Did you finally beat Cynthia and her Garchomp from hell? Here's a list of things for you to do!

1. Complete Your Sinnoh Dex

Assuming that you haven't skipped any trainers, the only Pokemon that you'll need to complete your dex are Manaphy if you haven't gone to the Pokemon Mansion and Rotom if you haven't gone to the Old Chateau. They're both easy to get. You can get Manaphy registered in your dex by reading a book located in the office of Mr. Backlot and Rotom can be found in the Old Chateau in the room with the TV in the evening, remember to interact with the TV - Rotom isn't in the Overworld.

1. A Whole New Island

After you complete your Sinnoh Dex and get the National Dex from Rowan, fly to Snowpoint and talk to the sailor outside the city. He will take you to the Battle Area. After you battle Volkner and Flint with Barry, the Frontier will be unlocked and you can enter. The Survival Area and the Resort Area will be unlocked, but ignore them for now and head straight to Stark Mountain. Complete the story there and go back to the Survival Area. You will see Buck in front of the Battleground, which is now accessible. There, you can fight Barry and the Gym Leaders. Here are some things to do in the Battle Tower:
Defeat Tower Tycoon Palmer once to earn a Silver Print Defeat Factory Head Thorton once to earn a Silver Print Defeat Arcade Star Dahlia once to earn a Silver Print Defeat Castle Valet Darach once to earn a Silver Print Defeat Hall Matron Argenta once to earn a Silver Print Defeat everyone above a second time to earn 5 Gold Prints

1. Hunt The Legendaries Down

After you've done all that stuff, it's time to return to the main island. Here are the locations of all accessible legendary Pokemon in the game:
Uxie and Azelf: Lake Acuity & Valor Cavern Uxie is overworld spawn in the middle of Lake Acuity. Interact with it to battle it. Azelf is also a overworld spawn, but in the middle of Lake Valor. Interact with it to battle it.
Mesprit: Lake Verity Cavern
Mesprit is a overworld spawn in the middle of Lake Verity, interacting with it causes it to flee. You can now hunt it down with the Marking Map app.
Heatran: Stark Mountain
Heatran is a overworld spawn in the cave where Charon was arrested. Interact with it to battle it.
Shaymin: Flower Paradise
Shaymin is a event overworld spawn in the Flower Paradise. To get it, you'll need Oak's Letter, an event item. Travel back into the Victory Road and go find the cave entrance that was previously blocked by a fat man. You will find Marley there. Travel through the cave and the routes until you see Oak next to a stone tablet. Complete the story events and eventually you'll find Shaymin. Interact with it to battle it.
Cresselia: Fullmoon Island
Cresselia is a overworld spawn in Fullmoon Island, to get there, head to Canalave City and talk to the Sailor who took you to Iron Island earlier. He will now take you to Fullmoon Island where you can interact with Cresselia. It will flee and you can now hunt it down with the Marking Map app.
Darkrai: Newmoon Island
Darkrai is a event overworld spawn in Newmoon Island. To get it, you'll need the Member's Card, an event item. Head to the building above the Canalave Pokemon Center and go inside it. Sleep in the bed and you'll be teleported to Newmoon Island. Find Darkrai and interact with it to battle it.
Dialga & Palkia: Spear Pillar
Both are overworld spawns. First, talk to Cynthia's Grandmother in Celestic Town, go grab the Adamant and Lustrous Orbs inside Mt. Coronet and head to the Spear Pillar. Dialga's portal will appear and you can interact with the rift to battle Dialga. After Dialga is captured or defeated, leave Spear Pillar and reenter it. Palkia's portal will appear and you can interact with the rift to battle it.
Legendary Birds: Roaming
After the National Dex is completed, go talk to Professor Oak, who lives in Eterna City. He will give you a Up-Grade and tell you about the legendary birds. Afterwards, the birds will now be roaming and you can now hunt them down with the Marking Map app.
The Regis: Multiple Locations
First, collect the event Regigigas from the PokeMart mailman. The regis will now be obtainable in the following locations: Regice: Mt. Coronet (East of Rt. 216) Regirock: Rt. 226 Registeel: Iron Island After all three are captured, head to Snowpoint Temple, which is now accessible. Complete the puzzles inside and capture Regigigas.
Arceus: Spear Pillar
Arceus is a event overworld spawn on Spear Pillar. It is unobtainable in legitimate games. If a Azure Flute is hacked into the games with a AR code, head to Spear Pillar and you will be asked to blow the flute, blow it and a staircase will appear. You can catch Arceus on top of it.
Giratina: Turnback Cave
If you didn’t catch Giratina in the Distortion World, you can find Giratina in Turnback Cave. It is located in the Sendoff Springs, where Cynthia was standing after you completed the Distortion World. Once you enter the cave, complete the puzzles and you will find Giratina’s over world sprite, interact with it to battle it. Once Giratina is caught or defeated again, you will be able to return to the distortion world to get the Griseous Orb.

1. Beat the League Rematches

The rematches are unlocked after you get the National Dex. By this time, they have Pokemon in the level 70s, so make sure to grind up. The teams remain unchanged. Cynthia's Garchomp is level 78, so make sure you're prepared!

1. Get the Ultimate Black Trainer Card

This is your final quest on your great journey. To get this special trainer card, you need to: Defeat the League Rematches Win At Least 1 Master Rank Super Contest Play At Least 1 Online Underground Capture the Flag Match Complete the National Dex Earn 100 Wins in the Battle Tower

1. For the Completionists

This is super-postgame. You can take the time to grind money to buy all villa furnitures or get access to the Ribbon Syndicate. Both of these require heaps and heaps of money grinding. If you don’t have the time to do these, don’t.
If you've completed all of these quests, then congratulations! You have now completely completed Pokemon Platinum. I hope you had fun! It's time for some shiny hunting. Note: The quests above don't have to be completed in numerical order, but I recommend you do it in that order.
This took pretty long to make, I hope you liked it.
Edit: Through popular demand, the next post will be on HG/SS. Stay tuned!

Note: I am mostly summarizing the aggregate of explanations currently floating around about the 1/29/21 option expiry date. I don't claim any knowledge. This is not investment advice. Do your own research, don't invest what you can't afford to lose, and if something feels wrong it probably is.
TL;DR: This isn't about options (yet), it's about shares, and Institutional Investors are playing a dangerous game by convincing us (some of y'all have bought in without realizing it) that a magical short squeeze has some 3-day time limit, that Friday is somehow the end game, and are hoping that when investors don't see a $5,000 short squeeze by next week they will fold and take their gains at a "reasonable" double-digit stock price. Don't believe them. They can survive through mid-late February before the true short squeeze smashes upward. And I'll be ready. I like this stock and believe in it's long term potential, and I think it's undervalued.
THESIS: If institutional investors can (1) convince retail investors to sell stock at low prices and (2) convince their lenders to wait, then the 0.01% get richer.
JUSTIFICATION: There is so much public sentiment (passion, enthusiasm, excitement, anger, whatever) surrounding short (~1 day) price movements*, and Friday's expiring options (these are also end of month contracts), that it seems like big clever money may be trying to artificially create a sort of bear trap for shareholders.
Whatever happens in the next week or so (crest to $700? crash to $60?) almost means nothing in the long term, but could fool investors into giving these guys CHEAP ways out of their 140% float short interest positions. Remember, these are people who have been dumping tons of money for a long time, shorting the stock when it was in the single digits. They've been hoping for a GameStop bankruptcy, and manufacturing one as best they can.
IT'S DIFFERENT THIS TIME: Remember the VW infinite squeeze, where we saw weeks of crazy price movement before the actual peak. And that is a mild case, as most of the shares were held by an entity with legal, competitive, and strategic reasons and obligations forcing them to hold shares and artificially reducing the float, or available shares for trading. This reduced supply caused the short squeeze.
However, this time around we've got a huge short interest, much much larger by comparison than that from VW's 2008 peak, to the tune of 140% of shares available for trading (float). They've massively overreached, and are going to pay the price for that. But they haven't yet.
SO YOU'RE SAYING THERE'S A CHANCE: This time, however, if the big dogs can shake shareholders hard enough, weak links break and paper hands fold and a fantastic long term play starts to seem out of reach. The market manipulation wins.
DARE TO BELIEVE: Unfortunately for the shorts, GME has real long term prospects to revolutionize the gaming industry for consumers, and now has the attention and potential equity momentum (if they play it smart, which I think the new leadership will) to make this a reality.
From that link above:

In GME's case the rise in the stock price itself will likely result in fundamental improvements to the underlying economic metrics of the company.

