Best Casino Sites in the UK | 100+ Online Casinos to

best casino website uk

best casino website uk - win

/r/Perth Coronavirus Megathread - 31/01 - 07/02

WA Government - Lockdown Information
WA Government Infographic - Summary
WA Health - Locations visited by confirmed cases
HealthyWA - COVID Clinic Locations / Operating Hours
Lockdown Rules Summary (ABC News)
ABC COVID Live Blog - Sunday 31/01
Premier's Annoucement:
--- IMPORTANT UPDATE REGARDING COMMUNITY CASE OF COVID-19 IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA, AND PERTH, PEEL AND SOUTH-WEST FIVE-DAY LOCKDOWN ---
This morning, I convened an urgent meeting of the Emergency Management Team.
We have a serious update to provide the WA community.
This morning we received news of a positive COVID-19 test result.
That positive result has come from a male hotel quarantine security guard, in his 20s.
The information we have is fast-evolving. As you can understand, immediately our teams moved into place to begin contact tracing and put in place emergency response systems.
This is all underway, and I ask everyone to be cooperative and understanding of what is going to take place.
Here is what we know about the male who tested positive:
He was working at one of the State’s hotel quarantine facilities – the Sheraton Four Points in the city. He had tested negative for COVID-19 on January Friday 15, January Sunday 17 and Saturday January 23 – as part of the weekly testing system in place. When the man was working at this hotel, there were four active cases of COVID-19. Of those four cases, we have at least three confirmed variant strains, two UK and one South African. We are told the guard was working on the same floor, as a positive UK variant case. The guard completed two 12-hours shifts on both the 26th and 27th of January. Exactly how the infection was acquired remains under investigation.
The Health Department contact tracing team has pulled together a list of potential exposure sites of where this positive case has been in recent days. These locations currently include:
People who have been to these venues on these dates and times must get tested.
In addition, people who live or work in the Falkirk Avenue, Maylands area including Coles, Liquorland and the Maylands shopping precinct should present for a test. They must then go home and isolate until their negative test results are returned.
The investigation is on-going by our public health team, and it is likely more locations will be added following further discussions with the man.
Close contacts will be contacted by public health officials and asked to quarantine for 14 days.
More information on testing clinics will be available on our website – the WA Health and WA Gov websites.
The man’s immediate household contacts have been contacted, tested and placed in isolation at State managed quarantine facilities to complete a 14-day quarantine period in a quarantine facility.
All three have tested negative this morning. However, we can expect that they will become positive in coming days.
Genome sequencing is underway on the positive case and results will be known by Tuesday morning.
However, based on the information we have, it appears possible that this new positive case has the highly transmissible UK variant.
The past year has been unlike any other – Western Australia has done an incredible job. It’s something I am so proud of.
But as we have always known with COVID – it can change very quickly.
Today – we need to go back to what we know best, to ensure we limit community transmission of COVID-19 in our State.
Even though it was nearly 10 months ago – WA has experienced community transmission of this virus before.
We all did the right thing and we crushed it.
And it worked.
So beginning at 6pm tonight, the whole Perth metropolitan area, the Peel region and the South West region will be going into a full lockdown.
This lockdown will run until 6pm on Friday.
A five-day lockdown.
It’s crucial we act quickly, to keep the community safe.
We cannot forget how quickly this virus can spread, nor the devastation it can cause.
Following our discussions with the Chief Health Officer and Police Commissioner, the following measures will be put in place from 6pm for people in Perth, Peel and the South West:
People in these regions are required to stay home, except for the following four reasons:
In addition to this Stay Home rule.
If you do leave home, for one of the four reasons you will be required to wear a mask at all times outside and if you need to work indoors, then wearing a mask in the workplace is also mandatory.
To be clear, mask wearing on public transport is also mandatory.
People in the Perth, Peel or South West region need to stay inside their region for the next five days, unless for an essential reason.
We are strongly encouraging that everyone in this area, who is from another WA region, stay here and do not travel further outside of this area until the lockdown is over.
If you do need to travel outside the region you are in now, that can only occur if you need to return to your place of residence or exceptional circumstances.
