finale. You can now start to build wealth and add to your future. Depending on your financial security you can decide to add to your savings or opening an investing account (I use Fidelity). Investing in low risk ETFs will continue to gain and gain and gain.
6) if your company offers 401k and match, DO IT. I can’t stress this enough, it’s free money that you can’t touch. Over 3 years of working my 401k has absolutely ballooned. My company matches as well and I can’t withdraw, only add. It’s the perfect scenario for someone still learning how to control their financial future.
7) sit back and watch your money grow. Once you see gains in your investing accounts, you will become invested in learning about different ETFs that it will become a low risk way to “gamble”.
Hope this helps. Be patient. The damage is done and the recovery will take some time. Use your new time wisely, you’ll have a lot of it. As someone who constantly bet on sports, I’d sometimes spend 6-7 hours a day watching college basketball games I normally wouldn’t care about or sweating doing research on how to make back the money I lost. Spend this time to learn new things, pick up a new hobby, and apply to new jobs/opportunities to advance your career and increase your salary.
Most of all, be excited. Be excited about a life without lying to loved ones, chasing loses, owing people or institutions money. Be excited for a life of stability, even if it takes years to arrive at that point. Don’t let the past you define your future. It is never too late to recover. There will be a point where you’ve made so much progress you think you can go back as a changed person. You can’t. Use whatever you can to remind yourself.
One thing I want to add. The most difficult part for me is dealing with the constant regret of losing money. My parents certainly think I’m better off than I am and my bank account could look far better. What helps me is thinking about how fast time flies and how fast you can rebuild if you set your mind to it. Another thing is not comparing myself to others. I always think about how far ahead my friends and classmates are, but in reality everyone deals with different vices. I’m not big into buying material things or smoking, but many people do. These cost money. A lot of it. You really don’t know what other things people are dealing with. I look at gambling as an investment gone wrong.

Hey everyone! I've been really geeking out on finding problems that I think could be turned into meaningful businesses. I'm sharing all my ideas here if you're interested. Here's what I've been thinking about lately -

Keeping track of betting lines is a pain

“I love sports betting but it’s hard to keep track of the betting odds on all the different betting apps. I’ve created a spreadsheet and do it manually, but I still need to search through all the sites to get the information. I’d definitely pay for something that did this automatically.” - Anonymous sports better seeking a solution.
Market Background/Opportunity Size:
Changes in sports betting law have created amazing entrepreneurial opportunities! It's like the goldrush here given how young this market is and how quickly things are changing in the US.
On May 14, 2018, the United States supreme court ruled the federal law prohibiting states from authorizing sports betting, protection act PASPA, unconstitutional. It is now up to individual states to decide if they want to authorize and regulate sports betting in their state. 18 states have fully legalized sports betting with 4 more passing bills just this year to legalize it (they aren’t operational yet).
Even though less than half of the US has legalized sports betting, the market cap was sitting pretty at $104.41 billion and expected to reach $155.49 billion by 2024 (this is an estimate, it was tough to nail down). This market is much larger if you include other global players like the UK, Australia, etc… who have already legalized sports betting. It’s clear that trends for this industry are going in the right direction and there’s still a strong opportunity for the first-mover advantage to take place.
Major Players:

• Draft Kings
  • Founded in 2012
  • 700 employees
  • Publicly traded
• Fan Duel
  • Founded in 2009
  • 1,000 employees
  • 412.6m raised
• Bet 365
  • Founded in 2000
  • 4,500 employees
  • Bootstrapped (if anyone has more info on this, please share)

Note: there are over 100 sports betting services on the market
The Opportunity:
As mentioned above, there is a huge problem with keeping track of all the different betting lines that exist - resulting in many people (unsuccessfully) using a spreadsheet. Here’s an article that explains why tracking betting lines is important.
The TL;DR is this, placing your bet on a site that has the most favorable odds results in you getting the highest return on that investment. Most people are doing one of these two things:

1. Nothing. Rather than checking to see where they can get the best returns, they are just using their core betting app and taking the odds they are given. Depending on the bet size, that leaves hundreds of dollars on the table.
2. Manually tracking the odds each betting site is offering and compiling the odds in a spreadsheet. This results in a lot of time spent switching between sites and transposing numbers.

Current Solutions:

• Manually tracking betting lines in a spreadsheet or on paper
• Smart Lines
  
  • Founded in 2018
  • 2-10 employees
  • Price: Free
  • Notes: They don’t aggregate betting lines from any of the major bookmakers.
• Action Network
  
  • Founded in 2017
  • 53 employees
  • Price: Free
  • Notes: At their core, Action Network is a sports analysis and media company. One of their features is line tracking across all the major bookmakers but it’s relatively hidden and poorly advertised.

How to Get Your First 10 Customers:

1. Define Your Early Adopter: Your TAM is anyone who participates in sports betting, but I’d focus your efforts on finding people who acutely experience this pain. People who are spending a lot of time and money on sports betting have the most to lose. More specifically, hunt for people who’ve already created solutions to this problem themselves - like those using homegrown spreadsheets.
2. Look for CDIs: When looking for channels to find potential users I ask myself “where do my potential customers hang out?”. In this case, I’d look at online communities like Sports Book and Sports Betting subreddits. By simply asking the question, “How do you track betting lines?” you’ll be able to start conversations with potential users about unmet needs.
3. Create an Online Ad: I’d next test an offer to see if you can acquire potential users to sign up for your service. This can be as simple as creating a landing page (using marketing language from the conversations above) and run a paid ad to your target audience to collect emails.
4. Build a Wizard of Oz Test: Now that you have a list from running the ad above, I’d see if you can monetize it. Contact people and charge a small fee to run a small wizard of oz test - you could manually pull lines based on the bets they're watching and send it to them in a daily email. Or, there’s likely a no-code tool you could use to scrape the data from existing sites and organize it for them.

I can see a freemium model working for this as well, so you may not need to monetize immediately. One great option would be to charge the bookmakers a fee for every bet you send to their platform.
Challenges:

• Is there a problem worth solving? Although this idea logically makes sense, there are flags raised because no company has solved the problem yet. Typically, you can validate some form of demand based on market signals or other competitors, but this seems like a blue ocean (both a good and bad thing). Follow the plan above and you should be able to tell quickly if you’re on the right track.
• Can you build it? The technology to create a product as this exists. That said, it may be difficult to pull data from the major bookmaker’s sites. The fact that Smart Lines doesn’t work with any of the major bookmakers left me scratching my head and wondering why.
• Legal Challenges? Sports betting is highly regulated like most industries that are birthed from law changes. Even being associated with this space is likely going to create some challenges. I'm not an expert in this space, so it's hard to say exactly what legal challenges may arise, but getting accessing other bookmaker's data and facilitating the betting process are two great places to start your investigation.

Additional Opportunities:
There appears to be no shortage of companies trying to become the next big bookmakers. But, there’s plenty of opportunities this burgeoning market has opened up beyond just being a bookie. With this market in its infancy, you can bet (pun 100% intended) that there’s going to be a lot of room to expand your offerings. Whether it be sports betting tips, predictions, tools or even becoming a bookie yourself, there’s money to be made here.
While doing research on this, I found many people are struggling with keeping track of their bets and recording their results. This could be an easy addition to a solution to tracking betting lines. Here’s what some people said -
https://imgur.com/a/aPTXuBd
Thanks for reading everyone! I'll monitor the comments for any questions and stuff - would love feedback.

Let's be honest; it is a hard truth that sports wagering is a most loved sit back for some games sweethearts and gamers today with some not having the option to go a day without it. There is practically zero uncertainty that innovation and the online insurgency has made it simpler to put down wagers than any time in recent memory. It is presently conceivable to put down your wagers by just clicking a catch and given that there are endless bookmakers online today, gamers are truly spoilt for decision.
In any case, notwithstanding the numerous preferences that online games wagering offers, there are still some who like to stroll to their ordinary wagering houses or bookies to put down wagers. Indeed, to give you a superior thought, underneath is a snappy guide or a couple of the reasons regarding why internet wagering is a superior choice for all gaming sweethearts.
Bookmaker decision
While it is conceivable to locate various in-store bookmakers in your city or road, there is as yet a lot greater collection of them on the web. There are various bookmakers online both neighborhood and worldwide that you could decide to put down your wagers with which is a favorable position since your decision won't be restricted to the not many that could have branches in your nearby. Since frankly, they may not really be the best. A wide scope of conspicuous and respectable bookmaker brands like Betway have entered the online domain and all these are at your picking.
Independent of what your game of decision is, most online bookmakers offer wagering open doors for most. Sports like volleyball, cricket, tennis, dashing, football and boxing among others are generally accessible. No compelling reason to stress that you may be passing up anything since all wagering openings are accessible on the web.
Imperative to likewise note is that the online bookmakers are as yet dependent upon similar administrative laws like their in-store mates so make certain to pay special mind to bookmakers that pass all the administrative necessities in your general vicinity. At the end of the day, pay special mind to those that are completely authorized since these will be the dependable decision that you should wager with.
Momentous offers
Numerous in-store bookmakers have fair chances and offers for their buyers yet these are not the slightest bit practically identical to the various offers that are accessible on the web. Online bookmakers are frequently in rivalry with one another, so they regularly attempt to do something extraordinary for themselves. From join rewards to insane big stakes, you can believe that you will locate the best offers on the web. There is certainly continually something energizing on the web so you should simply look for a bookmaker that gives you the better preferred position and better chances in your picked sport. Nonetheless, note that not every one of that sparkles is gold so pay special mind to offers that don't accompany offensive terms and conditions connected to them.
Wager at whatever point you need and from any place
The greatest bit of leeway that internet wagering offers is adaptability. The sheer comfort of putting down a wager online can't be contrasted with whatever else. Most bookmakers have their sites as well as have portable destinations and applications for your benefit. You can basically utilize an application on your cell phone to put down your wager day or night and from any place you may be. Regardless of whether you are at home, at the workplace or in any event, sunbathing at the sea shore, you can put down your wagers effectively and rapidly without holding up in a long queue or even trust that the store will open. Online bookmakers are consistently just getting started and there is continually something that you can wager on.
Live Betting
Online bookmakers offer the most well known games, however they additionally make it feasible for you to wager continuously. With live wagering, you can wager toward the beginning of the game or even as it advances. You can even put down a wager ultimately which probably won't be conceivable with in-store wagering. Furthermore, you could decide to money out ahead of schedule and try not to lose all your cash. The decisions online are perpetual and the preferences various.
Just from the above it is anything but difficult to tell that internet wagering offers an entire scope of preferences and has incredibly improved the games wagering field. From free wagers to unimaginable extra offers, online bookmakers are continually searching for methods of improving the wagering experience of their clients.