I believe.
However, if the shorts can fight, sneak, manipulate, and otherwise adjust the share price down this week then they start to see light at the end of the tunnel. They make 2-3 week plans for doing the same thing. For them, prices don't have to bottom back out, they just have to convince enough people to sell that they buy thrmselves a few weeks before a short squeeze really takes them all under.
*Some of this price movement is shorts covering, but much is actual legitimate investment between retail investors and other institutional investors who have seen the light. Remember, TSLA didn't get to where it is because one company made some bad short positions. But if GME shorts can convince everyone that a 3-day squeeze is all they get until GME crashes to some "normal" level, then they win.
Everyone getting hyped about Friday is playing into their hands. Yeah maybe some will need to take gains after a Friday pop, but a smart long-term hold position on GME is what they're really afraid of. And I want to be a shareholder in GME's future, as many wanted to be with TSLA. And sure, maybe if everyone else thinks that way too, there may be an incidental short squeeze that wrecks the uber wealthy in mid-late February along the way.
Again, I am not claiming to be knowledgeable or insightful, just commenting my best guesses. Nobody knows the future. This is not investing advice.
🚀

I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
 
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to.
Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547
I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can.
I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts.
Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T

Intro

• "The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
  • "I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
• "For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
  • "We're spread way too thin."
• "If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
• RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
  • Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
  • ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
  • Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
  • Widespread match fixing
  • The Pandemic
    • "People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
    • "People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
      • "To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
      • "Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
      • "People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
• "It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
  • RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
    • He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

• RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
  
  • He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
    • He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
      • He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
    • Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
    • RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
    • Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
      • "and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
• He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
  
  • "We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
  • He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
  • "They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
• He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
  
  • He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
    • He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
  • He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
    • RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
  • "I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
  • "Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
    • "Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
    • "That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
• He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
  
• He also says their rankings are a joke
  
  • "Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
• He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
  
• "Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"
  

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

• RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
• "ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
  • "Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
  • "Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
    • Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
      • Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
  • "They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
    • "They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
• ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
  • He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
    • Also says more coaches being banned are coming
    • He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
• ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
  
  • "I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
  • "So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
    • "Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
• RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.
  

Stream Sniping

"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"

• RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
  • On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
    • "Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
      • He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
        • He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
        • The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
        • "ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
• He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
• "All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
  • He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?

Match Fixing

"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."

• RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
  • "Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
• "Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
• Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
  • Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
    • They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
      • "I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
        • "Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
• RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
• "There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
  • "It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
• "It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
  • "I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
• He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
• "That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
  • "All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
• "I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."

North America

"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."

• RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
• There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
• He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
  • RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
  • He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
• He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
  • He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
    • They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
    • When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
    • "was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
    • He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
• He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
  • He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
• He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
  • He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
• He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
• He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
  • Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
• RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
• RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."

Talent

"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."

• RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
• He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
• Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
• He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
  • He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
• He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
• He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
• New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
• He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
• He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
• He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."

Valve

"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"

• Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
  • Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
• In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
• RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
• He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
• RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
  • A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
  • RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
  • RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
• RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
• Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
  • They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
• RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
  • Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
• He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
• Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
  • RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
• "It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
  • Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
• "Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
• "People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."

Closing Statements

"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."

• RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
• "We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
• "There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
• "How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
• "Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
• "The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
  • He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
• He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
  • "If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
    • "They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
• He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
• "Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
• "This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
• "You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
  • "Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
• "Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
  • "You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
• "I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
  • "I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
• "I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."

Hey apes,
tl;dr Please read this whole post. This is how we can win and why Wall Street is so scared of us.
I've still got these diamond hands and I like GameStop even more. Why? Because our favorite company has received the biggest injection of consumer capital a brand has likely ever received. Our favorite company is literally the storefront battle line where the little guy is taking on Wall Street, won but got cheated out of victory, and has codified memes like "diamond hands" into a modern version of David vs Goliath. And we still just want to go to the moon. The rest of this post is going to explore 2 certainties: 1) we can go to the moon with GME, and would have already except for blatant market manipulation and fraud, so we have to recognize that this is a war and we have to innovate to get to the moon, and 2) it's actually really easy to go to the moon and we figured out the legal cheat code to get there.
Why do we know we can go to the moon with GME? Because Wall Street cheated to crash our rocket ship. But the important thing to recognize is that they crashed our rocket ship to the GME moon by shutting off consumer demand then colluding to flood supply and use short ladder attacks to impose a downward stock trend. But media pundits (who are paid by Wall Street interests) are saying "fundamentals" and presenting talk of "Reddit guys are the bad market influence video game players because they don't know what they're doing, like we do, the experts." No. Supply and demand. That's how the market functions at its most basic parts. We had them in a squeeze and they turned off demand because they have advance data that showed them how fucked they were if they didn't turn off our ability to buy more GME.
How do we know that supply and demand drives stock price? Let's assess recent trends that don't concern GME. Here are two examples off the top of my head:

1. Signal Advance. One tweet from Elon Musk about using the Signal App drove people into a company not related to the Signal App. A small cap company that trades on the OTC (remember that for later - it's important for winning a war against short sellers while playing within the legality of market rules). A sudden demand for just 2 million shares of Signal Advance spiked the share price 5,643%... yes, demand of a small cap stock pushed a price up 5,643%. Demand. The thing Wall Street shut off when we were buying GME. Here's an article about Signal Advance. I think this moment is incredible information for us and it's worth a read to solidify the idea that supply and demand drives price.

https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/finance/musk-signal-advance/
2) Dogecoin. Again, Elon is providing us incredible information here. The exposure of and resulting demand for Dogecoin, even though the market cap is huuuuuuge and the cryptocurrency was actually intended as a joke, is driving the price through the roof. The last time I checked my dogecoins they went from fractions of a cent per coin to about 8 cents per coin. That is a huge gain based solely on consumer demand and psychological willingness to join into a meme attached to the perception of potentially life changing financial gains.
So what does this tell us about GME?
The squeeze isn't squoze, apes... here's some high level confirmation of this fact in an interview that u/rekoms12 alerted me to that is actually an attempt to say the squeeze already happened. This video is an interview with Ihor Dusaniwsky, the head guy at S3, the agency that has been blasting reports that short interests in GME covered, uses a statistical model that doesn't account for naked shorting as a possibility (he actually gives the game away by explaining how short selling is supposed to work considered with data of a GME short interest above 100%), and is paid by hedge funds for market data. Keep all of those things in mind.
Here's the link: https://youtu.be/22r48IVx7c8
As u/Rekoms12 observed, Ihor contradicts himself in the interview at a critical juncture. He says the upward movement of GME was retail demand, not a short squeeze. Supply and demand... But then he says that the squeeze happened at around $300, and then the price corrected. So was it a squeeze or not? And what's very telling to me is that Ihor and the interviewer don't talk about Robinhood and other brokerages artificially turning off consumer demand at the same time hedge funds turned up supply, the point when the price starts to dip.
What else do we know that's critical to understanding that the squeeze isn't squeeze?
We're getting gaslit with a mass media narrative that says GME is a bad investment. Because fundamentals... but let's dissect that:

1. again, GameStop is literally the face and rallying point where we occupied and fucked with Wall Street in a real and serious way. So seriously that they cheated markets in broad view of the world. That is an injection of consumer capital and potential loyalty spending that has unfathomable value. The fact that none of the GME hit pieces mention the demand side market manipulation as the catalyst for a price drop or offer honest consideration of GameStop's new WORLD profile as the face of small consumers resisting rich assholes fucking us and our wives as a value add to the fundamentals definitely shows that they're lying.
2. I've read reports that the real short report scheduled for February 9th will now be delayed until Feb 25th. Hmm. What that tells me is that they haven't settled their short positions at all. The greedy fucks actually, most likely, increased their short positions while they were cheating us. So why the delay? Simple. Their only out from the short squeeze is to turn market sentiment against GME, against us, and wait us out. It's a delay tactic. They think they can win a game of patience with us where they have an options deadline they're trapped in. They need us to let them out of the trap. But I'm no Portnoy because I have diamond hands.
3. here's how bullshitty these pricks are actually being when they say their superior understanding of "fundamentals" justify them not letting us do what we want. This article is from Bloomberg. It is literally called "Is the Key to Beating the Market Written in the Stars?", stars by saying "Henry Weingarten invests his clients’ money by charting the movement of heavenly bodies," and includes line like:

By grounding astrology in the less mystical-sounding business cycle, Williams inspired a new generation of financial astrologers. The most decorated is Arch Crawford, 77. Mark Hulbert, a ranker of financial newsletters, has rated Crawford the country’s top stock market timer a number of times. One of his biggest wins came in 2008, when he essentially called the crash. Crawford, a veteran of Merrill Lynch & Co., nails his CNBC soundbites and comes off as only mildly eccentric when discussing his craft. “I have the moon on the midheaven in Capricorn, which means I gain the attention of people without trying,” he tells me. “I have been written up in all the best places.”
And the article gets deeper:
US MARKETS ARE ‘EASY’ IF YOU REMEMBER THAT TRUMP’S 2018 HOROSCOPE IS STELLAR
Here's the article; PLEASE READ IT to understand the truth of HOW FUCKING MANY (even places like Merril-Lynch!!!) HEDGE FUNDS INVEST AND JUDGE COMPANY FUNDAMENTALS BASED ON ASTROLOGY!!! And they're chastising retail traders ABOUT FUNDAMENTALS!!!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-27/is-the-key-to-beating-the-market-written-in-the-stars
Would you trust an astrologer to tell you what to do with your hedge fund and call it sound fundamentals. Please take the time to google how widespread "financial astrology" is on Wall Street. It really tells us how full of shit they are about GME fundamentals... I wish this was a joke. It's not. And, again, my hands are fucking diamond.
How do we win?
It's the Age of Aquarius, baby. I learned that on MarketWatch, though this isn't an official MarketWatch article, like the official Bloomberg article above:
https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/age-of-aquarius-final-activation-on-december-21st-at-622-pm-utc-2020-12-14
And how does that help? It helps because of something we learned, the real thing Wall Street is so terrified of us figuring out because it breaks their short selling game: pump and dumps are illegal, but our diamond hands pump and pump strategy isn't regulated, and it's legal (and fyi, I trust diamond hands with my money way more than Tina, my wife's boyfriend's tarot card reademarket astrologer). How do we know pump and hold is legal? Two things:

1. Here's the definition of Pump and Dump from Investopedia:

Pump-and-dump is a scheme that attempts to boost the price of a stock through recommendations based on false, misleading, or greatly exaggerated statements. The perpetrators of this scheme already have an established position in the company's stock and sell their positions after the hype has led to a higher share price. This practice is illegal based on securities law and can lead to heavy fines.
But what if you just say "I just like the stock. Want to like it with me and hold onto it with me because you have diamond fucking hands, you beautiful ape baby." Or what if you say, "I'm into this stock for the memes instead of the Wall Street star chart fundamentals." Or just "I don't care what you say about it. I like it and I want it and I'm keeping it." And what if you have that market perspective about a stock and identify some legitimate underlying potential in a stock like u/deepfuckingvalue saw in our favorite stock, GME, that now has a ride or die consumer base motivated by decades of getting fucked over because we finally figured out how to say, "Apes angry. Apes together strong. Game stop."
2) And to reconfirm that our Pump and Hold Diamond Hands (PHD-H) ape market strategy is legal, I got this Wall Street Journal article on Robinhood titled "GameStop frenzy is tough call for regulators focused on transparency"; here's the link:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gamestop-frenzy-is-tough-call-for-regulators-focused-on-transparency-11612693802
The key takeaway for me in this article is when a very important Wall Street astrologer says: “You can sell garbage to the public as long as you say to the public, ‘This is garbage and you’d be an idiot to buy it, but would you like to buy it?’” The Wall Street astrologer who said that is Harvey Pitt, a former SEC chairman. An SEC chairman told us that... WE FIGURED OUT THE CHEAT CODE APES. THE WAR WE'RE IN IS LITERALLY MARKET ASTROLOGY vs DIAMOND HANDS. AND WE HAVE THE ADVANTAGE BECAUSE WE CAN DO DIAMOND HANDED MEME PUMPS LEGALLY WHICH DISADVANTAGES HEDGE FUNDS IN SHORT POSITIONS. AND WE HAVE THEM TRAPPED IN SHORT POSITIONS!!!
They literally told us how to beat them at the market game.
How do we beat and humiliate Wall Street?
Let's fuk these fuckers who have humiliated and shamed us for not being educated like them over their GME manipulation while they're investing billions of dollars (maybe trillions) based on star charts.
As MarketWatch told us, it's the Age of Aquarius. And we're currently under Aquarius Zodiac sign. Something else I found out while researching for this post is that the Aquarius Zodiac is ruled by Saturn and Uranus. So let's ride a rocket together. Let's say/protest market cheating as a community and tell Wall Street: "it's Aquarius (which you know better than us because you're about fundies, not tendies), so we decided to ride a diamond hands rocket past Saturn and straight to Uranus."
Here's the small cap stock we can do this with:
Aquarius AI INC
As SEC chairman Harvey Pitt told us to do, I'm pretty sure this stock is complete garbage. I bought some because I'm an idiot. I literally bought this stock because I want to tell Wall Street "I rode an Aquarius rocket to Uranus, I fucked, then I rode the rocket back to earth.
That's the main reason I like the stock. Why else, though:

1. Aquarius AI has AI in their name. This is definitely a stupid reason to like and buy this stock, but I made a few grand on Dogecoin stalking Papa Elon's Twitter, and he's so into AI that I think he's a robot. So this is for Elon.
2. Aquarius AI is involved in E-Sports Betting. Here's an article about it:

https://www.aquariusai.ca/aquarius-ai-announces-transition-into-esports-betting-management-changes-private-placement-financing-and-proposed-shares-for-debt-transaction-2/
So this is definitely stupid because Wall Street told me liking GME with diamond hands is a dumb ape strategy (which it says in their star charts), but DraftKings made huge Super Bowl money, E-Sports is getting bigger and bigger, and Aquarius AI being involved in E-Sports Betting means it fits with my love (and future consumer spending habits) that are fixated on GameStop. Also, I'm on Reddit and play video games and Wall Street mocked me for that. In fact, I didn't even know I could bet on E-Sports!!! Fuck buying my wife's boyfriend more stamina crackers. I'm betting on Starcraft. So this is for elite video game players and GameStop.
3) Aquarius AI trades on the OTC. Why is that important? Because it's very uncommon for an OTC stock to get shorted, so it's largely outside the schemes Wall Street conspired with to cheat us out of GME tendies.
4) The CEO of Aquarius AI has crazy eyes. That's probably a stupider reason to invest than Trump's horoscope like that hedge fund manager in the Bloomberg article, right?
5) Aquarius AI trades for $0.07 right now, there are only 22.3M outstanding shares, and the market cap is only $1.5M. That's way easier to rocket with a PHD-H community investment strategy than Signal did after Elon's tweet. WAY EASIER!!! And this is also a totally stupid reason to invest in this garbage stock, but that makes it easier to ride an Aquarius rocket to Uranus, then back to Earth. And that sounds fun.
6) Also, I have diamond hands. I want to see how much I lose after the Aquarius AI peak so we can extrapolate real market research about the impact of turning of demand side for GME to halt price momentum. That's such a stupid idea it isn't even regulated because no one smart enough to regulate the markets has ever been stupid enough to want to do that. So... is it stupid to invest in a garbage stock to get less stupid? Definitely. You'd be stupid to invest. Are you stupid? I am.
7) Also, I just like the stock.
Apes, let's rocket the fuck out of Aquarius AI INC and mock these hedge fund cheaters. It's legal. And it's a legitimate protest. And I want us to be able to look back at this moment and say, "Diamond hands, Wall Street. You fucked us on GME. But we rode an Aquarius AI Rocket straight to Uranus, then we rode it back home, you astrology fundamental fucks."
Who's with me? I'm in. I'm staying in. Diamond Hands. It won't take many of us.
p.s. I know some of you apes will go full paper hands and jump off the Aquarius AI rocket at Mars, or wherever. But whatever. I'madvocating you be stupid enough to not profit from this Pump and Hold strategy about this garbage stock I like that I'm not selling. But if you're less stupid than that, I implore you to be so stupid that you reinvest you're Aquarius AI rocket tendies back in GME, for totally stupid reasons, like you just want to.

Before going into this, this advice is going to mostly apply to guys, and will appeal to a hetero-normative bias. Some tips might apply to women, but it should be obvious which. Additionally, I'm not mentioning anything here in bad faith - Tinder has been majorly successful for me, as I'll get to.
I've spent the last hour going through male profiles as a guy. Full disclosure, I am a bisexual male so a small select group of these individuals were attractive to me, but man there's so much fucking garbage. I don't even know how women choose to wade through this shit. All the memes you see on women's profiles are true. Every stereotype is true. There are bare chests galore, caught fish that are dying in people's hands, embarrassing selfies, no bios, blurry pictures, sometimes only one or two pictures, guys asking to have sex, it's all there. I don't know necessarily what you folks are interested in, but as someone who goes beyond hooking up with someone, I just can't help but be embarrassed. This was the first time in months, maybe years, that I've legitimately questioned my sexuality again because it is just that bad. I cannot even understand how people make quality connections through Tinder because there's just so much garbage dick on this app.
I am aware that there are people who are not in this group, and you guys are doing great. Keep it up, always get feedback. You likely already are getting good performance, and if not, feel free to DM me, I'll be happy to help any way I can.
Point is, if you put in effort, try to not be nearly as much of an ogre as the rest of these guys, put care into making a decent profile, and take nice pictures, I guarantee you'll be more successful than you are now. I have a curated profile after multiple review sessions with both friends and the Profile Review thread here, and I've successfully made 30 matches in the last week, after an account reset and staying off the app for about a year. Tinder also enabled me to have a wonderful life-changing relationship for more than a year, and I only had that opportunity after discovering a lot of the things I mention here the hard way.
Here's some tips from what I've learned:

• Do NOT make self-deprecating jokes. They only stand to make you look even less attractive than the joke makes you out to be. Hold some confidence. If you can't feel comfortable in your skin (I've been there), at least try to fake it. I've found that while you're in the sort of "self-improvement" mode, faking it helps you see positives in yourself that you didn't realize you had, potentially pushing you further in the right direction.
  