The transport of essential goods into this region, is permitted, under our existing transport guidelines.
This lockdown means the following businesses, venues and locations in the relevant regions need to close for the next five days:
Restaurants and cafes will close, and provide takeaway service only.
10 people can attend funerals, weddings are cancelled for the next five days.
No visitors are permitted to your home, unless caring for someone vulnerable or an emergency.
No visitors will be allowed in aged care homes, unless exceptional circumstances.
No visitors to hospitals and/or disability facilities, unless exceptional circumstances.
Elective surgery and procedures for categories 2 and 3 will be suspended from Tuesday, 2 February. Category 1 and urgent category 2 surgery will continue.
For a majority of schools in these regions, school was due to start tomorrow.
That has now been put on hold and schools will be closed until next week – following the lockdown measures.
It is, in effect, an extension of the school holidays.
I have been in contact with the Prime Minister and my fellow State and Territory colleagues to advise them of this situation.
I have recommended that they put a stop to any travel into WA – as an extra precautionary measure.
Border controls are important here – and I 100% support them to ensure we can get through this.
All these measures will be reviewed regularly and the Chief Health Officer will continue to monitor the serious situation and provide more ongoing advice. This is an extremely fast-moving situation.
I know for many Western Australians this is going to come as a shock.
Western Australians have done so well for so long but this week it is absolutely crucial that we stay home, maintain physical distancing and personal hygiene and get tested if you have symptoms.
This is a very serious situation and each and every one of us has to do everything we personally can to help stop the spread in the community.
We have acted decisively and swiftly given these circumstances.
I want to thank everyone in advance for their patience.
In effect, for a short period of time, we are going back to what we experienced in March and April.
This is a highly unpredictable virus. But it is important to act calmly and take sensible precautions.
Leaving your home to purchase food and essentials will be permitted during the lockdown.
I say this, so people understand that you do not need to rush to the supermarket today.
Take care of your loved ones and be respectful of others including those who are working, to keep essential services and supplies ticking over.
Our State is well equipped to handle this situation.
We have systems in place throughout the health system that are swinging into action as we speak.
We have the capacity to manage this situation.
Throughout the pandemic, the response of Western Australians has been second-to-none.
The community has done everything we have asked of them.
They have made great sacrifices, and it has kept our State safe.
I could not be more proud and thankful of the way Western Australians have carried themselves.
Now we’re asking for your help once again.
We will provide further updates as they come to hand.
All relevant information will be posted on websites as it comes to hand.
Thank you WA.
submitted by squeeowl to perth [link] [comments]

Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis

NEW INFO 5 Results from share redemption are posted. Less than .2% redeemed. Very bullish as investors are showing extreme confidence in the future of PLBY.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/playboy-mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-120000721.html
NEW INFO 4 Definitive Agreement to purchase 100% of Lovers brand stores announced 2/1.
https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Playboy+%28MCAC%29+Confirms+Deal+to+Acquire+Lovers/17892359.html
NEW INFO 3 I bought more on the dip today. 5081 total. Price rose AH to $12.38 (2.15%)
NEW INFO 2 Here is the full webinar.
https://icrinc.zoom.us/rec/play/9GWKdmOYumjWfZuufW3QXpe_FW_g--qeNbg6PnTjTMbnNTgLmCbWjeRFpQga1iPc-elpGap8dnDv8Zww.yD7DjUwuPmapeEdP?continueMode=true&tk=lEYc4F_FkKlgsmCIs6w0gtGHT2kbgVGbUju3cIRBSjk.DQIAAAAV8NK49xZWdldRM2xNSFNQcTBmcE00UzM3bXh3AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA&uuid=WN_GKWqbHkeSyuWetJmLFkj4g&_x_zm_rtaid=kR45-uuqRE-L65AxLjpbQw.1611967079119.2c054e3d3f8d8e63339273d9175939ed&_x_zm_rhtaid=866
NEW INFO 1 Live merger webinar with PLBY and MCAC on Friday January 29, 2021 at 12:00 NOON EST link below
https://mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/press-release-details/2021/Playboy-Enterprises-Inc.-and-Mountain-Crest-Acquisition-Corp-Participate-in-SPACInsider-ICR-Webinar-on-January-29th-at-12pm-ET/default.aspx
Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis
!!!WARNING READING AHEAD!!! TL;DR at the end. It will take some time to sort through all the links and read/watch everything, but you should.