Hey everyone! I've been really geeking out on finding problems that I think could be turned into meaningful businesses. I do have an ask, but before I do that I'll provide some value first :)

Keeping track of betting lines is a pain

“I love sports betting but it’s hard to keep track of the betting odds on all the different betting apps. I’ve created a spreadsheet and do it manually, but I still need to search through all the sites to get the information. I’d definitely pay for something that did this automatically.” - Anonymous sports better seeking a solution.
Market Background/Opportunity Size:
Changes in sports betting law have created amazing entrepreneurial opportunities! It's like the goldrush here given how young this market is and how quickly things are changing in the US.
On May 14, 2018, the United States supreme court ruled the federal law prohibiting states from authorizing sports betting, protection act PASPA, unconstitutional. It is now up to individual states to decide if they want to authorize and regulate sports betting in their state. 18 states have fully legalized sports betting with 4 more passing bills just this year to legalize it (they aren’t operational yet).
Even though less than half of the US has legalized sports betting, the market cap was sitting pretty at $104.41 billion and expected to reach $155.49 billion by 2024 (this is an estimate, it was tough to nail down). This market is much larger if you include other global players like the UK, Australia, etc… who have already legalized sports betting. It’s clear that trends for this industry are going in the right direction and there’s still a strong opportunity for the first-mover advantage to take place.
Major Players:

• Draft Kings
  • Founded in 2012
  • 700 employees
  • Publicly traded
• Fan Duel
  • Founded in 2009
  • 1,000 employees
  • 412.6m raised
• Bet 365
  • Founded in 2000
  • 4,500 employees
  • Bootstrapped (if anyone has more info on this, please share)

Note: there are over 100 sports betting services on the market
The Opportunity:
As mentioned above, there is a huge problem with keeping track of all the different betting lines that exist - resulting in many people (unsuccessfully) using a spreadsheet. Here’s an article that explains why tracking betting lines is important.
The TL;DR is this, placing your bet on a site that has the most favorable odds results in you getting the highest return on that investment. Most people are doing one of these two things:

1. Nothing. Rather than checking to see where they can get the best returns, they are just using their core betting app and taking the odds they are given. Depending on the bet size, that leaves hundreds of dollars on the table.
2. Manually tracking the odds each betting site is offering and compiling the odds in a spreadsheet. This results in a lot of time spent switching between sites and transposing numbers.

Current Solutions:

• Manually tracking betting lines in a spreadsheet or on paper
• Smart Lines
  • Founded in 2018
  • 2-10 employees
  • Price: Free
  • Notes: They don’t aggregate betting lines from any of the major bookmakers.
• Action Network
  • Founded in 2017
  • 53 employees
  • Price: Free
  • Notes: At their core, Action Network is a sports analysis and media company. One of their features is line tracking across all the major bookmakers but it’s relatively hidden and poorly advertised.

How to Get Your First 10 Customers:

1. Define Your Early Adopter: Your TAM is anyone who participates in sports betting, but I’d focus your efforts on finding people who acutely experience this pain. People who are spending a lot of time and money on sports betting have the most to lose. More specifically, hunt for people who’ve already created solutions to this problem themselves - like those using homegrown spreadsheets.
2. Look for CDIs: When looking for channels to find potential users I ask myself “where do my potential customers hang out?”. In this case, I’d look at online communities like Sports Book and Sports Betting subreddits. By simply asking the question, “How do you track betting lines?” you’ll be able to start conversations with potential users about unmet needs.
3. Create an Online Ad: I’d next test an offer to see if you can acquire potential users to sign up for your service. This can be as simple as creating a landing page (using marketing language from the conversations above) and run a paid ad to your target audience to collect emails.
4. Build a Wizard of Oz Test: Now that you have a list from running the ad above, I’d see if you can monetize it. Contact people and charge a small fee to run a small wizard of oz test - you could manually pull lines based on the bets they're watching and send it to them in a daily email. Or, there’s likely a no-code tool you could use to scrape the data from existing sites and organize it for them.

I can see a freemium model working for this as well, so you may not need to monetize immediately. One great option would be to charge the bookmakers a fee for every bet you send to their platform.
Challenges:

• Is there a problem worth solving? Although this idea logically makes sense, there are flags raised because no company has solved the problem yet. Typically, you can validate some form of demand based on market signals or other competitors, but this seems like a blue ocean (both a good and bad thing). Follow the plan above and you should be able to tell quickly if you’re on the right track.
• Can you build it? The technology to create a product as this exists. That said, it may be difficult to pull data from the major bookmaker’s sites. The fact that Smart Lines doesn’t work with any of the major bookmakers left me scratching my head and wondering why.

Additional Opportunities:
There appears to be no shortage of companies trying to become the next big bookmakers. But, there’s plenty of opportunities this burgeoning market has opened up beyond just being a bookie. With this market in its infancy, you can bet (pun 100% intended) that there’s going to be a lot of room to expand your offerings. Whether it be sports betting tips, predictions, tools or even becoming a bookie yourself, there’s money to be made here.
While doing research on this, I found many people are struggling with keeping track of their bets and recording their results. This could be an easy addition to a solution to tracking betting lines. Here’s what some people said -
https://imgur.com/a/aPTXuBd
Here’s my ask - I’m looking for feedback on whether posts like these are valuable enough to turn into a business. I’d like to send out a vetted problem/idea like this each week if there’s enough interest.
If you would like posts like these each week, please either DM me or reach out to [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). If you reach out, I’ll give you another free problem/idea as thanks for your time!