• Selfies suck. Low-quality pictures suck. They both distort your facial features, almost consistently to your detriment. I've seen multiple very attractive guys who are just ruined by selfies and low-quality pictures. Close-up pictures also suck, if that wasn't clear. There should be something around you in the pic that isn't just your face, otherwise it's just not comforting to the viewer. This also includes Snapchat filters. Don't use them.
  
• Mind your lighting. The best pictures I saw were ones taken during the "golden hour", or when the sun is either rising or setting. Other good lighting comes from pictures involving natural light - literally taking your picture in front of a window will do the trick, and you'll look 10x better. One guy that actually was attractive had a selfie where he literally looked black due to lighting, whereas he was actually white. These things are important.
  
• For the love of God, please don't use pictures where you're shirtless. Have some class. Showing off your pecs just for the sake of doing so is just rampant hubris, and it really, really shows. If you're at the gym and you're trying to show that you go to the gym, and you have your shirt off because that's how you workout, fine. Other than that, don't do it if you can avoid it.
  
• Pictures of things you own are not cool, at all. They won't win you dates with anyone that actually cares about you. If you're cool with partners that exclusively desire you for your money and things you own, then that's a win for you, but I don't know anyone who just wants that and is still using Tinder.
  
• Don't use pictures that have women in them if it's not obvious that they aren't a past (or CURRENT) partner. Doing so casts doubt on both your relationship status, and is extremely disrespectful to your (presumed) ex, if they are the one in the pic. The last thing I, or anyone for that matter, want to think about when looking at a picture of you is who you're posing with in the picture, and if they might be a threat to me dating you.
  
• If you plan to take multiple pictures in a location at the same time (for example, several pictures in the same clothes in front of the same colored Christmas tree), do NOT use more than one picture on your profile. Using two pictures from the same place, in the same clothes, just in a different pose, adds absolutely ZERO value. Doing this also makes you look really, really desperate. Everyone can do this, make it more natural and less obvious.
  
• Fill in your bio!! I cannot stress this enough. Pictures tell me very little about who you are, especially without context. Tell me you like hiking, or that you enjoy cooking, or that you are a member of a heavy metal band, or whatever! If you like playing sports, mention it! The more unique, the better. We're trying to use this small space to create a personality. Don't spill your entire guts out into it, though. Take the majority of your personality, and squeeze it into a three word description. For example, I'm "goofy caring musician" because I really embody those traits. Do I suffer from anxiety? Yeah. Do I need to mention that? No. From there, make your pictures and your bio reflect that. You are that person, and even though there's more to you, we're trying to get ourselves in the door to a conversation where we can really be OURSELVES.
  
• Don't include anything in your bio that is what would be expected of a normal human being. "Honesty", "Laid-back", "Responsible", "Kind", "Smart", or any other adjective that would be expected out of literally any member of the human race shouldn't be included, because it's kind of a baseline.
  
• Hey, are you a gamer? I bet you are. Guess what? So is every other dude. ~90% of profiles either had the personality tag "gamer", or mentioned gaming somehow one way or another. Unless it's truly your hobby and you wanna share the entire Final Fantasy story with your potential partner, don't mention. I would go as far as to make mentioning you're a gamer as bad as making a Pam + Jim joke, because it is the most unoriginal shit. There has to be something else to you other than video games. That's what needs to shine!
  
• Unless it's relevant in some way to you, don't include a meme, or a weird unrelated picture in your profile. I'm sure what you just found on dankmemes is great, but it doesn't belong in your profile.
  
• If you have a picture of your pet in the picture, be in the picture. The point of including a pet is not only to have an objectively cute thing in your profile, it's more to show that you can have compassion where compassion matters. Dating apps are also intended to help confirm people aren't psychopaths, so by showing yourself in the profile, you're doing yourself a ton of good.
  

I sound harsh in this post, but trust me when I say that I just want the best for you guys. There is no reason, in my eyes, that a guy cannot be less than a 6 with reasonably minor effort. There is no reason anyone can't make a match on this app and have a meaningful conversation.
Again, my DMs are open, and I want to help as many people as I can. Tinder enabled me to experience a wonderful relationship for more than a year, I can't see why it can't work for you guys if you just put in the time and effort. Let me know if there's anything I can.
Good luck!
Edit: Hi everyone! I’m happy this post is helping you guys. For anyone who Dm’d me I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, but I’ve been a bit bombarded with messages so it’ll take me a bit.
edit2: I am finally caught up with everything, so if you want help, I'm still available for it.

For those of you that have been playing vigor since season one “thank you founders” to the new raincoats running around in lobbies with a Thompson and pm this is a personal message to you all. If you’ve followed this Reddit within the last year you’ll see that their have been trolls running rampant on the Reddit but the facts that are being spilled amongst the bullshit is legitimate problems being established by seemingly inside sources.
This Reddit has done a great job by coming together to support new players while still respecting the ones who came before us and etched their names on the boards forever but that doesn’t give the excuse for certain leader-boarders to disrespect and degrade new players this is something only us as a community can combat by blocking out and reporting accounts that decide to continuously harass users on this Reddit either it be them posting game crash issues or issues of being harassed, if you aren’t looking for a helping solution to a fellow outlander than you are just as big a problem as the original postings issue.
So to begin
The facts • sweats/streamers run this game, they have access from devs to private lobbies and almost endless crown funds, the devs grant these players crowns on a daily basis to keep them streaming vigor, the developers like having people that stream and advertise for the game to have the new cosmetics and better loot drops due to the garnered interest those players will get from new and unsuspecting raincoats wanting to get into the game.
Hackers or just shit shooter ? •this questions is easily answered, most players ranked highly on this game have utilized outside sources for aim assisting in game. Strike packs and Cronus max are 2 highly used mods/controller mods that offer incomparable amounts of aim assist to the applying users controller. Mouse and key is another black sheep tactic by so called vigor veterans to assist in aim, multiple users have been caught showcasing their aim bot in videos they’ve posted here and have been called out by numerous community members because of this obvious use of aim and click or unnatural analog realignment after a spray and pray.
•toxicity and gang up mentality. As you see on this Reddit their are multiple members who no matter what the case may be they already have something snarky and frankly simple minded to say, long time members on here will defend eachother to the bare bone as they are all afraid of stepping on each others toes and getting a bounty put out on them in every lobby, they prefer to suck up to eachother when posting on here but they’ll degrade and disrespect the fellow sweat once they see the opportunity for no back lash or if you have them in a private chat aka jealous fist bashing M3N0M1U the number one player for received drops or guys like the slaughter train macro moe and snipers like zeezo77, he’ll bash em verbally every chance he can get when it’s in private messages, y’all want the messages dm this account before the mods suspend it and I can send you guys the personal messages from fist himself you guys can see his true feelings about you especially after he found that his name wasn’t said amongst the list of users the audio clip played yesterday which infuriated him. U/zeezo77 u/macromoe
•developers and lack of help No matter what you post say complain cry comment or care the devs will not care. They have a small priority list of players they have attuned this games mechanics too to appease their blood thirsty wannabe call of duty run and gun game. They accommodate these players because it helps bring in money and coin currency cash flow for the devs. They allow full lobbies of m2e or reg to run rampant because these guys insanely boost the lobbies they all start queuing up into and run through it with their 8 ports each. When you have this kind of man power they don’t really rely much on skill hence why they are deadly as a group but 1-2 m2e and or reg are a walk in the park for the average player. The devs will never stop these groups from teaming up and playing because usually these guys are streaming and bringing in views to the game. Negative and positive publicity are one in the same this day in age.
Summary, don’t give yourself into this game without knowing what you’ll get in return, Know that if you load into a lobby with sweats just dashboard to home screen and close the app you’ll get your stuff back. You are in a game mid fight and you are trapped by 4 guys just dashboard/homepage and you’ll get your stuff back. Don’t be afraid to exploit the things in this game that they make available since you’ll be screwed by a lagging player or shitty server anyways so don’t let yourself become victim to this games faults. You get stuck in the ground or in between some logs lay down and exit the game you’ll get your stuff back. You spent coins on a crate or loot lobby and you don’t recover anything worth what you paid??? LEAVE THE LOBBY before the game is ends and radiation comes and you’ll get your coins back. Exploit this game as much as it does it’s users.
Only way to take back this community and stop the toxic flow of older players trying to make things better for themselves rather than new players starts now here with legit players who play to appreciate the game and it’s atmosphere. Don’t let the port duping Rock glitch shooting crown harvesting sweats over take this Reddit again we can control it by coming together and supporting the new changes we all want to see in game. Don’t let the basement dwellers win.
Devs are failing us