In the next couple weeks, Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp is taking Playboy public. The existing ticker MCAC will become PLBY. Special purpose acquisition companies have taken private companies public in recent months with great success. I believe this will be no exception. Notably, Playboy is profitable and has skyrocketing revenue going into a transformational growth phase.
Porn - First and foremost, let's talk about porn. I know what you guys are thinking. “Porno mags are dead. Why would I want to invest in something like that? I can get porn for free online.” Guess what? You are absolutely right. And that’s exactly why Playboy doesn’t do that anymore. That’s right, they eliminated their print division. And yet they somehow STILL make money from porn that people (see: boomers) pay for on their website through PlayboyTV, Playboy Plus, and iPlayboy. Here’s the thing: Playboy has international, multi-generational name recognition from porn. They have content available in 180 countries. It will be the only publicly traded adult entertainment (porn) company. But that is not where this company is going. It will help support them along the way. You can see every Playboy magazine through iPlayboy if you’re interested. NSFW links below:
https://www.playboy.com/
https://www.playboytv.com/
https://www.playboyplus.com/
https://www.iplayboy.com/
Gambling - Some of you might recognize the Playboy brand from gambling trips to places like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Cancun, London or Macau. They’ve been in the gambling biz for decades through their casinos, clubs, and licensed gaming products. They see the writing on the wall. COVID is accelerating the transition to digital, application based GAMBLING. That’s right. What we are doing on Robinhood with risky options is gambling, and the only reason regulators might give a shit anymore is because we are making too much money. There may be some restrictions put in place, but gambling from your phone on your couch is not going anywhere. More and more states are allowing things like Draftkings, poker, state ‘lottery” apps, hell - even political betting. Michigan and Virginia just ok’d gambling apps. They won’t be the last. This is all from your couch and any 18 year old with a cracked iphone can access it. Wouldn’t it be cool if Playboy was going to do something like that? They’re already working on it. As per CEO Ben Kohn who we will get to later, “...the company’s casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth.” Honestly, I stopped researching Scientific Games' sports betting segment when I saw the word ‘omni-channel’. That told me all I needed to know about it’s success.
“Our SG Sports™ platform is an enhanced, omni-channel solution for online, self-service and retail fixed odds sports betting – from soccer to tennis, basketball, football, baseball, hockey, motor sports, racing and more.”
https://www.scientificgames.com/
https://www.microgaming.co.uk/
“This latter segment has become increasingly enticing for Playboy, and it said last week that it is considering new tie-ups that could include gaming operators like PointsBet and 888Holdings.”
https://calvinayre.com/2020/10/05/business/playboys-gaming-ops-could-get-a-boost-from-spac-purchase/
As per their SEC filing:
“Significant consumer engagement and spend with Playboy-branded gaming properties around the world, including with leading partners such as Microgaming, Scientific Games, and Caesar’s Entertainment, steers our investment in digital gaming, sports betting and other digital offerings to further support our commercial strategy to expand consumer spend with minimal marginal cost, and gain consumer data to inform go-to-market plans across categories.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tMDAA1
They are expanding into more areas of gaming/gambling, working with international players in the digital gaming/gambling arena, and a Playboy sportsbook is on the horizon.