Introduction:
Hi guys, my name is Isick. I’ve been climbing in Masters this season and have been focusing on more meta decks. That said, I want to make an in-depth guide to Discard Aggro. This deck has a lot of play to it and there is a lot to talk about.
Deck Code: ((CEBAIAIDAMKCGJYIAECACHBGE4UC2NBXAEBACBAMBUAA))
CEBAIAIDAMKCGJYIAECACHBGE4UC2NBXAEBACBAMBUAA
Decks of Runeterra: https://decksofruneterra.com/decks/-hvzikO\_B
I’m a Master player in NA and peaked at 325 with this deck. In the 35 games I recorded I went 23 and 12 which is a 66% win rate. I don’t have time to enter tournaments or ladder as much as I like. I’m not able to make video content either as my computer won’t handle running the game, fraps, and audacity at the same time. So, instead I want to write guides so that others with more time can climb the ladder and win tournaments.
What is Discard Aggro:
Discard Aggro is an aggressive deck focused around Jinx and Draven. It utilizes PnZ discard cards to cheat on mana costs and to cycle through the deck quickly. But this deck doesn’t just swarm the board and attack. It also has the ability to gain card advantage and the ability to forgo the attack step altogether and pressure the enemy nexus with a leveled-up Jinx.
How to play:
There are three main modes of the deck that you should play towards. Here I will go through the advantages and disadvantages of each game plan. I will also reference these game plan when discussing matchups.
Aggressive:
This will be the most natural playstyle for the deck. Card advantage and caution are thrown to the wind as we aim to swarm the board and maximize face damage. This deck lacks aggressive two drops, so our ideal curve consists of three one drops in the first two rounds. Play a combination of your one drops and try to discard Jury Rig or Chompers to Zuanite Urchin. The most powerful part of this opening is playing a Vision through discard on an early wide board. It’s best to play vision on your attack token. Lastly a Draven on three and Jinx on four tend to be the best way to pressure your opponents. From there, hopefully you’ll have them low enough that you can burn them out. Draw aggressively for burn to finish the game.
While we’re here, lets talk about the new discard cards. They are insane tempo and they let you cheat on mana costs. Jury Rig puts you one mana ahead of your opponent. Chomper puts you two mana ahead. And Vision puts you three whole mana ahead. This mana cheating puts you miles ahead in the early game. So not only do you cheat on mana, but you are also gaining pseudo card advantage. You’re not gaining a card but you’re not losing a card either.
Jinx:
If the opponent isn’t dead by the time that we reach the midgame we transition to playing around Jinx. Jinx can be a win condition all on her own. So, it’s important to know how to play her and what risks she comes with.
Leveling Jinx requires you to discard your hand. This is usually done through using axes to discard cards for no value. If you discard your hand and Jinx dies you will be left empty handed with no payoff. This is the risk of Jinx. Now, lets talk about how to mitigate this risk. Rummage and Augmented Experimenter are good ways to empty your hand while still having some cards in your hand after she levels. This same principle applies to getting a rocket from her after she is leveled. To a lesser extent, Zuanite Urchin and Sump Dredger also fill this role.
So, when playing Jinx consider if she is likely to be killed. If she is, then discarding your hand likely won’t be worth it. It is up to you to gauge the best play.
Lastly I want to mention that there are some mistakes to avoid. Lets say that your Jinx is about to be killed. You want to empty your hand in response. You have 5 cards. One is a Rummage, another is Get Excited. You cannot empty your hand in this situation. If you play Get Excited and then play Rummage, Rummage will go off first while the card that Get Excited is wanting to discard will still be in your hand. Another mistake that I made is having two Bookies and a leveled Jinx in play with one card in hand. The first Bookie will discard one card then Jinx will make a rocket, then the second bookie will discard the rocket. Lastly, be aware that you cannot get a rocket from Jinx on the same turn she levels up. This is because of the way she is worded. It’s unfortunate and I hope that it is reworked in the future.
Value game:
Lastly there are hands and games where your early game aggression is not useful. And Jinx will simply get removed. But there is another alternative path to playing your mid game. This deck has a great value engine in Bookie and Draven. Bookie discards your lowest cost cards while Draven generates 0 cost axes. Discarding Axes to Urchin, Dredger, or Rummage also generate card advantage in a the same way.
So, in some games, when hyper aggression will just get you answered and outvalued, you can gain card advantage and play multiple waves of threats, while always keeping your hand full.
In a value game where you keep a steady stream of threats on board and cards in hand, it will be hard for you to level up Jinx or Draven. However always look for openings where you can level up either of them while not losing too many cards in the process. This can happen after they spend all their mana on removal or trying to establish a threat of their own. When leveled, either of these will generate more card advantage for you. And with how much card draw you have, playing their champion spells will help you not deck out as quickly.
It is important to understand that you do not have to devote to one game plan for the entire game. If you start aggressive and then decide you’re better off if you stop pressuring and start getting card advantage, that is fine. If you start off getting card advantage and then you can make a large board and swing, go for it. Always assess what your game plan should be given the matchup and situation and change your game plan accordingly.
TL;DR: You can mulligan for specific game plans depending on matchup. For aggression, try and find a curve of round one: one drop, round two: one drop one drop. And after this you should play a vision, preferably discarded from a Zuanite Urchin. For an Early Jinx you’ll want to line up a round three Draven, round four Jinx, and then line up discarding your hand down with axes so that rummage levels up Jinx or you cycle aggressively to find an Augmented Experimenter. To gain card advantage you will need Draven and ways to discard axes. Don’t feel locked into one game plan for the entire game. Change your game plan as you transition to your mid game at your own discretion.
Card Choices:
I will try to keep this section as brief as possible as this guide is already long enough. I’ll also end each description with the card being rated alright, good, or great.
Draven: round three threat, discard outlet, card advantage engine. There is a reason I’m running Draven’s Biggest Fan. Great Card
Jinx: Alternative win condition. Strong attacker. Great card.
Draven’s Biggest Fan: Good attacker, draws us a Draven. Good card.
Astute Academic: Good threat that enables some insane early pressure. Good card.
Jury Rig: Unassuming sleeper threat. An extra body to get an extra vision buff is invaluable. Good card
Rummage: Helps level Jinx and is a discard outlet. Rummaging Jury rig and Chompers is huge tempo. Great Card.
Zuanite Urchin. Enables degenerate early game pressure, especially when paired with Astute Academic. Great card.
Arena Bookie: Doesn’t help with early game aggression but is a great value engine. Great card.
Flame Chompers: Enables further pressure as it can pull away big blockers. Great card.
Mystic Shot: Burn to draw into. Great card
Get Excited: More burn. Enables discard. Though three mana can be cumbersome. Good Card.
Sump Dredger: I want to hate this card. I want to say it’s bad. But it just isn’t it’s a solid body. It enables discard. I just hate spending three mana in a turn on a low impact card like this. There probably is a better card for this slot, as Draven is our usual three drop of choice. But I don’t know what I would run instead. Alright card.
Vision: This card is messed up. Playing a three mana card for free is inherently broken, even if this particular card doesn’t feel game breaking. Great card.
Augmented Experimenter: The best way to level a Jinx. I only run two because you will draw enough cards by round six that you will be able to play him. Great card.
Matchups:
Ashe / Sejuani: Unfavored
This is a huge downfall of discard aggro. Ashe Sej is so hard to deal with. Early Yetis shutdown our aggression with Draven and Jinx and our Jinx dies to attack token Sejuani. A value game is out of the question because we can’t answer their board and gain card advantage. They keep up in tempo and out scale us. The only way to win is a good aggressive draw that doesn’t get answered. I’m talking about presenting 8+ damage and a round two or three discarded vision on a board of three to four units. Otherwise we lose.
Ezreal: Favored
Ezreal decks are usually slower decks with a combo finish. Though some flavors of Ezreal can apply some pressure. Generally, though Ezreal feels like a favorable matchup. You just need to play aggressive and finish them off with burn. They will usually Mystic Shot our Bookie and Jinx usually gets removed as well. So those game plans are usually out. However their removal isn’t infinite. Sometimes you can set up a Bookie Draven or leveled Jinx as you enter the mid to late game.
Deep: Unfavored
They stomp on our early game and they ruin our late game plan of drawing our deck, because Maokai deletes our deck. Hope that they can’t deal with our early game, or if you have to play late try and kill Maokai as quickly as possible.
Most of my other games were against various off meta builds. People kind of play whatever they want on ladder and the meta allows it. I found that against tier two and tier three decks you can usually beat them with your strong early game and card advantage. Generally if you think you can swarm the board and the opponent won’t have a good answer to it, you can spend what would be set up for your mid game on early game damage instead. Otherwise stick to the Draven Jinx plan and play toward a stronger midgame push. However, I was finding success against all these random decks that I played against. Any game played with this deck tends to feel winnable. This leads to the last thing I want to talk about.
Play to your outs:
This is a concept that I want to mention because it is so crucial to finding success with this deck. You have so many ways to draw cards that if there is a slim chance of winning by drawing a card, you can try to do it. There will be times when you can either play cards to contest the board, or you can draw aggressively for a card you will need to win. Sometimes, if you think you will lose the game by playing for board, you can draw instead to get the game winning card you need, which is usually a burn spell. Always play to your outs.
Conclusion:
This deck is a strong Aggro deck that has more to offer than an early board swarm. I think the unique mid game options of this deck makes it a strong choice that should hopefully stick around as the meta changes.
If nothing else, this deck is incredibly fun. What’s more fun than just cycling through your entire deck before round 10 and firing off one mana decimates? Not much.
Thank you all so much for reading my guide. If you have questions about Discard Aggro or suggestions for my next guide, leave a comment.

Sports betting is essentially the act of placing a wager on the overall result and predicting sports results. The likelihood of sports wagers varies widely by culture, with a majority of bets being placed on sporting events that are won by a certain margin. Sports betting can take place on a single event such as an NBA or NFL game, a Formula One race, or any other competitive sporting event. In many cases sports betting can also take place on non-competing teams and/or players in order to handicap the competition.
Gambling has long been regarded as an acceptable form of gambling by many people, including many law makers. Gambling comes under the heading of sports betting in the United States law because the US government recognizes that it can generate revenue for its citizens through regulation of sports betting. Many states in the US have legalized sports betting, although they generally do not include online gambling, lottery bets, or other non-regulated forms of sports betting. Internet gambling is illegal in most states, but Las Vegas is the only city that openly promotes sports betting by allowing online bookmakers to participate in the LVAC Sportsbook Select program, which is used by hundreds of bookies across the country. The US State Department does not recognize online gambling, however, and individuals caught participating in this activity can face serious criminal charges.
In Las Vegas, a sportsbook allows customers to place bets on a variety of different sporting events, including basketball, football, baseball, tennis, golf, swimming, horse racing, and skating. The odds at which these wagers are placed are based on the sportsbooks' understanding of each sporting event and the probability of that event occurring. In order to place a successful bet, the gambler must be able to understand the odds on the game or event. The odds at which a bet is placed may vary significantly from bookmaker to bookmaker. In order to place a profitable bet, the gambler must use all available information, including the odds, to make his or her best bet.
With so many sports betting options available today, bookmakers have made it possible for bettors to enjoy their favorite recreational activities while still earning money. There are literally thousands of sites on the Internet where bookmakers allow bettors to place sports bets. Many of the sites feature daily, weekly, and even monthly payouts. The terms and conditions for placing sports wagers on such sites vary, but most include the following basic information: the name of the bettor, his or her credit card or e-mail account information, the wager amount, the date and time of the game, whether the game will be played in an online casino or on a television set, and whether or not the game will be played in more than one game. In addition, bettors must read carefully over the terms and conditions and follow all instructions provided.
Some online sports betting websites offer betting programs that include a variety of different games, including college football, baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, and NASCAR racing. These programs also typically include a schedule of games for the different sports involved. Most bettors must register at the website in order to place a bet. Others must join a VIP program, which allows them to place larger sports bets that would not be eligible under regular rules.
Online sportsbooks also allow bettors to look up current news and odds for sports events within their books. This information allows them to place bets based on news and odds. The best sportsbooks can offer a wide range of information and provide updates on game scores and odds for millions of sports events. Before making a bet, it is important to find out if the website and the bookmaker have good customer service, because in the end, it is you who will have to keep track of your winnings or losses. And most importantly, do not forget to check if the site and the sportsbook can actually produce the numbers you're looking for; that way, you won't get stuck paying too much for sports betting odds.