Posted by u/dwarfboy1717 1 day ago Friday 1/29/21 GME Expiry Date Means Nothing. Don't buy into the hype - shorts aren't just afraid of this Friday. Come down the rabbit hole with me.Discussion📷
Note: I am mostly summarizing the aggregate of explanations currently floating around about the 1/29/21 option expiry date. I don't claim any knowledge. This is not investment advice. Do your own research, don't invest what you can't afford to lose, and if something feels wrong it probably is.
TL;DR: This isn't about options (yet), it's about shares, and Institutional Investors are playing a dangerous game by convincing us (some of y'all have bought in without realizing it) that a magical short squeeze has some 3-day time limit, that Friday is somehow the end game, and are hoping that when investors don't see a $5,000 short squeeze by next week they will fold and take their gains at a "reasonable" double-digit stock price. Don't believe them. They can survive through mid-late February before the true short squeeze smashes upward. And I'll be ready. I like this stock and believe in it's long term potential, and I think it's undervalued.
THESIS: If institutional investors can (1) convince retail investors to sell stock at low prices and (2) convince their lenders to wait, then the 0.01% get richer.
JUSTIFICATION: There is so much public sentiment (passion, enthusiasm, excitement, anger, whatever) surrounding short (~1 day) price movements*, and Friday's expiring options (these are also end of month contracts), that it seems like big clever money may be trying to artificially create a sort of bear trap for shareholders.
Whatever happens in the next week or so (crest to $700? crash to $60?) almost means nothing in the long term, but could fool investors into giving these guys CHEAP ways out of their 140% float short interest positions. Remember, these are people who have been dumping tons of money for a long time, shorting the stock when it was in the single digits. They've been hoping for a GameStop bankruptcy, and manufacturing one as best they can.
IT'S DIFFERENT THIS TIME: Remember the VW infinite squeeze, where we saw weeks of crazy price movement before the actual peak. And that is a mild case, as most of the shares were held by an entity with legal, competitive, and strategic reasons and obligations forcing them to hold shares and artificially reducing the float, or available shares for trading. This reduced supply caused the short squeeze.
However, this time around we've got a huge short interest, much much larger by comparison than that from VW's 2008 peak, to the tune of 140% of shares available for trading (float). They've massively overreached, and are going to pay the price for that. But they haven't yet.
SO YOU'RE SAYING THERE'S A CHANCE: This time, however, if the big dogs can shake shareholders hard enough, weak links break and paper hands fold and a fantastic long term play starts to seem out of reach. The market manipulation wins.
DARE TO BELIEVE: Unfortunately for the shorts, GME has real long term prospects to revolutionize the gaming industry for consumers, and now has the attention and potential equity momentum (if they play it smart, which I think the new leadership will) to make this a reality.
From that link above:

In GME's case the rise in the stock price itself will likely result in fundamental improvements to the underlying economic metrics of the company.

I believe.
However, if the shorts can fight, sneak, manipulate, and otherwise adjust the share price down this week then they start to see light at the end of the tunnel. They make 2-3 week plans for doing the same thing. For them, prices don't have to bottom back out, they just have to convince enough people to sell that they buy thrmselves a few weeks before a short squeeze really takes them all under.
*Some of this price movement is shorts covering, but much is actual legitimate investment between retail investors and other institutional investors who have seen the light. Remember, TSLA didn't get to where it is because one company made some bad short positions. But if GME shorts can convince everyone that a 3-day squeeze is all they get until GME crashes to some "normal" level, then they win.
Everyone getting hyped about Friday is playing into their hands. Yeah maybe some will need to take gains after a Friday pop, but a smart long-term hold position on GME is what they're really afraid of. And I want to be a shareholder in GME's future, as many wanted to be with TSLA. And sure, maybe if everyone else thinks that way too, there may be an incidental short squeeze that wrecks the uber wealthy in mid-late February along the way.
Again, I am not claiming to be knowledgeable or insightful, just commenting my best guesses. Nobody knows the future. This is not investing advice.
Edit: we are seeing this dangerous bias even in such reputable characters as thicc_dads_club with his recent speculation - GME Endgame.
🚀

This story is only ramping up, with numerous politicians jumping in today. The post made yesterday was specifically about Discord banning their server. But that is A) really tangential, and B) very much in the middle of the procedure. And when people enter in the middle, we often have a bad habit of assuming what came before. So I wanted to start with the basics of finance so it's all laid out simply.

It begins with a magic box

Suppose there is a magic box that spits out $10 every year.
Every January 1 a $10 bill comes out of this box. You don't know how and you don't care, but you have every faith it will continue to happen. How much would you pay for the box?
Seriously, try to come up with a number.
It's not obvious if you've never studied this kind of thing. The entire field of finance exists to answer questions like that. But let's say for the purposes of our discussion the "reasonable" price is $500. (If you're curious about the actual calculation, look up "Present Value of a Perpetuity".)
We'll say there's a whole bunch of these magic boxes out there, all exactly the same. But not infinite. So if someone new comes along and wants a box, they have to find a previous owner and offer a trade. Maybe you'd take $500 for it if you wanted the money now instead of waiting. Or maybe you really like your box and you insist on $520 or $530 for yours. If all the people buying and selling the boxes make the trade prices publicly known, what you have is a market. And the prices of the boxes will go up and down based on various factors.
But it should be clear that regardless of what anyone is paying for it, this magic box continues to work exactly the same.

Eat my shorts

So you have your box. I come to you and say "Can I borrow that? I will give it back to you in the future, and in the meantime I will pay you the $10 every year that the box would have." So to you it makes no difference. To the box it makes no difference. But to the market, it might. Because I can then go sell that box, planning to buy it back later. And if I do that a lot, all these boxes I'm selling might make people less interested in buying. Which means the going price is lower, and the box I sold for $500 maybe I can buy back for $400. Then I return it to you and keep the difference as profit. (Minus any annual payments I had to give you.)
This is "short selling", or "shorting". Instead of buying then selling, I would sell then buy. It's made possible because I was able to borrow.
Now let's ramp it up. I borrow more and more boxes, selling each time. I even borrow the same box again from the person I sold it to, just to sell it to someone else. And the price at which I do it goes cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. Eventually I'm so successful the last buyer bought a magic money box for $50. I have successfully shorted the price that low.
So let's ask the question: is this bad? Consider different points of view:

• If you had held on to your box and suddenly found you needed a quick $500, you'd be pretty unhappy if no one was paying more than $50.
• If you loaned yours to me you don't care. You're still getting your annual $10 and will eventually get the box back.
• The box doesn't care. Not because magic boxes don't have feelings (who knows?) but because it still works exactly the same.
• If you were looking to acquire a box, you'd be absolutely thrilled that I had made them so cheap.

So good/bad depends on who is speaking. But I would point out that the first group is hypothetical and probably not that big. But the fourth group very definitely exists. My shorting offered a lot of valuable boxes to a lot of people at a very low price. In any other context you might even call that a public service.
In all likelihood, the biggest loser of this scenario is me. I took something of proven value and made people temporarily question that. But if they have either rationality or patience, they're not going to sell me these boxes back at $50. And I do have to buy them sometime because I owe a whole lot of them.

Group hug

In fact, sometimes it's not up to me when I start returning the boxes. Suppose that while I'm trying to short the price down, it actually goes up to $600. You were fine with me borrowing before because you knew that I'd already have the cash to buy it back at a lower price. But at a higher price, you'd probably want some reassurance. This is known as a "margin call". (Margin being the broker's term for borrowing.)
When the price goes higher than expected, as the short seller I either need to dump a whole bunch more cash in the account to make you more confident, or I need to start buying back the boxes immediately and returning them to the lenders. But of course if I start panic buying a bunch of boxes, that's going to have the exact opposite effect that selling them did. The market price will go up. And the higher it goes, the more margin calls I get on the ones I still owe. This loops on itself over and over, and is known as a "short squeeze".
Basically everyone in this situation wins except me. Lenders get their boxes back immediately. People who bought them cheap now get to sell to me at a higher price. People who held see the price shooting up. This is why shorts are painted as the enemy - because in terms of our bet, it's everyone against me. But remember that the short itself wasn't a problem. All I did was make this valuable magic box available at a low price.