https://www.playboy.com/read/the-pleasure-of-playing-with-yourself-mobile-gaming-in-the-covid-era
Cannabis - If you’ve ever read through a Playboy magazine, you know they’ve had a positive relationship with cannabis for many years. As of September 2020, Playboy has made a major shift into the cannabis space. Too good to be true you say? Check their website. Playboy currently sells a range of CBD products. This is a good sign. Federal hemp products, which these most likely are, can be mailed across state lines and most importantly for a company like Playboy, can operate through a traditional banking institution. CBD products are usually the first step towards the cannabis space for large companies. Playboy didn’t make these products themselves meaning they are working with a processor in the cannabis industry. Another good sign for future expansion. What else do they have for sale? Pipes, grinders, ashtrays, rolling trays, joint holders. Hmm. Ok. So it looks like they want to sell some shit. They probably don’t have an active interest in cannabis right? Think again:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/09/24/playboy-gets-serious-about-cannabis-law-reform-advocacy-with-new-partnership-grants/?sh=62f044a65cea
“Taking yet another step into the cannabis space, Playboy will be announcing later on Thursday (September, 2020) that it is launching a cannabis law reform and advocacy campaign in partnership with National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Last Prisoner Project, Marijuana Policy Project, the Veterans Cannabis Project, and the Eaze Momentum Program.”
“According to information procured exclusively, the three-pronged campaign will focus on calling for federal legalization. The program also includes the creation of a mentorship plan, through which the Playboy Foundation will support entrepreneurs from groups that are underrepresented in the industry.” Remember that CEO Kohn from earlier? He wrote this recently:
https://medium.com/naked-open-letters-from-playboy/congress-must-pass-the-more-act-c867c35239ae
Seems like he really wants weed to be legal? Hmm wonder why? The writing's on the wall my friends. Playboy wants into the cannabis industry, they are making steps towards this end, and we have favorable conditions for legislative progress.
Don’t think branding your own cannabis line is profitable or worthwhile? Tell me why these 41 celebrity millionaires and billionaires are dummies. I’ll wait.
https://www.celebstoner.com/news/celebstoner-news/2019/07/12/top-celebrity-cannabis-brands/
Confirmation: I hear you. “This all seems pretty speculative. It would be wildly profitable if they pull this shift off. But how do we really know?” Watch this whole video:
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/playboy-ceo-telling-story-female-154907068.html
Man - this interview just gets my juices flowing. And highlights one of my favorite reasons for this play. They have so many different business avenues from which a catalyst could appear. I think paying attention, holding shares, and options on these staggered announcements over the next year is the way I am going to go about it. "There's definitely been a shift to direct-to-consumer," he (Kohn) said. "About 50 percent of our revenue today is direct-to-consumer, and that will continue to grow going forward.” “Kohn touted Playboy's portfolio of both digital and consumer products, with casino-style gaming, in particular, serving a crucial role under the company's new business model. Playboy also has its sights on the emerging cannabis market, from CBD products to marijuana products geared toward sexual health and pleasure.” "If THC does become legal in the United States, we have developed certain strains to enhance your sex life that we will launch," Kohn said. https://cheddar.com/media/playboy-goes-public-health-gaming-lifestyle-focus Oh? The CEO actually said it? Ok then. “We have developed certain strains…” They’re already working with growers on strains and genetics? Ok. There are several legal cannabis markets for those products right now, international and stateside. I expect Playboy licensed hemp and THC pre-rolls by EOY. Something like this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/842996758/10-playboy-pre-roll-tubes-limited?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=pre+roll+playboy&ref=sr_gallery-1-2&organic_search_click=1 Maintaining cannabis operations can be costly and a regulatory headache. Playboy’s licensing strategy allows them to pick successful, established partners and sidestep traditional barriers to entry. You know what I like about these new markets? They’re expanding. Worldwide. And they are going to be a bigger deal than they already are with or without Playboy. Who thinks weed and gambling are going away? Too many people like that stuff. These are easy markets. And Playboy is early enough to carve out their spot in each. Fuck it, read this too: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimosman/2020/10/20/playboy-could-be-the-king-of-spacs-here-are-three-picks/?sh=2e13dcaa3e05
Numbers: You want numbers? I got numbers. As per the company’s most recent SEC filing:
“For the year ended December 31, 2019, and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s historical consolidated revenue was $78.1 million and $101.3 million, respectively, historical consolidated net income (loss) was $(23.6) million and $(4.8) million, respectively, and Adjusted EBITDA was $13.1 million and $21.8 million, respectively.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Licensing segment contributed $44.2 million in revenue and $31.1 million in net income.”