Hi folks, long time lurker here, zero time poster. On this rare occasion, I feel as though I actually have something to say. Who am I and why should you care? well, i'm nobody but over the past 7 years I have held bets with every single major bookie that services the UK. All sportsbooks here are regulated so in general you should never have an issue if you are following the rules.
 
However, owing to the coronavirus in March of this year and suspension of every major sports league in the world, it quickly became apparent to me in communications with them that none were adequately prepared to deal with a situation quite like this. I was curious then to see how each would step up (or not) to the plate given that the majority of their T&C’s were fairly lacking RE: a global pandemic. How much can you really trust the books to do right by you and your money when it’s nut-crunching time. Let's find out!
 
I had just over £61k of open NBA division futures across 8 of the major UK bookies when the season was suspended. By day I’m a Chartered accountant (CPA for you folks across the pond) and ex-Big 4 auditor so you better believe I kept a paper trail of every correspondence and read the T&C’s of every site back to front. Now that everything has been settled, I’d like to a take a minute j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶i̶t̶ ̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ to write about my experience with each book. Maybe it'll be useful to some of you.
 
These are the 8 sites in question: Bet365, Paddypower, Betfair, Unibet, 888, Betway, Skybet, William Hill (Notable omissions Ladbrokes/Coral and Betstars)
 

• Bet365 – A+ The gold standard and they simply can’t be beaten. Any bettor with experience knows that they are light years ahead of the competition in terms of well everything.. betting limits, customer service, UI, favourable treatment of their punters. This was one of only 2 books which had irrefutable wording in their rules with regards to NBA futures- “all bet stand regardless of team relocation, team name change or season length". No qualms, the ruling is crystal clear.
  
• A quick chat with one of their agents was all I needed to confirm that indeed all my bets are 100% live. Once the season resumed- divisions were marked as settled and paid out as soon as they were mathematically clinched.
  
• In a gesture of goodwill they also voided all Jazz NW division winner futures and paid out for all parlays which they were a leg of. Spoilers- they were the ONLY book to do so. This was worth over £10k to me and highly unexpected as at best I expected a push. The best book there is, period (and not just because they refunded me)
  

 

• PaddpoweBetfair - B+ I’m grouping these 2 together because they share the same traders. Another powerhouse duo in the UK. Terms and conditions here were far less forthcoming than for Bet365. No explicit wording regarding the status of suspended NBA futures but reassurances were given by live chat agents that they were in touch with the league to confirm whether NBA divisions would still be a thing. A fair position to take given the circumstances but still significant uncertainty for me regarding the status of my bets.
• These were however my fastest bets to settle once divisions were eventually clinched so I give them credit for that. No voided bets and everything settled as is. Communication could have been better in the 5 month gap but on the whole, OK.

 

• Unibet/888 - B Again, grouping these 2 because they share the same traders. No particular wording or clear T&C’s with regards to the status of bets in a suspension but Unibet do have their own forum where you can ask questions. For all intents and purposes I found them to be rather useless. A definite clear line of distinction between the agents answering questions and the traders who know (or don’t know) what’s going on but are unable or unwilling to commit to a clear answer one way or the other.
• With no clear T&C’s to cover the situation I understand why they took this line but it was of no comfort to me who had £17k of open bets between them. I was told seemingly every week “there’s a big meeting with the traders to discuss this on Friday” but never heard the outcome or details of said meetings. Definitely felt as though I was being given the run around but hey ultimately these were settled correctly as at the completion of every seeding game. Communication could have been better.

 

• Betway - B Same wording in their T&C’s as Bet365 so I had little worry about my bets being voided. My bets were marked as won as soon as they were clinched but were not paid out until the completion of every seeding game.
• I held no losing bets with Betway so cannot speak to whether they voided losers. Chat agents were clueless of their own T&C’s though when I sought to confirm whether my bets were live during the hiatus but on the whole at least tried to be helpful in our back and forths.

 

• Skybet – B- Semi-clear wording in their T&C’s: “If an NBA Division is not completed within the same calendar year, all Division bets will be made void unless the result has already been determined.” No confirmation from their traders what would happen if the season were totally suspended though, just that that they would resort to the ruling from the official governing body. Fine, what else could they do.
• Bets were settled on completion of all seeding games. Agent’s again a little clueless or hesitant to confirm or deny what would happen in the event of [insert scenario here] but on the whole, okay. Communication could have been better in the hiatus, i'm sensing a theme here..

 

• William Hill – F Maybe I’m being a tad harsh here but in my experience William Hill was by far the worst of all the books to deal with during this time. T&C’s: “Bets will be settled on the division standings on completion of all matches". What does this even mean? For months on end I was unable to get a clear answer from literally anyone. All matches being all matches of the original 82 game schedule, or all matches of the seeding games?
• With hundreds of messages exchanged it seemed crystal clear to me that even they didn’t know or hadn’t decided. On June 14th they ended up voiding all my bets including those which had already clinched by then. To be clear, it wasn’t an issue that these were voided if in fact these were voided in line with their T&C’s. I didn't care how these would be settled. However, the fact that nobody was able to offer any clarity on this one sentence for 3 straight months is ridiculous. Once they were voided then they were able to clarify that actually yes “all games” did in fact mean of the original 82 having having by that point already held onto my money for months longer than necessary.... definitely left a dirty taste in my mouth. Expected better for a book this size. F is for fail.

 
So overall? fairly positive to be honest. You can trust them all to do the right thing... eventually. The main element that was lacking during the down time was communication. I feel as though almost all of them were caught flat footed- didn't what to do, what to say and how to say it to their players when things first went zerodarkthirty, though even that I can sort-of overlook given the unprecedented situation. There is no doubt though, if your market is available on Bet365 and you aren't limited there's little reason to go elsewhere. This has been my TedTalk. Thanks for attending.

Hey everyone! I've been really geeking out on finding problems that I think could be turned into meaningful businesses. I do have an ask, but before I do that I'll provide some value first :)

Keeping track of betting lines is a pain

“I love sports betting but it’s hard to keep track of the betting odds on all the different betting apps. I’ve created a spreadsheet and do it manually, but I still need to search through all the sites to get the information. I’d definitely pay for something that did this automatically.” - Anonymous sports better seeking a solution.
Market Background/Opportunity Size:
Changes in sports betting law have created amazing entrepreneurial opportunities! It's like the goldrush here given how young this market is and how quickly things are changing in the US.
On May 14, 2018, the United States supreme court ruled the federal law prohibiting states from authorizing sports betting, protection act PASPA, unconstitutional. It is now up to individual states to decide if they want to authorize and regulate sports betting in their state. 18 states have fully legalized sports betting with 4 more passing bills just this year to legalize it (they aren’t operational yet).
Even though less than half of the US has legalized sports betting, the market cap was sitting pretty at $104.41 billion and expected to reach $155.49 billion by 2024 (this is an estimate, it was tough to nail down). This market is much larger if you include other global players like the UK, Australia, etc… who have already legalized sports betting. It’s clear that trends for this industry are going in the right direction and there’s still a strong opportunity for the first-mover advantage to take place.
Major Players:

• Draft Kings
  • Founded in 2012
  • 700 employees
  • Publicly traded
• Fan Duel
  • Founded in 2009
  • 1,000 employees
  • 412.6m raised
• Bet 365
  • Founded in 2000
  • 4,500 employees
  • Bootstrapped (if anyone has more info on this, please share)

Note: there are over 100 sports betting services on the market
The Opportunity:
As mentioned above, there is a huge problem with keeping track of all the different betting lines that exist - resulting in many people (unsuccessfully) using a spreadsheet. Here’s an article that explains why tracking betting lines is important.
The TL;DR is this, placing your bet on a site that has the most favorable odds results in you getting the highest return on that investment. Most people are doing one of these two things:

1. Nothing. Rather than checking to see where they can get the best returns, they are just using their core betting app and taking the odds they are given. Depending on the bet size, that leaves hundreds of dollars on the table.
2. Manually tracking the odds each betting site is offering and compiling the odds in a spreadsheet. This results in a lot of time spent switching between sites and transposing numbers.

Current Solutions:

• Manually tracking betting lines in a spreadsheet or on paper
• Smart Lines
  • Founded in 2018
  • 2-10 employees
  • Price: Free
  • Notes: They don’t aggregate betting lines from any of the major bookmakers.
• Action Network
  • Founded in 2017
  • 53 employees
  • Price: Free
  • Notes: At their core, Action Network is a sports analysis and media company. One of their features is line tracking across all the major bookmakers but it’s relatively hidden and poorly advertised.