You don't actually believe in magic, do you?

Of course, magic isn't as reliable as it used to be. For years the box spit out a $10, sure. But at the start of 2021, each of the boxes only gave out $7...
Well that changes things, doesn't it? $500 may be a fair value for $10 a year. But if the box doesn't pay as much, it's not worth as much. And what if next year is lower than $7? What if someday it stops giving out money entirely?
Now the *intrinsic value* of the box has changed, and may continue to do so. If I were to short in this environment, that makes a lot more sense, does it not? If the price is going to go down, I'd sure like to be selling now and buying later.
This still puts us on opposite teams. Whether you bought your box a long time or got it cheaply from me, you hope I'm wrong and come next January it goes back to giving $10s. Again, you win if I fail. I guess that makes me the enemy. But don't mistake that for me breaking the box. I didn't affect it. I just have a different prediction.

The box is Gamestop. It was a metaphor!

OK, push the "magic box" analogy to the back of your mind. Stocks really aren't all that different. When you buy a stock you own a piece of a company. You bought it from a previous owner. You hope they will make money and someday send you your cut (called a "dividend"). But these things are unpredictable, which is why stock markets move around.
Always remember the order though: The magic box affects the price. The price did not change the box.
If Gamestop is a good company, all the shorts do is make the stock cheaper for people who would like to own it. They can't drive the company out of business and "cost thousands of people their jobs". Which is something I've been seeing people say. It's kind of why I wrote this. You can't make the magic boxes stop just by selling a bunch of them.
However, if Gamestop is legitimately having problems, the price is going to go down and the shorts are just the first ones to figure that out.
(1)

The special investors

I've been entertained by WallStreetBets for years. And there's a way I like to describe them:
1/3 smart people acting dumb because it's funny. 1/3 dumb people not knowing it's a joke. 1/3 people who think they're in the first group but are actually in the second.
WSB has made the news a couple times. The biggest story before this involved using an account glitch (at newbie broker RobinHood) to borrow a million dollars and then gamble it at 20:1 odds. Who they are (or at least pretend to be) are wanna-be Jordan Belfort. (The guy from Wolf of Wall Street). It's not reflective of your save-for-retirement investor and it's not some new Occupy Wall Street movement. Causing a short squeeze like the one I described above is something they might do because it's funny, and because some gamblers will get paid off, and because it's funny.
That's basically what happened here. Many short sellers had bet against Gamestop. Management had added new members to their Board of Directors (basically the shareholder's representatives) including Ryan Cohen, the founder of pet-food-seller Chewy. His suggestions about significant change to the company had inspired some optimism. WSB members saw that as an opportunity and tried to rally people into the stock to cause a short squeeze. And from there it caught on.
Make no mistake. When something like this hits the news, causing either casual investors or anti-Wall Street bandwagoneers to follow with their own money, that makes the joke so much better.
But remember the stock price does not affect the underlying company. The shorts pushing it down to $4 or the buyers/squeeze pushing up to $400, neither affects how Gamestop operates. This isn't about saving the company. It's what happens when serious predictions meet treating-money-like-a-video-game.

Short answers about shorts

Is there going to be a government bailout?
Not of the hedge funds. We're only talking about 1-2 funds. And I assure you, there are hedge funds on the other side as well. Nobody wants to see a fund manager fail more than their rival managers. The industry is fine. And hedge funds are by their very nature not open to average investors because of the risk involved.
Will anyone else get one? I don't know. This is America. So probably.
How will this end?
I don't know the accurate value of Gamestop stock any more than anyone else. But I can tell you it's a lot closer to $10-15 than it is to $250. If you're in for the joke, it's hilarious. But the higher the spike, the more appealing it is to sell - both to new shorts and to long-term holders. No one wants to be the last one holding.
Marijuana company Tilray might be a model. In 2018 the stock was first issued at $17 per share. Buyers (including a great deal of WSB hype) pushed it up to $300 within 3 months. Last year it hit a low of $2.43.
Who will be the biggest loser?
Probably RobinHood. This app-based broker targets a less experienced audience which makes them perfect for WSB-style comedy. And for reasons not entirely clear, earlier today they banned the purchase of Gamestop (along with others including AMC, BB, and BBBY) on their platform. This has already sparked a class-action lawsuit and promises of legal investigation from as diverse a group as AOC and Ted Cruz.
That action may actually be the bit that leads to lasting change. If it turns out that Robinhood was pressured by their own market connections, who were motivated by the hedge funds involved, we might see stricter rules about firewalls between roles. But that is speculation. I could guess several reasons why they might have acted that don't rhyme with "Bon fearacy". But they should be made to answer.
Is this like 2008?
No. Other than that they're both about finance, and therefore about the prediction of the value of future events. But these are predictions about the value of selling used video games. Not comparable to a drop in home values - the most widespread, leveraged market in the world.
-----
Footnote:
(1) For completeness, I should add a caveat. If a company is in trouble but not dead, they may seek out new investors so they have money to stay alive longer. A low stock price makes that harder to do, and short sellers certainly don't help that. But crucially here, genuine problems must exist first.

EDIT - one week after i posted this, Britain's most successful hedge fund manager Michael Platt has taken a 6.5% stake
tl;dr
At-NAV new SPAC with world-leading expertise in online gambling. Worth a bet on potential to be next DKNG on the hype train
   
+++++++
Hi all - have had a lot of great tips from this sub. Hopefully this pays some of you back. I have been watching and researching this since 23 December when it first filed S1, awaiting the units to be listed - they are available today trading as ADERU
Positions - 500 units @ 10.42 to start. Will be monitoring and building position below $15, especially if attention starts to build ahead of units and warrants splitting and shares coming available to Robinhood.
(My other SPAC positions are OPEN, IPO-E-F, PSTH, FUSE, PIPP, ACTC, CCIV and DMYD, 100 to 1000 shares each mostly around NAV and numerous warrants and options around these.)
As ever, this is not investment advice and do your own research
+++++++
   
26 Capital Acquisition Corp or ADER
is a 240m SPAC with usual terms - 10$ units, 1/2 warrants. Seeking a merger in "gaming and gaming technology, branded consumer, lodging and entertainment, and Internet commerce sectors".
I think this is highly worth a play on the online gambling hype if you can get in at near NAV, based entirely on the management which is unbeatable in its knowledge of the gambling industry
   
CEO Jason Ader
has held director level positions at Las Vegas Sands Corp. ($42bn one of biggest casino groups in world), IGT (£3.72bn multinational gambling firm specialised in software and slot machines) and Playtech (£1.4bn multinational gambling software firm)
Before starting his own fund in 2013 he was regularly ranked Wall Street's top analyst on the gambling and leisure sector
His fund, Spring Owl Capital, is a small activist fund focused on gambling and leisure. They are probably most famous for ousting the CEO of Viacom in 2016 and a crusade against Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer in 2015.
Ader knows the gambling - and online gambling - industry inside out. He drove bWin to a £1.1bn takeover by gambling giant GVC (now Entain) in 2016, and has been driving similar change and demands for improvement at board level at Playtech
The fund mostly manages money for a select group of wealthy families, which could be a positive sign for the SPAC (although I don't know how much skin in the SPAC the fund has, if any)
Here is a video of Ader from November talking about how he's excited about SPACs. He talks about how he has been advising certain States about legalising sports betting and how to maximise value and liquidity by linking up with European companies in the space (Playtech e.g.??).
Ader is extremely bullish on US legalising online casino and more sports betting options, accelerated by need for revenue because of pandemic
   
Rafi Ashkenazi
One of the most highly respected names in the online gambling world, including COO and CEO positions at major online gambling firms such as Playtech and Stars Group (a world leader in online poker and casino). At Stars he led the $4.7bn takeover of Sky Betting to create the world's largest publicly listed online betting firm in 2018. Most recently he led the £10bn merger between Flutter (biggest gambling company in world by revenue, market cap £26bn), and Stars Group (Ader also involved). Also has connections into the booming Israel tech space which is interesting
   
Joseph Kaminkow
Special Advisor to the Chief Product Officer at Aristocrat, a leading gambling software provider and games publisher, previously Vice President of Game Design at Zynga Inc. This guy is a former video game / pinball designer who is credited with revolutionising the slots industry after moving into gambling software from video games in 1999. Regarded as a "legend" and "hall of famer" in this niche. At Zynga he designed so-called 'social casino games' which don't involve real-money gambling but are otherwise basically gambling apps (revenue from microtransactions etc). 130 patents on gambling/gaming design inventions
   
Greg Lyss
This is a very interesting but extremely low profile person. He was Bill Ackman a.k.a SPACman's right hand man at Gotham Capital. Ackman respected him so much that when Ackman set up a personal hedge fund to invest the Ackman family's money, he put Lyss in charge of it. To repeat - Bill Ackman thinks this guy is such a good investor and trustworthy that he put him in charge of investing his family's money. Don't know anything more about him, but I like this association with Ackman, which suggests to me some integrity around management of this SPAC, especially as the gambling world can be very murky.
The other member of the team is the CFO of SpringOwl with 20+ years' hedge fund experience and not notable (although clearly competent)
   
Thesis / potential targets
Based on the above experience and many public comments by Ader over the past year, I would be very surprised if ADER is not looking to merge with an online gambling technology provider / existing online betting website / social casino app / possibly a supporting technology provider
They are activist inventors, and specifically say in the IPO prospectus that they could look for businesses that can benefit from turnaround or are not being run well. I speculate that their deep knowledge of the European / global online gambling industry means they have a target in mind that they think would benefit from their expertise and US liberalisation of gambling legislation.
   