“In the ninth months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Direct-to-Consumer segment contributed $40.2 million in revenue and net income of $0.1 million.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Digital Subscriptions and Content segment contributed $15.4 million in revenue and net income of $7.4 million.”
They are profitable across all three of their current business segments.
“Playboy’s return to the public markets presents a transformed, streamlined and high-growth business. The Company has over $400 million in cash flows contracted through 2029, sexual wellness products available for sale online and in over 10,000 major retail stores in the US, and a growing variety of clothing and branded lifestyle and digital gaming products.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
Growth: Playboy has massive growth in China and massive growth potential in India. “In China, where Playboy has spent more than 25 years building its business, our licensees have an enormous footprint of nearly 2,500 brick and mortar stores and 1,000 ecommerce stores selling high quality, Playboy-branded men’s casual wear, shoes/footwear, sleepwear, swimwear, formal suits, leather & non-leather goods, sweaters, active wear, and accessories. We have achieved significant growth in China licensing revenues over the past several years in partnership with strong licensees and high-quality manufacturers, and we are planning for increased growth through updates to our men’s fashion lines and expansion into adjacent categories in men’s skincare and grooming, sexual wellness, and women’s fashion, a category where recent launches have been well received.” The men’s market in China is about the same size as the entire population of the United States and European Union combined. Playboy is a leading brand in this market. They are expanding into the women’s market too. Did you know CBD toothpaste is huge in China? China loves CBD products and has hemp fields that dwarf those in the US. If Playboy expands their CBD line China it will be huge. Did you know the gambling money in Macau absolutely puts Las Vegas to shame? Technically, it's illegal on the mainland, but in reality, there is a lot of gambling going on in China. https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/10/19/magic-johnson-and-uncle-buds-cbd-brand-enter-china-via-tmall-partnership/?sh=271776ca411e “In India, Playboy today has a presence through select apparel licensees and hospitality establishments. Consumer research suggests significant growth opportunities in the territory with Playboy’s brand and categories of focus.” “Playboy Enterprises has announced the expansion of its global consumer products business into India as part of a partnership with Jay Jay Iconic Brands, a leading fashion and lifestyle Company in India.” “The Indian market today is dominated by consumers under the age of 35, who represent more than 65 percent of the country’s total population and are driving India’s significant online shopping growth. The Playboy brand’s core values of playfulness and exploration resonate strongly with the expressed desires of today’s younger millennial consumers. For us, Playboy was the perfect fit.” “The Playboy international portfolio has been flourishing for more than 25 years in several South Asian markets such as China and Japan. In particular, it has strategically targeted the millennial and gen-Z audiences across categories such as apparel, footwear, home textiles, eyewear and watches.” https://www.licenseglobal.com/industry-news/playboy-expands-global-footprint-india It looks like they gave COVID the heisman in terms of net damage sustained: “Although Playboy has not suffered any material adverse consequences to date from the COVID-19 pandemic, the business has been impacted both negatively and positively. The remote working and stay-at-home orders resulted in the closure of the London Playboy Club and retail stores of Playboy’s licensees, decreasing licensing revenues in the second quarter, as well as causing supply chain disruption and less efficient product development thereby slowing the launch of new products. However, these negative impacts were offset by an increase in Yandy’s direct-to-consumer sales, which have benefited in part from overall increases in online retail sales so far during the pandemic.” Looks like the positives are long term (Yandy acquisition) and the negatives are temporary (stay-at-home orders).
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921006093/tm213766-1_defa14a.htm
This speaks to their ability to maintain a financially solvent company throughout the transition phase to the aforementioned areas. They’d say some fancy shit like “expanded business model to encompass four key revenue streams: Sexual Wellness, Style & Apparel, Gaming & Lifestyle, and Beauty & Grooming.” I hear “we’re just biding our time with these trinkets until those dollar dollar bill y’all markets are fully up and running.” But the truth is these existing revenue streams are profitable, scalable, and rapidly expanding Playboy’s e-commerce segment around the world.