How to Get Your First 10 Customers:

1. Define Your Early Adopter: Your TAM is anyone who participates in sports betting, but I’d focus your efforts on finding people who acutely experience this pain. People who are spending a lot of time and money on sports betting have the most to lose. More specifically, hunt for people who’ve already created solutions to this problem themselves - like those using homegrown spreadsheets.
2. Look for CDIs: When looking for channels to find potential users I ask myself “where do my potential customers hang out?”. In this case, I’d look at online communities like Sports Book and Sports Betting subreddits. By simply asking the question, “How do you track betting lines?” you’ll be able to start conversations with potential users about unmet needs.
3. Create an Online Ad: I’d next test an offer to see if you can acquire potential users to sign up for your service. This can be as simple as creating a landing page (using marketing language from the conversations above) and run a paid ad to your target audience to collect emails.
4. Build a Wizard of Oz Test: Now that you have a list from running the ad above, I’d see if you can monetize it. Contact people and charge a small fee to run a small wizard of oz test - you could manually pull lines based on the bets they're watching and send it to them in a daily email. Or, there’s likely a no-code tool you could use to scrape the data from existing sites and organize it for them.

I can see a freemium model working for this as well, so you may not need to monetize immediately. One great option would be to charge the bookmakers a fee for every bet you send to their platform.
Challenges:

• Is there a problem worth solving? Although this idea logically makes sense, there are flags raised because no company has solved the problem yet. Typically, you can validate some form of demand based on market signals or other competitors, but this seems like a blue ocean (both a good and bad thing). Follow the plan above and you should be able to tell quickly if you’re on the right track.
• Can you build it? The technology to create a product as this exists. That said, it may be difficult to pull data from the major bookmaker’s sites. The fact that Smart Lines doesn’t work with any of the major bookmakers left me scratching my head and wondering why.
• Legal Challenges? Sports betting is highly regulated like most industries that are birthed from law changes. Even being associated with this space is likely going to create some challenges. I'm not an expert in this space, so it's hard to say exactly what legal challenges may arise, but getting accessing other bookmaker's data and facilitating the betting process are two great places to start your investigation.

Additional Opportunities:
There appears to be no shortage of companies trying to become the next big bookmakers. But, there’s plenty of opportunities this burgeoning market has opened up beyond just being a bookie. With this market in its infancy, you can bet (pun 100% intended) that there’s going to be a lot of room to expand your offerings. Whether it be sports betting tips, predictions, tools or even becoming a bookie yourself, there’s money to be made here.
While doing research on this, I found many people are struggling with keeping track of their bets and recording their results. This could be an easy addition to a solution to tracking betting lines. Here’s what some people said -
https://imgur.com/a/aPTXuBd
Here’s my ask - I’m looking for feedback on whether posts like these are valuable enough to turn into a business. I’d like to send out a vetted problem/idea like this each week if there’s enough interest.
If you would like posts like these each week (and pay a small fee), please either DM me or reach out to [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). If you reach out, I’ll give you another free problem/idea as thanks for your time!

A few points before I begin:

• CW for accidental poisoning and animal attacks.
  
• Credit where it's due, my writeup heavily borrows from this article.
  
• In the modern day, most Olympic athletes are professionals (and therefore not hobbyists.) However, in this particular event, the majority of competitors were not professional athletes, and indeed, many weren't even experienced at long-distance running.
  
• More fish drama is in the works, don't worry! I just saw this article and got a bit sidetracked.
  

The year is 1904, and in St Louis, the third modern Summer Olympic games are gearing up to start. Men in boaters and ladies in gowns are filling the bleachers to watch what will become the world's greatest sporting competition. At an event as important as the Olympics, the budget is a blank cheque. Only the finest professionals are hired to organise every aspect of the competition, guaranteeing a polished showcase of the best sporting talent the world has to offer. Truly, the Olympics is the ideal of a well-organised competition.
..yeah, no.
The 1904 Olympic marathon is widely remembered as the worst marathon in history. A series of organisational failures created a truly bizarre race where everything you can think of - and some things you can't - went wrong. To set the stage, the marathon had 32 competitors. The temperature was 90F/32C. The track began and ended in the stadium, but the majority of the distance took place on dirt roads, with officials in cars bookending the runners.
Fewer than half of the competitors reached the finish line, and several nearly died trying. Here's what went wrong:

Giving Runners Rat Poison and Brandy Instead of Water (For The Power Of Science!)

In the early 20th century, one popular scientific theory argued that water actually reduced athletic performance rather than enhancing it, and that inducing "purposeful dehydration" would bring about superior results. Unluckily for the hapless athletes, James Sullivan, the chief organiser of the Olympics at the time, was a strong proponent of this theory. He insisted that there only be a single water station on the entire 26 mile/42km course. HydroHomies would be furious. The obvious ill effects of this decision were exacerbated by sweltering temperatures and the incredibly dusty conditions of the race, as runners were forced to remain inside the dust clouds kicked up by the officials' vehicles.
The runner coming in second place, American Thomas Hicks, collapsed from dehydration 17 miles/28km into the race. Unfortunately for Hicks, his personal trainers were also fans of purposeful dehydration. Instead of hydrating the extremely dehydrated runner (a radical idea!) they instead provided him with a cocktail made of... *checks notes* rat poison. Specifically, rat poison mixed with egg whites and brandy. Our boy needs his protein and liquid courage, after all. In fact, the only water these trainers allowed poor Hicks was a quick sponge bath, before which the sponges were carefully heated up by the cars' radiator.
Surprisingly, the rat poison proved effective. Hicks was able to continue running until the 20 mile/32km mark, at which point he collapsed a second time and could not be reinvigorated by the World's Best Running Juice™. This time around, his trainers had help (read: carry) him over the finish line, which at the time was not a disqualifying offence. By the end of the race, Hicks was hallucinating and incoherent. He was immediately treated by several doctors, who stated that he would likely have died if he had not received prompt medical attention. Hicks lost 8lb/3kg over the course of the race, but luckily made a full recovery.

The Legend of Felix Carbajal de Soto, Madlad Extraordinaire

With a name like that, is it any wonder that Felix Carbajal de Soto is one of the maddest lads in Olympic history? A Cuban postman, de Soto relied on funds raised by his community to afford to travel to St Louis. This would have worked out fine if he hadn't lost it all on a gambling bender in New Orleans. Out of cash and nearly out of time, de Soto had to frantically hitchhike to St Louis in time for the starting gun. Indeed, de Soto was so time-poor (and just flat-out poor) that he showed up having not eaten in 40 hours... and still wearing his formal slacks and a beret. A sympathetic bystander with a pair of scissors helped him convert the slacks into shorts just before the race began. He kept the beret.
Since de Soto had no personal trainers to provide him with the food he so desperately needed, he instead snuck into an orchard partway through the race and stole some apples. Unluckily for him, the apples were rotten. De Soto quickly began suffering from severe stomach cramps, so he took a quick nap in the shade to sleep it off. Despite quite literally taking a nap partway through the race, de Soto somehow finished fourth overall.
(After his stunning performance in the 1904 Games, Greece sponsored de Soto to travel to Athens and compete in a marathon in 1906. He didn't show up. De Soto was presumed dead, and his obituary was published in the newspapers. A year later, he arrived back in Cuba on a Spanish steamship, surprised everyone with his non-death, and continued his running career like nothing had happened. I'm still not sure what exactly he was doing while presumed dead, but I can only assume it was wild.)

The Guy Who Nearly Died on the Road (or; dust is scarier than you'd think)

Remember those constant dust clouds I mentioned? American runner William Garcia certainly does. While running, Garcia ingested so much dust that it quite literally ripped open his stomach lining. (Honestly, I was happier in my life before I found out that breathing in dust can rip open your stomach. Y'all had better appreciate my sacrifice.) He was discovered lying prone on the road and emergency surgery was quickly administered. Luckily, Garcia survived.
If you're thinking that after someone nearly died attempting to run this course, the officials would have called off the race to save the remaining runners, then you're wrong. The race continued.

Who Let The Dogs Out!?

Interestingly, this marathon boasted the first two black African competitors in Olympic history - Tswana tribesmen Len Tau and Jan Mashiani. Tau, in particular, was projected to perform extremely well in the marathon. However, he placed a paltry ninth. The reason has very little to do with incompetent bookies and very much to do with feral dogs, which chased the hapless Tau nearly a mile off course. The race officials either didn't notice one of their competitors fleeing for his life, or were unable to help. I'm still undecided on which option is worse.
Unfortunately, Len Tau wasn't given any kind of handicap bonus as compensation for his brush with nature. He had to accept ninth place and be happy about it. Frankly, finishing at all was a considerable achievement amidst the madness.

Some Good Old-Fashioned Cheating

Meanwhile, the spectators were ignorant of any berets, emergency surgery, wild dogs and rotten apples. They had simply been sitting in the bleachers for hours, waiting for a runner to reappear. Their patience was rewarded when the first-place runner returned to the stadium: an American named Fred Lorz. The crowd went wild. Lorz had his photo taken with Roosevelt's daughter. However, right before Lorz accepted the gold medal, a witness stepped up and publicly accused him of cheating.
According to the witness, like most runners on the disastrous track, Lorz had actually given up 9 miles/14km into the race. Exhausted and dehydrated, Lorz simply couldn't continue. His sympathetic trainer offered Lorz a ride back to the stadium in his car. As fate would have it, the car only managed to carry the pair a further 11 miles/17km along the course before breaking down. Lorz... saw his opportunity and he took it, I suppose. Now rested and re-hydrated, and far ahead of the other runners, he simply exited the vehicle and kept running.
Unsurprisingly, Lorz was disqualified from the race. So who won?
Our old friend, of course, Tom Hicks of the brandy and rat poison.