1) Ader believes the listing of UK-listed gambling companies in US is immediately big in terms of market cap because of the premium on online gambling stocks in US. He has pitched DraftKings to takeover Playtech and called on Playtech to spin off non-core business. This makes me wonder if he would spin off some element of Playtech to list in US to cash in on gambling hype.
This might be Finalto.com / TradeTech which is an online financial platform owned by Playtech. Playtech has been trying to sell this for 200 - 240m since August so it fits. This company provides liquidity and trading to brokerages and runs markets.com a trading site. I wouldn't be that excited although apparently the business has been booming during COVID and there could be a decent pop just on fintech hype.
   
2) This could be a 'picks and shovel' type data/B2B betting software play a la DMYD, or something like e.g. Israel based CRM software Optimove which works with some of biggest online gambling cos and has links to Ashkenazi. This would be interesting but probably not a huge pop
   
3) Possibly - given Ader's links to Sands - an online gambling tie-up with one of the big Vegas casinos who are desperate to get into the online betting space (see MGM's attempt to buy Entain for $8bn last week). Interestingly, Sands' owner Sheldon Adelson, previously a major opponent of online betting, has just died. Ader predicted a few months ago that Sands would be moving in this direction.

“There’s no stopping online gaming,” Ader said [before Adelson's death]. “(Las Vegas Sands’) initiatives to stop online gaming, at this stage, are largely historic. There hasn’t been a lot of spending recently to do that, especially post-pandemic.”
“I think the company will see the value created by DraftKings and FanDuel and Penn (National) Gaming and others. They’re not foolish,” Ader added. source

   
4) Ader is very confident that Macau will legalise online gambling in next year or two. Sands is big in Macau, the biggest gambling market in the world. A SaaS-type product positioned to capitalise on Asian gambling would be MASSIVE - at present however, China's attitude to gambling and local regulations mean this is unlikely
   
5) I also wonder if they might try to take legitimate one of the offshore bookmakers with big customer databases and brand recognition but which have been grey-area/illegal under US gaming legislation. For example, Five Dimes recently announced a settlement with the FBI to attempt to transition into newly legalised US markets. This might have the most hype potential
   
Potential upside
This is entirely a play on management experience and the meme factor / hype around online gambling in the US. I think if they pick a good target - which given their experience and connections seems likely - and get the right publicity and attention from retail investors looking for the next DKNG this could easily 3x and maybe 5-6x if on DKNG-type hype levels.
There is currently little spotlight on this and it is a good time to get in at NAV
   
Potential Downside

• Ader has been vocal that he thinks US online betting is overvalued and in a bubble - why is he starting his own SPAC in the space then? Does he just want to cash in while the hype is at all-time high or does he have a legitimate business goal?
  
• If he just wants to dump a part of Playtech which he does not like onto retail investors, this is a bad deal.
  
• Other targets could be e.g. hotel industry or other leisure sector which would be zero sexiness to retail. Given Ashkenazi and Kaminkow's background this seems unlikely though
  
• Usual SPAC caveats apply about potential difficulty finding a target, locking up your money for unspecified period of time, and the fact I may have completely misread the potential and my above thesis might be totally wrong
  

I think that everyone who is looking for major political change has the right attitude of course, but lacks a reasonable, finite plan. So I am here today to provide that for you.
As of August 24th, I Started what is currently being called the Votebreaker SuperPAC.
For now that is only in name. I’m not collecting money, I’m not campaigning in the traditional sense. I’m not a large company or anything.
But by Election Day 2024, I will be working my ass off to convince between 1.5 and 2.5 million people in Florida, North Carolina, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, 300k each, to vote together, not to endorse a specific candidate that we all love, but to use the objective leverage that we as a large disillusioned group objectively have, to threaten the Democratic and Republican parties(by way of the DNC, RNC, and other relevant groups) with a win from the opposing party, unless they bow to some very specific concessions made by the SuperPAC. This will firstly be in the form of Cash, but also in an effort to bring about the end of first past the post voting, gerrymandering, ending the electoral college, and other political issues, to siphon as much money and power out of big politics as possible.
The name of the game here is creating leverage.
The 5 states mentioned above are swing states, the average margin of win in all 5 is under 300k votes in each. With these numbers, it is very possible to throw those states collective 80 electoral votes, enough to decide an election mind you, into whichever direction the group so chooses. (This can be done with other states in various combinations, but these are the easiest 5.)
We’re not going to win any elections, but we’re not trying to.
With those numbers, we have more than enough power to completely upend the electoral process with just a little bit of coordination between you, and other anti establishment and third party voters (or previously non voters as the case may be) You have a common goal, no matter how much you hate any other particular third party philosophy.
There is too much money in politics and too much money in the two party system. You may have ideological differences with other third party members, but in order to progress, your starting point is the same.
The SuperPAC itself is simply a vehicle for collecting and distributing the money in a Transparent way for everyone to see, as per FEC guidelines.
The money collected, which will be demanded other PACs, and other big money supporters, will be mostly given away or otherwise spent on a neutral as possible, public good project to be decided in the near future.
But this is again to create leverage to level the political playing field in the form of major policy change.
The only way to get Elites to pay attention to you is to Affect their ability to generate cash. So let’s do that.
This plan takes advantage of a few loopholes.
Firstly; buying and selling votes at the individual level is explicitly illegal.
However, directing blocks of voters with suggestions is just electioneering, which is regulated by the FEC, and if done in the correct manner, is entirely legal.
Essentially, as the operator of the Votebreaker superPAC, after gathering the appropriate amount of people and attention, I and my team of people who help me operate will publicly declare, across the official social media accounts and as many other sources as I can, that the representatives of the Democratic and Republican parties that we choose have a choice.
Pay X amount of dollars, in the form of a payment towards an official endorsement in conjunction with FEC guidelines, or the collective vote will go to the other party.
Let’s say the amount is $60 million.
If neither party participates, choose a party at random. They will receive the collective vote at every level of government for every election, so as to force the opposing party to pay.
If one party pays, they get the collective vote.
If both party’s pay, the vote is neutralized.
In order to demonstrate that we are as numerous and powerful and coordinated as we say we are, we can’t simply not vote in that election.
So to demonstrate that we have real voting power, a neutral unaffiliated third party name will be written in, not as a legitimate candidate, but simply to bypass the secret ballot, and publicly acknowledge the groups numbers. We will collectively vote for that name instead.
Individual votes are anonymous. Groups of votes however are publicly tracked and tallied every Election Day.
And that is the gist of the project. A simple, non violent, accelerationist option.
Now functionally, this is how every superPAC operates, but to gather explicit support for a specific party with voters that they HOPE to get.
But with a bit more 21st century coordination, we can do a lot more with this, with a lot less people.
Do not consider this project to be one that works against your own interests.
That would be the case if I was looking to mobilize say, the entire Democratic Party, which makes up 25% of the population.
But what I am asking for is the support of less than half a percent of you. That is literally all it takes. That is how unstable the US political system is.
Over the next four years I will be working towards creating public service announcements and the like In order to draw attention to this.
Anyone with applicable skills and suggestions are encouraged to contact me and support with your talent or your vote (and not your money) as you are able. Eventually, this culminates in an app that makes the coordination effort significantly easier.
There are multiple tactical considerations to consider for all sorts of reactions that people may have to this project, but many of those have already been considered, and are waiting to be enacted.
Again, The name of the game here is creating a type of leverage that the majority of people are scared of, but that people in power will have a hard time ignoring. All for the greater good.
I look forward to hearing from all of you, and garnering support, chiefly by getting people with technical talent or resources that I may use, significant writing skill, familiarity with OSINT, social media prowess, and anything short of that, simply following along and pledging support and spreading the word.
Come join us over at votebreaker. Time is running out. Please spread the word.