"Even in the face of COVID this year, we've been able to grow EBITDA over 100 percent and revenue over 68 percent, and I expect that to accelerate going into 2021," he said. “Playboy is accelerating its growth in company-owned and branded consumer products in attractive and expanding markets in which it has a proven history of brand affinity and consumer spend.”
Also in the SEC filing, the Time Frame:
“As we detailed in the definitive proxy statement, the SPAC stockholder meeting to vote on the transaction has been set for February 9th, and, subject to stockholder approval and satisfaction of the other closing conditions, we expect to complete the merger and begin trading on NASDAQ under ticker PLBY shortly thereafter,” concluded Kohn.
The Players: Suhail “The Whale” Rizvi (HMFIC), Ben “The Bridge” Kohn (CEO), “lil” Suying Liu & “Big” Dong Liu (Young-gun China gang). I encourage you to look these folks up. The real OG here is Suhail Rizvi. He’s from India originally and Chairman of the Board for the new PLBY company. He was an early investor in Twitter, Square, Facebook and others. His firm, Rizvi Traverse, currently invests in Instacart, Pinterest, Snapchat, Playboy, and SpaceX. Maybe you’ve heard of them. “Rizvi, who owns a sprawling three-home compound in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a 1.65-acre estate in Palm Beach, Florida, near Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, moved to Iowa Falls when he was five. His father was a professor of psychology at Iowa. Along with his older brother Ashraf, a hedge fund manager, Rizvi graduated from Wharton business school.” “Suhail Rizvi: the 47-year-old 'unsocial' social media baron: When Twitter goes public in the coming weeks (2013), one of the biggest winners will be a 47-year-old financier who guards his secrecy so zealously that he employs a person to take down his Wikipedia entry and scrub his photos from the internet. In IPO, Twitter seeks to be 'anti-FB'” “Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia looks like a big Twitter winner. So do the moneyed clients of Jamie Dimon. But as you’ve-got-to-be-joking wealth washed over Twitter on Thursday — a company that didn’t exist eight years ago was worth $31.7 billion after its first day on the stock market — the non-boldface name of the moment is Suhail R. Rizvi. Mr. Rizvi, 47, runs a private investment company that is the largest outside investor in Twitter with a 15.6 percent stake worth $3.8 billion at the end of trading on Thursday (November, 2013). Using a web of connections in the tech industry and in finance, as well as a hearty dose of good timing, he brought many prominent names in at the ground floor, including the Saudi prince and some of JPMorgan’s wealthiest clients.” https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/technology/at-twitter-working-behind-the-scenes-toward-a-billion-dollar-payday.html Y’all like that Arab money? How about a dude that can call up Saudi Princes and convince them to spend? Funniest shit about I read about him: “Rizvi was able to buy only $100 million in Facebook shortly before its IPO, thus limiting his returns, according to people with knowledge of the matter.” Poor guy :(
He should be fine with the 16 million PLBY shares he's going to have though :)
Shuhail also has experience in the entertainment industry. He’s invested in companies like SESAC, ICM, and Summit Entertainment. He’s got Hollywood connections to blast this stuff post-merger. And he’s at least partially responsible for that whole Twilight thing. I’m team Edward btw.
I really like what Suhail has done so far. He’s lurked in the shadows while Kohn is consolidating the company, trimming the fat, making Playboy profitable, and aiming the ship at modern growing markets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-ipo-rizvi-insight/insight-little-known-hollywood-investor-poised-to-score-with-twitter-ipo-idUSBRE9920VW20131003
Ben “The Bridge” Kohn is an interesting guy. He’s the connection between Rizvi Traverse and Playboy. He’s both CEO of Playboy and was previously Managing Partner at Rizvi Traverse. Ben seems to be the voice of the Playboy-Rizvi partnership, which makes sense with Suhail’s privacy concerns. Kohn said this:
“Today is a very big day for all of us at Playboy and for all our partners globally. I stepped into the CEO role at Playboy in 2017 because I saw the biggest opportunity of my career. Playboy is a brand and platform that could not be replicated today. It has massive global reach, with more than $3B of global consumer spend and products sold in over 180 countries. Our mission – to create a culture where all people can pursue pleasure – is rooted in our 67-year history and creates a clear focus for our business and role we play in people’s lives, providing them with the products, services and experiences that create a lifestyle of pleasure. We are taking this step into the public markets because the committed capital will enable us to accelerate our product development and go-to-market strategies and to more rapidly build our direct to consumer capabilities,” said Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy.