Consequences:

The 1904 marathon was so terrible that the event was very nearly removed from all future Olympics. Luckily for modern-day marathoners, the race retained its coveted Olympic slot. Brandy, rat poison and champagne continued to be favoured over water for a few more Olympics, but common sense eventually won the day. De Soto built a career off the race. A few runners nearly died. And now all organisers of future Olympic events can rest assured that, no matter how badly they mess up, they probably can't organise the worst Olympic event in history.

My 2019 was wild. But with everything finally on the up and up, I feel I can tell this story here.

After uni (late 2018), I fell on rough times and was forced to move back to my home town. I tried to transfer my job to a branch in my area but failed, thus I needed to get a new job.
I settled for a 20 hour a week job at a bookies, with a second bar tending job in the evenings. The bookies is the target for my revenge, which was entirely accidental.
Involved are the following:

• Janelle - My managers manager
• Shay - My manager
• Jorge and Gordan - my co-workers

^and,

• Kara - a co-worker at another store (who is relevant later)

^\NAMES CHANGED AND/OR REDACTED])
I ended up working behind the counter as a customer service manager, basically a step up from a cashier. It’s fancy when seen on a CV but there’s nothing really to it. I took bets, chatted with customers, helped people with machines and (for the vast majority of my shift) sat around waiting for something to do. I got on well with my co-workers (or so I thought) and had no major issues.
It was 20 hours a week, about £1 more than minimum wage with a lot of overtime required of me and irregular shift patterns. Though I had no issue with the job, beyond how difficult it was to juggle the schedules of both of my jobs.
In February of 2019 (after working for the company for 6 months) I was invited to a Probation hearing. It cannot be emphasised enough that it was a Probation hearing in which I would have my performance reviewed and (as informed in training) was entitled to a pay rise at the end of it.
I arrived that morning to a Disciplinary Hearing where, without even a shred of evidence, I was accused of 11 different cash discrepancies dating back to early November of 2018 (shortly after I’d started) which all amounted to £271.36. All but one of which I’d never heard of before.
These had apparently been reported and logged by my manager (Shay) and my co-workers, despite no one saying a word to me at all. Not a whisper in the 5 months this had apparently been occurring.
I was told that it was unacceptable, a call was made to HR and I was terminated on the spot and forced to hand over my keys and to never set foot in the store again. To my protests I was told the decision could not be appealed and I would eventually receive written confirmation of my employments termination in the post.
I didn’t let myself slump around and feel sorry for myself, so (on the way home) I opened up Indeed and applied for a bunch of jobs and (before I arrived home) had an interview set up for the next week at what is my current place of work.
Now, I was FURIOUS. Fuming at having gone to what I thought should have been a normal probation meeting and having (effectively) been called a thief and been banned for life from a place I’d never go to anyway. But somehow, my parents were angrier and ordered me to let them know when they got into contact with me again.
Almost two weeks later I received an EMAIL from the companies HR which reiterated the accusations and stated (again) that I was terminated. My mum sat me down in her kitchen and walked me through a letter response that was two parts professional and three parts scathing. Ripping into them about their unprofessional conduct, their ludicrous claims, their lack of evidence, the holes in their story (because their were quite a few) and finally, the cherry on the cake...
The employment laws they’d broken.
Now I didn’t want much, just a nice reference. A promise that not a whisper of these accusations would turn up when my new job asked them for a reference (because, by then, I’d already been offered the job). I then attached the letter to an email to fire back at their HR department.
Then I added Janelle’s work email. Then her bosses email and finally, the holding company that owned the brand. Cause I wanted to make sure this was seen.
A bit of background, the bookies I worked for is a brand that is owned by an international company, their name (behind the scenes) is slapped on everything and they pretty much dictate everything we did. I’m not sure if holding company is the correct term, but I’ll stick to that for now.
Anyway, I sent this email with a fourty-eight hour window for a response. I received a reply the next day from the same email that my demands were being met. I smirked victoriously and moved on with my life, happy to wash my hands with the entire ordeal. However, I’d set off a chain reaction that I wouldn’t know about until three months later.
Three months on, I’d settled into my new job, a call centre position with double the hours and well over double the pay.
I’d gone through training and was settling into my new position when I see a new set of trainees settling in near my team. Among them was Gordan, one of my co-workes from the bookies.
I was stunned. Gordan had been at the bookies for six years when I joined. He was well liked, good at his job and a favourite of the managers. There was no way he’d been fired.
Though I didn’t really want to talk to him (as I was of the impression that he, Jorge and my manager had likely set me up) I did want to know what happened.
Luckily, on seeing me in the break room one shift, he sought me out and told me everything.
Apparently my email had been read by the higher ups in the holding company and had caused a lot of scrutiny to fall onto the bookies in our town (of which there were three in our area that Janelle was responsible for, two in my town and a third in a neighbouring one). Someone in HR passed a message down to the Area Manager (Janelle’s boss) claiming they wanted things investigated and they wanted results yesterday, causing him to drop everything and descend on our little town with the panic and aggression of a man who’s superiors were watching his every breath.
He went to Janelle wanting to know: why he hadn’t been made aware previously that I was apparently stealing money, why I had been given keys to the shop and shifts on my own when allegations of that nature were attributed to me AND why I hadn’t been put under investigation. Turns out, Janelle HAD in fact put in my ‘employee file’ that I was under investigation but had never actually gone through with any of the official procedures for monitoring and investigating me ^{(shock horror}). Thus she had fired me for the accused crime without looking into it at all, falsely claiming otherwise.
Thus, the Area Manager took the dates and amounts of the cash discrepancies, confirmed that they had been reported on those days (without my knowledge) in Shay’s own log book of the shops cash, and sent that information onto our security team to investigate.
Another little detail is that the CCTV for every shop in the brand is outsourced to a private security company who monitors each shop remotely and has access to all the camera’s and video. As was procedure, they looked into the dates mentioned to see if I’d been doing anything untoward. I know I wasn’t and nothing was ever said to me.
But they DID find something...
Turns out, money WAS going missing from the shop but (surprise surprise) it wasn’t me, but Jorge and Shay. They not only set me up (for reasons I will never know) but were also falsifying numbers and cash checks on the system to hide it. One thing Shay was caught doing was deliberately short changing customers by taking portions of their winnings without them even knowing it (bear in mind, a lot of our customers were elderly men and women).
Gordan claims that he once opened the shop (after I and Shay had closed the night before) and noticed a cash difference but had been told not to say anything to me as I was under investigation and it could compromise it. He did apologise and I let it go.
Needless to say, Jorge and Shay were fired.
But it doesn’t end there.
Our team was small, including me there were a total of four people working at the store. As they hadn’t been able to hire anyone to replace me, Jorge and Shay’s termination meant Gordan was the only employee at the busiest shop in our area. Even if they’d been able to get other colleagues from the two other shops to help out, it wouldn’t have been enough to keep the shop open and manage the amount of customers. So they closed the location down until they could get the staff to run it.
It was at that point that Gordan handed in his resignation and applied for his job at my work. Meaning they had no one.
On top of that, Gordan’s girlfriend worked in the same shop as Janelle and she relayed that she was rarely at their store (in the other town) for the next few weeks before the Area Manager reported she was fired as well. No reason given to her.
I was later issued an apology for everything by the Area Manager and informed she (Janelle) was no longer with the company in an email some time later.
But SOMEHOW, it doesn’t end there.
With the store I worked at closed (this one being on the high street and where most people preferred to go), the only other location in town was the MUCH smaller location in the suburbs. The one where Kara worked. ALONE.
She suddenly received an influx of customers into her tiny store space and absolutely no support from other staff or upper management. Thus, for her own mental health (having already been overworked and underpaid, running an entire store by herself) she quit, meaning that location had to be closed down too.
All of this at the worst possible time, March, when the Cheltenham Festival was occurring. Which is a HUGE money maker for the gambling industry, even in a small town like ours.
An opportunity the three other bookies on the high-street reaped the benefits of instead of my old place, as the former customers went to them instead.
As it currently stands, just over a year later, both shops remain closed and I’m currently entering a job in cyber-security, the training for which I paid for with my current job.
Thanks for firing me dumbasses, you did me a favour.
(TL/DR: I was fired for false claims of theft. I complained to the higher ups. The real culprits lost their jobs, every shop in town closed down and they lost out on a bunch of money and customers)

《▪︎》《▪︎》《▪︎》《▪︎》《▪︎》《▪︎》《▪︎》《▪︎》 

UPDATE

^{This massively blew up, thanks for the support and everything x}
Gordan and I got in touch with our old Area Manager and we were able to get a bit more information:
The security team rifled through about three years worth of footage after they found out about Jorge and Shay and have estimated that (in that period alone) they both stole nearly £4,000 through various means. The parent company also got involved and searched through years worth of their cash checks and till checks and noted plenty of irregularities.
The parent company persued criminal charges and the two were arrested but, as far as our Area Manager knows, the case is still ongoing. He thinks it's because they are still looking into how much they actually stole (as they've both been there a while, Jorge about 8 years and Shay 10 years). I doubt they'll have security footage of all that time, but I bet they're trying to get a more accurate figure to really nail them.
And in comes a new character: Tammy (obviously not her real name). She is an employee who was hired and fired shortly before I was, at the same store. She lasted just past her probation before she was fired, wait for it, for months worth of cash differences and false till checks she wasn't made aware of prior.
HOWEVER, her situation is FAR worse than mine. Tammy is in the process of suing the company for wrongful termination (alongside financial and emotional damages) as she was put under a lot of stress whilst in the job by Shay (who apparently left her to fend for herself and would refuse to step in when customers got aggressive) and then had a miscarriage shortly after her employment was terminated.
Our Area Manager doesn't know anything more, as it's escalated and gone way above his head and I doubt I'll be able to get any more information on it. But I doubt the company's doing too well on that front and I wish her the best.
Gordan and I are considering reaching out to some of the other fired employees (of which he can name a few who were terminated for similar reasons) to get their side of things. But it seems very clear that what Shay and Jorge were doing was going on for a long time and I was only the latest scapegoat.
Janelle, unfortunately, is perfectly fine as far as I'm aware. Her husband and her opened a taxi company several years ago and she seems to have just got more involved with that. I haven't seen her so I wouldn't know. But she was terminated for gross misconduct and for not following procedure, which is kinda what I expected.
And Kara, who our Area Manager actually really dislikes (but is lovely and did not deserve what she went through) is doing okay. I've messaged her and she and her partner recently bought a house. She also got a job as an Events Manager at a local historical site. She's happier there as she actually has people to talk to at work and isn't alone anymore.
(TL/DR: Jorge and Shay are being prosecuted after stealing thousands, a former employee is suing after going through the same thing as me (but worse), Janelle is fine and so is Kara.)
Thank you again for all the awards, updoots and support x