I think that everyone who is looking for major political change has the right attitude of course, but lacks a reasonable, finite plan. So I am here today to provide that for you.
So As of August 24th, I Started what is currently being called the Votebreaker SuperPAC.
For now that is only in name. I’m not collecting money, I’m not campaigning in the traditional sense. I’m not a large company or anything.
But by Election Day 2024, I will be working my ass off to convince between 1.5 and 2.5 million people in Florida, North Carolina, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, 300k each, to vote together, not to endorse a specific candidate that we all love, but to use the objective leverage that we as a large disillusioned group objectively have, to threaten the Democratic and Republican parties(by way of the DNC, RNC, and other relevant groups) with a win from the opposing party, unless they bow to some very specific concessions made by the SuperPAC. This will firstly be in the form of Cash, but also in an effort to bring about the end of first past the post voting, gerrymandering, ending the electoral college, and other political issues, to siphon as much money and power out of big politics as possible.
The name of the game here is creating leverage.
The 5 states mentioned above are swing states, the average margin of win in all 5 is under 300k votes in each. With these numbers, it is very possible to throw those states collective 80 electoral votes, enough to decide an election mind you, into whichever direction the group so chooses. (This can be done with other states in various combinations, but these are the easiest 5.)
We’re not going to win any elections, but we’re not trying to.
With those numbers, we have more than enough power to completely upend the electoral process with just a little bit of coordination between you, and other anti establishment and third party voters (or previously non voters as the case may be) You have a common goal, no matter how much you hate any other particular third party philosophy.
There is too much money in politics and too much money in the two party system. You may have ideological differences with other third party members, but in order to progress, your starting point is the same.
The SuperPAC itself is simply a vehicle for collecting and distributing the money in a Transparent way for everyone to see, as per FEC guidelines.
The money collected, which will be demanded other PACs, and other big money supporters, will be mostly given away or otherwise spent on a neutral as possible, public good project to be decided in the near future.
But this is again to create leverage to level the political playing field in the form of major policy change.
The only way to get Elites to pay attention to you is to Affect their ability to generate cash. So let’s do that.
This plan takes advantage of a few loopholes.
Firstly; buying and selling votes at the individual level is explicitly illegal.
However, directing blocks of voters with suggestions is just electioneering, which is regulated by the FEC, and if done in the correct manner, is entirely legal.
Essentially, as the operator of the Votebreaker superPAC, after gathering the appropriate amount of people and attention, I and my team of people who help me operate will publicly declare, across the official social media accounts and as many other sources as I can, that the representatives of the Democratic and Republican parties that we choose have a choice.
Pay X amount of dollars, in the form of a payment towards an official endorsement in conjunction with FEC guidelines, or the collective vote will go to the other party.
Let’s say the amount is $60 million.
If neither party participates, choose a party at random. They will receive the collective vote at every level of government for every election, so as to force the opposing party to pay.
If one party pays, they get the collective vote.
If both party’s pay, the vote is neutralized.
In order to demonstrate that we are as numerous and powerful and coordinated as we say we are, we can’t simply not vote in that election.
So to demonstrate that we have real voting power, a neutral unaffiliated third party name will be written in, not as a legitimate candidate, but simply to bypass the secret ballot, and publicly acknowledge the groups numbers. We will collectively vote for that name instead.
Individual votes are anonymous. Groups of votes however are publicly tracked and tallied every Election Day.
And that is the gist of the project. A simple, non violent, accelerationist option.
Now functionally, this is how every superPAC operates, but to gather explicit support for a specific party with voters that they HOPE to get.
But with a bit more 21st century coordination, we can do a lot more with this, with a lot less people.
Do not consider this project to be one that works against your own interests.
That would be the case if I was looking to mobilize say, the entire Democratic Party, which makes up 25% of the population.
But what I am asking for is the support of less than half a percent of you. That is literally all it takes. That is how unstable the US political system is.
Over the next four years I will be working towards creating public service announcements and the like In order to draw attention to this.
Anyone with applicable skills and suggestions are encouraged to contact me and support with your talent or your vote (and not your money) as you are able. Eventually, this culminates in an app that makes the coordination effort significantly easier.
There are multiple tactical considerations to consider for all sorts of reactions that people may have to this project, but many of those have already been considered, and are waiting to be enacted.
Again, The name of the game here is creating a type of leverage that the majority of people are scared of, but that people in power will have a hard time ignoring. All for the greater good.
I look forward to hearing from all of you, and garnering support, chiefly by getting people with technical talent or resources that I may use, significant writing skill, familiarity with OSINT, social media prowess, and anything short of that, simply following along and pledging support and spreading the word.
Come join us over at votebreaker. Time is running out. Please spread the word.

This might be a long one, but the TLDR is right at the bottom :)
I started CSGO exactly 2 years (24 months) ago and it was my first ever FPS. For the first year I played, I just played the game hoping to improve without putting any blood, sweat or tears. Early last year, I started to watch videos, invest some time refining my aim and utility usage, watch my own demos etc. I improved from Nova 2 to MGE in just about 6 months. Fast forward another 4-5 months (last year November) and I have climbed to lvl 5 on faceit soloqueue with an average K/D of 1.2. Some people on the csgo subreddits were skeptical and claimed that there is no way a lvl 5 could be in MGE. Fast forward 2 months (now) and I have lost 17, drew 1 and won 2 of my last 20 mm games. And here's the thing - more than 3/4 games I lost had an obvious cheater in it, and one of the games I won I had the cheater on my side queuing with his Malay friends and telling them where everyone was (fortunately I understand Malay). I now sit in MG1 and I'm really considering quitting MM.
Before you all go 'get good they are not cheating' on me, please have a look at this post last year, and check out the link included in the post below as well:
https://www.reddit.com/csgo/comments/c218gm/asia_csgo_is_nothing_but_cheats_and_acting/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Yes, it may sound exaggerated, but I can confirm it's not. SEA csgo is tough. And it's not tough because SEA players are insane and good at CSGO, it's tough because its INFESTED with cheaters, and even more so than other regions like NA and EU. A friend of mine has been hacking in csgo for a long time and he only got caught out because he wasn't careful and got overwatched. Another cheating friend of mine is Global and in his 470+ comp wins he was never caught (one day I asked him to play faceit and he got banned by the Faceit AC pretty quick, that was when I knew he was cheating). Another guy I met online is a blatant waller and he has many knives and an inventory probably worth RM 10000. And I'm not about to go into the many players I met online who I thought was good and added them, only for them to get VAC banned somewhere down the road.
If you are not yet convinced of my point, I had an online friend from UK who came to Singapore to study and as an LEM in EU, I queued with him and we got chewed on by GNMs and MG1s(who Im sure were cheating). Moreover, two legitimately good Faceit players I know (one 2500 elo and another lvl 8) are both hard stuck in LEM and DMG respectively in MM. There are two possibilities here:
1) Most players past LEM are either cheaters are better than 2500 elo faceit
OR
2) The pool of legitimate good players are so small that even an LEM and DMG can get high levels on faceit, and that is very disappointing.
Since I started taking the game seriously, I have been feeling that SEA region was full of cheaters and that alot of suspicious shit was going on in my games. I always held that I was toxic (maybe I am) and that I cannot accept that players that consistently kill me are just better, because everyone from EU and NA online says they don't meet cheaters often. However, looking at the demos, and the fact that according to csgostats.gg I have more games with cheaters in it than I have comp wins, and on top of all that reading the post I linked above and realising it's not just me, I have to say that my suspicions are justified. I'm just tired that I have invested so much effort into the game, just to be beaten down by lazy losers who happen to have money to buy the right cheats. I'm therefore giving up on matchmaking in SEA - it's pointless. There's no point playing people who have advantages against you and are able to time swings and outplay you just by looking at their screen. This is not how CSGO is supposed to be. You are supposed to outsmart, outplay and outaim your human opponent, and that is what I want to get better at. I'm not here to learn to outsmart someone who can see me through walls; outaim someone with some aim assistance nor outplay someone using radar hacks. I'll give MM a try again if I end up studying in Europe/America.
Perhaps I'm not making sense, or perhaps you strongly disagree and would like to put me in my place, or perhaps you think all this is cap. Whatever it is, feel free to drop your opinions, questions and thoughts about this matter.
TLDR matchmaking in SEA is unplayable. Matchmaking here is more detrimental to my growth as a player than it is beneficial. And this applies to every SEA player out there. Feel free to speak your opinion and thoughts.