I Have Easily Defeated Casino Bookies And Become Millionaire In Less Than 100 Days
The story something like this: I was tried to help this society/civilization to solved problems around Climate Change, Economic Trade War, Pandemic, etc. but those who are in charge give no fuk, such a waste of 2-3 years time. So I have decided to returned to gambling to have some fun and destroy the bookmakers again.
The last time was more than 10 years ago, I have easily defeat those bookmakers in sport betting category to the point they have to “banned” me due to winning too much.
So I need to do some research, testing not just about gambling but about other subject as well especially about online money. And I have a conclusion that, in 2020 it is much more easier to earn money via “gambling” than 10-15 years ago because of a basic reason: machines, technology take away the jobs from the people, so they must need give something back in return to balance the society.
The true reason of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin Ethereum, etc. was a hidden giveaways from the “gold holders”. It has absolutely no any other positive effect for life, because they are no difference than any in-game video where every one can generate in few minutes.
My instinct was right, there are some hidden gems giveaways websites out there where you can easily earn 1000+ US Dollar per day, but you must be smart enough to decode and overcome the nearly impossible “casino bookies”.
What I am talking is not some random bet random gambling, but to know the 100% sure winning bet !
You may not believe that is true, but that is the way it is, you can only verify by yourself. As long as the casino bookies allow people to “change” the result via so called: provably fair, there is some chance and open opportunity for you to win. Before you cannot win the casino.
Here is the limited time open offer I have for all of you: I will share this secret “100% winning sure bet” technique for you guys for free but in exchange I want to do you 2 things: - You need to donate at least 50% of your withdrawal winning profit to my bitcoin wallet. - You are not allowed to reveal/share this secret and chat/email log I have communicate with you via any methods, with any beings/groups without my permission.
If you break the rule, you will receive heavy punishment like car accident, dead from “above” beings such as angels, gods. Remember money is not the final goal of life.
All you need is less than 5 dollar to verify the technique I will share with you.
Here is some of my communication methods: Via Social Media: Aimoo User: The Savior. Gab, Reddit User: TheSaviorMoney
Via Email: thesaviorway [at] secmail.pro
If you agree with above requirements, then feel free to send me a message, I can help you become rich quick and easy with winning knowledge and wisdom, as long as you are a real honest human being. This offer is limited time, I will choose the one who I think it is “good” person. This offer will be closed at any moment without prior notice.
Best Regard, The Savior

Hey everyone! I've been really geeking out on finding problems that I think could be turned into meaningful businesses. I'm sharing all my ideas here if you're interested. Here's what I've been thinking about lately -

Keeping track of betting lines is a pain

“I love sports betting but it’s hard to keep track of the betting odds on all the different betting apps. I’ve created a spreadsheet and do it manually, but I still need to search through all the sites to get the information. I’d definitely pay for something that did this automatically.” - Anonymous sports better seeking a solution.
Market Background/Opportunity Size:
Changes in sports betting law have created amazing entrepreneurial opportunities! It's like the goldrush here given how young this market is and how quickly things are changing in the US.
On May 14, 2018, the United States supreme court ruled the federal law prohibiting states from authorizing sports betting, protection act PASPA, unconstitutional. It is now up to individual states to decide if they want to authorize and regulate sports betting in their state. 18 states have fully legalized sports betting with 4 more passing bills just this year to legalize it (they aren’t operational yet).
Even though less than half of the US has legalized sports betting, the market cap was sitting pretty at $104.41 billion and expected to reach $155.49 billion by 2024 (this is an estimate, it was tough to nail down). This market is much larger if you include other global players like the UK, Australia, etc… who have already legalized sports betting. It’s clear that trends for this industry are going in the right direction and there’s still a strong opportunity for the first-mover advantage to take place.
Major Players:

• Draft Kings
  • Founded in 2012
  • 700 employees
  • Publicly traded
• Fan Duel
  • Founded in 2009
  • 1,000 employees
  • 412.6m raised
• Bet 365
  • Founded in 2000
  • 4,500 employees
  • Bootstrapped (if anyone has more info on this, please share)

Note: there are over 100 sports betting services on the market
The Opportunity:
As mentioned above, there is a huge problem with keeping track of all the different betting lines that exist - resulting in many people (unsuccessfully) using a spreadsheet. Here’s an article that explains why tracking betting lines is important.
The TL;DR is this, placing your bet on a site that has the most favorable odds results in you getting the highest return on that investment. Most people are doing one of these two things:

1. Nothing. Rather than checking to see where they can get the best returns, they are just using their core betting app and taking the odds they are given. Depending on the bet size, that leaves hundreds of dollars on the table.
2. Manually tracking the odds each betting site is offering and compiling the odds in a spreadsheet. This results in a lot of time spent switching between sites and transposing numbers.

Current Solutions:

• Manually tracking betting lines in a spreadsheet or on paper
• Smart Lines
  • Founded in 2018
  • 2-10 employees
  • Price: Free
  • Notes: They don’t aggregate betting lines from any of the major bookmakers.
• Action Network Founded in 2017
  • 53 employees
  • Price: Free
  • Notes: At their core, Action Network is a sports analysis and media company. One of their features is line tracking across all the major bookmakers but it’s relatively hidden and poorly advertised.

How to Get Your First 10 Customers:

1. Define Your Early Adopter: Your TAM is anyone who participates in sports betting, but I’d focus your efforts on finding people who acutely experience this pain. People who are spending a lot of time and money on sports betting have the most to lose. More specifically, hunt for people who’ve already created solutions to this problem themselves - like those using homegrown spreadsheets.
2. Look for CDIs: When looking for channels to find potential users I ask myself “where do my potential customers hang out?”. In this case, I’d look at online communities like Sports Book and Sports Betting subreddits. By simply asking the question, “How do you track betting lines?” you’ll be able to start conversations with potential users about unmet needs.
3. Create an Online Ad: I’d next test an offer to see if you can acquire potential users to sign up for your service. This can be as simple as creating a landing page (using marketing language from the conversations above) and run a paid ad to your target audience to collect emails.
4. Build a Wizard of Oz Test: Now that you have a list from running the ad above, I’d see if you can monetize it. Contact people and charge a small fee to run a small wizard of oz test - you could manually pull lines based on the bets they're watching and send it to them in a daily email. Or, there’s likely a no-code tool you could use to scrape the data from existing sites and organize it for them.

I can see a freemium model working for this as well, so you may not need to monetize immediately. One great option would be to charge the bookmakers a fee for every bet you send to their platform.
Challenges:

• Is there a problem worth solving? Although this idea logically makes sense, there are flags raised because no company has solved the problem yet. Typically, you can validate some form of demand based on market signals or other competitors, but this seems like a blue ocean (both a good and bad thing). Follow the plan above and you should be able to tell quickly if you’re on the right track.
• Can you build it? The technology to create a product as this exists. That said, it may be difficult to pull data from the major bookmaker’s sites. The fact that Smart Lines doesn’t work with any of the major bookmakers left me scratching my head and wondering why.
• Legal Challenges? Sports betting is highly regulated like most industries that are birthed from law changes. Even being associated with this space is likely going to create some challenges. I'm not an expert in this space, so it's hard to say exactly what legal challenges may arise, but getting accessing other bookmaker's data and facilitating the betting process are two great places to start your investigation.

Additional Opportunities:
There appears to be no shortage of companies trying to become the next big bookmakers. But, there’s plenty of opportunities this burgeoning market has opened up beyond just being a bookie. With this market in its infancy, you can bet (pun 100% intended) that there’s going to be a lot of room to expand your offerings. Whether it be sports betting tips, predictions, tools or even becoming a bookie yourself, there’s money to be made here.
While doing research on this, I found many people are struggling with keeping track of their bets and recording their results. This could be an easy addition to a solution to tracking betting lines. Here’s what some people said -
https://imgur.com/a/aPTXuBd
Thanks for reading everyone! I'll monitor the comments for any questions and stuff - would love feedback.

Good afternoon Deaball Fans,
I, like much of you, found myself this summer bored without being able to check my sports websites for scores and updates so I turned to various other outlets of trying to simulate that experience. After some searching, I stumbled upon Deadball and it has been a a wonderful time. What really sold me on the game was the fact that you filled out a scorecard while doing it and that it was very easy to play in a solitaire-like fashion. My mind started percolating all the neat things one could do with this format and I bring to you my (hopeful) magnum opus: A recreation of the Evangeline League!

1. What is the Evangeline League? - The Evangeline League was a class C/D(1934-1957) Minor League based entirely out of Louisiana, mostly in the southern half of the state. Because of the close proximity of most of the teams, the fans were rowdy and during the golden era of the league, they had relatively high attendance for a teams of that talent level. It was a wild league with betting scandals and brawls in the stands and was colloquial called the "Pepper Sauce League" or the "Tabasco Circuit" for both its location and the fiery happenings. I am taking some inspiration from W.M. Akers "Southern Circuit" in the fact that this will not be a minor league as players will play here there entire careers if possible.
2. Who are the players? - All players are generated with the tools given in W.M. Akers first edition of "Deadball with Dice", and between various websites I managed to generate some names as well as an algorithm to "cajun-up" some of the names.
3. What is the seasonal structure? - 8 teams will play a 126 game schedule ( 6 3-game series vs the other 7 teams) with a break in the middle for the All Star Classic. This will be the monumental part of it, but I think I'll be able to finish out the schedule in a year+ (I already have a week of series completed). Top 4 clubs make the playoffs with the opening round being best-of-three and the Evangeline League Championship being a normal 7 game series.
4. Who are the teams? I have cobbled together what I believe are the 8 Signature franchises of the Evangeline League and are using those to recreate a fictionalized version of the 1946 season. In real life the 1946 season was the first after the league disbanded because of WW2 from 1943-1945. Below are little team previews for each of the eight ball clubs that will hopefully give the readers a rooting interest in the happenings of fictional players from a defunct league.
5. When is the league taking place and when are you updating? - I am doing a fictionalized version of the 1946 season which was the first after the league's postponement due to WW2. The league is as wide open as ever, which father time taking away some of the legendary Evangeline players. I plan on updating every time I finish a 4 series set, and hopefully will be better at Reddit posting to where I can include the standings as well statistical leaders (I am a statistician by trade so of course I'm keeping all these fictional records haha)

Abbeville Athletics - Sleepy's campaign versus Father Time.
Aging ace Roger "Sleepy" Woods( 37, SP, d12 CN+) has seen it all in his long tenure in the Evangeline League: World Wars, betting scandals, 20 win seasons, and has lasted on enough to have his son, Ricky Woods(19, RP, d4) make it on same staff as him. But one thing has eluded the talisman of the Abbevile franchise, an Evangeline League title. This year may be the best chance for the perennially fringe playoff team to make a run for the series. Recent addition of Darnell Harless(32, SP, D8) to bolster the starting staff along with the bullpen arms Caden Thibodeaux(23, RP, d8 CN+) and Martin Melancon (27, RP, d8 GB+) showing flashes of brilliance in spring training look to ease the yeoman-like load that Woods has had to carry all these years. Abbeville fans await the season with both excitement for the playoffs and the melancholy that this may be Robert's final season in Athletics park.
Alexandria Aces – The Pride of Northern LA look to bring Alexandria’s rebuild along ahead of schedule Even before the league took a break due to WW2, Alexandria was in the midst of a rebuild. The core players that had dominated the late 1930’s were looking a step too slow and their pitches a little less deceptive. Aces’ Owner “Boudin” Toussiant set out during the war year with a singular mission: find the best high school players North Louisiana had to offer as these players could train and not worry about being drafted into the war. Thankfully the fields of Northern LA were fertile and turned up a number of great prospects, most notably: Joel Guidry (22, 1B, 35/43, Monroe), Jack Hollinshead (20, CF, 29/38 P++, Bunkie), and Max Thomas (19, 2B, 30/39, Boyce). That combined with some pitching staff comprised of players from the halcyon era of Alexandria baseball (Leon Leblanc and Charlie Cormier) the Aces look to bring an interesting mix of future promise and past greatness to the Evangeline League this season.
Baton Rouge Redsticks - Grand Isle Champions to Capital City contenders?
The Redsticks capped off a blistering tour of the Grand Isle Spring Training League by bringing in heightened expectations for this year's season. Can BR's "Whiz Kids" continue this torrid pace and bring a title to the Capital City? It’s going to fall on their talented trio of Power Hitters who dubbed themselves the "Riverboat Gamblers" Mark McClelland (22, 1B, 31/34 P++), Declan Fisher (38, RF, 31/36 P+) and Johnny Bourgeois (21, LF, 21/27 P++) are ready to bet big on their hitting prowess and send a number of balls into the Mississippi. Their hitting is matched by a staff with 2 young aces, 19 year olds Ashton Romero (SP, d12 ST+) and Duluth Lusk (SP, d8 K+) who will not only be competing for most wins on the BR staff, but who's cheering section of co-eds is the loudest. Only one question remains: can all this promising young talent actually translate into wins or are they just paper tigers?
Hammond Berries - Will the record-breakers finally stop breaking their own hearts?
Hammond has stockpiled talent and assembled the deepest collection of hitters in the league. The team looks to return to what the Berries were known for, bruising offense and slick infield play. Giovanni Mendoza (19, SS, 21/26 S+D+) and Graham Marchand III (24, 2B, 34/44 D+) are the best double play pair in the league and Victor Venters (22, SP, d12) is a star in the making. However, one has to address the other part of Hammond's history, post-season failure. Having not advanced to an Evangeline League Final since the 1936 season, with fate always taking it in the cruelest of fashion. Whether it be Donald Levert's (Lafayatte SP) homerun to win game 3 of an opening series 1-0 in 1936 or having your end of season hot streak snapped by mother nature herself (Hurricane of 1940 delaying the post season) Berry fan have come to expect the worst. This year's gotta be the year though, right?
Houma Indians – Will a 4-year break finally allow Houma to just play baseball again?
At some point we have to address the elephant in the room. In 1941(in real life this happened in 1946), the Houma Indians were accused and convicted of throwing the opening round series against the New Iberia Pelicans. This scandal cast a shadow not only over the Houma franchise but also for the league itself. The 1942 season was bleak for Houma, some of their best players were banned from the league due to their involvement with local bookies and the fans never cared to show up. However, during the break massive changes were made to the franchise, first the team was sold to local businessman and beer magnate Donny “Smoke” Dupuis. Along with his new manager Ronnie Prejean, Dupuis orchestrated an entire roster turnover of the Indians bringing in players from the Texas League as well as local industrial leagues. These roster moves along with the league’s postponement has allowed bayou area fans’ hearts to heal, absence does make the heart grow fonder after all. While Houma may not compete for a playoff this year, they are most certainly going to compete with integrity.
Lafayette Bulls - Can a Repeat double as a swan song?
Only in the Evangeline League can a repeat be 4 years in the making. The 1942 Lafayette Bulls won the Evangeline League in surprising fashion of the Thibodaux Giants. They were poised to make another run in the 1943 season until the whole league itself was postponed. When the telegram game through from the league office in Baton Rouge, the Bulls core made a pledge to put on the cleats one more time for a title defense whenever they got the chance. Major contributors from that 1942 team that still remain are staff ace Donald Levert(40, SP, d8), lead-off man Andrew Rees (39, CF, 25/32 S+D+), power-hitter Dustin Thibodeaux(39, SS, 28/31 P+). Owen Frye (30, C, 23/30) and Deangelo Ewing(29,SP,d8) were considered to be the future of the 1942 team, but their patriotic duty robbed them of competing throughout their entire prime. Lafayette coach Jacob Comeau has proclaimed that the title still runs through Girard Park, and that they shouldn’t sleep on newcomer Harry Le (20, RP, d12 K+) as he may be the actual reason the Bulls may be able to contend for a title after a 4 year layoff.
New Iberia Pelicans – All they have to do is get to the 8th with a lead, but who’s gonna score the runs?
The Pelicans are trying to change the baseball equation: What if you only had to win a 7-inning baseball game instead of the normal 9. New Iberia fields two possible all-star relievers in Seth Trahan(25, RP(L), d12) and Eric Austin (23, RP(R), d12) who can freely switch between setup and closers depending on the lineup. The Pels suffer from a lack of dominant hitting and are kept afloat by aging slugger Hubert Landry (35, RF, 33/37 P+). Klark Darwish (24, SS, 29/35) and Duane Dickerson (25, 1B, 28/36) round out the other bright spots in the lineup. Some think New Iberia’s gambit of a stellar bullpen is out of necessity, I’m pretty sure the New Iberia’s head coach thinks he’s found out a way to compete with the top of the division.
Thibodaux Giants – Thunderous Giants look to stay on top for the whole season.
The Giants are fielding what is to be considered one of the best position-by-position lineups in all of the Evangeline League. Mark Fryou (22, 2B, 33/44), Salvatore Sawyer (24, CF, 30/37 C+), Otto Trahan (26, 1B, 34/45) and Morris Breaux (40, C, 32/42 P+) form a stellar top of the batting order that is sure to put opposing pitching staffs on the back foot early, where they should be able to cover up for Thibodaux’s lack of a true ace. The Giants were looking to challenge Lafayette in 1942 but their inexperience caught up to them. Hopefully the 4 year gap has hopefully seasoned this team enough to become a smart title pick for 1946. While questions remain about their slim bench and rotation, there’s no doubt you will see several Thibodaux names leading the Triple Crown Stat,s. Let’s just hope it translates to post season wins too.
Thanks to this subreddit for allowing me to share my love of simulations and building narratives about of numbers!