“Playboy today is a highly profitable commerce business with a total addressable market projected in the trillions of dollars,” Mr. Kohn continued, “We are actively selling into the Sexual Wellness consumer category, projected to be approximately $400 billion in size by 2024, where our recently launched intimacy products have rolled out to more than 10,000 stores at major US retailers in the United States. Combined with our owned & operated ecommerce Sexual Wellness initiatives, the category will contribute more than 40% of our revenue this year. In our Apparel and Beauty categories, our collaborations with high-end fashion brands including Missguided and PacSun are projected to achieve over $50M in retail sales across the US and UK this year, our leading men’s apparel lines in China expanded to nearly 2500 brick and mortar stores and almost 1000 digital stores, and our new men’s and women’s fragrance line recently launched in Europe. In Gaming, our casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth. Our product strategy is informed by years of consumer data as we actively expand from a purely licensing model into owning and operating key high-growth product lines focused on driving profitability and consumer lifetime value. We are thrilled about the future of Playboy. Our foundation has been set to drive further growth and margin, and with the committed capital from this transaction and our more than $180M in NOLs, we will take advantage of the opportunity in front of us, building to our goal of $100M of adjusted EBITDA in 2025.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
Also, according to their Form 4s, “Big” Dong Liu and “lil” Suying Liu just loaded up with shares last week. These guys are brothers and seem like the Chinese market connection. They are only 32 & 35 years old. I don’t even know what that means, but it's provocative.
https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1832415.htm
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-ii-002600994.html
Y’all like that China money?
“Mr. Liu has been the Chief Financial Officer of Dongguan Zhishang Photoelectric Technology Co., Ltd., a regional designer, manufacturer and distributor of LED lights serving commercial customers throughout Southern China since November 2016, at which time he led a syndicate of investments into the firm. Mr. Liu has since overseen the financials of Dongguan Zhishang as well as provided strategic guidance to its board of directors, advising on operational efficiency and cash flow performance. From March 2010 to October 2016, Mr. Liu was the Head of Finance at Feidiao Electrical Group Co., Ltd., a leading Chinese manufacturer of electrical outlets headquartered in Shanghai and with businesses in the greater China region as well as Europe.”
Dr. Suying Liu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp., commented, “Playboy is a unique and compelling investment opportunity, with one of the world’s largest and most recognized brands, its proven consumer affinity and spend, and its enormous future growth potential in its four product segments and new and existing geographic regions. I am thrilled to be partnering with Ben and his exceptional team to bring his vision to fruition.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
These guys are good. They have a proven track record of success across multiple industries. Connections and money run deep with all of these guys. I don’t think they’re in the game to lose.
I was going to write a couple more paragraphs about why you should have a look at this but really the best thing you can do is read this SEC filing from a couple days ago. It explains the situation in far better detail. Specifically, look to page 137 and read through their strategy. Also, look at their ownership percentages and compensation plans including the stock options and their prices. The financials look great, revenue is up 90% Q3, and it looks like a bright future.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
I’m hesitant to attach this because his position seems short term, but I’m going to with a warning because he does hit on some good points (two are below his link) and he’s got a sizable position in this thing (500k+ on margin, I think). I don’t know this guy but he did look at the same publicly available info and make roughly the same prediction, albeit without the in depth gambling or cannabis mention. You can also search reddit for ‘MCAC’ and very few relevant results come up and none of them even come close to really looking at this thing.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gOvAd6lebs452hFlWWbxVjQ3VMsjGBkbJeXRwDwIJfM/edit?usp=sharing
“Also, before you people start making claims that Playboy is a “boomer” company, STOP RIGHT THERE. This is not a good argument. Simply put. The only thing that matters is Playboy’s name recognition, not their archaic business model which doesn’t even exist anymore as they have completely repurposed their business.”
“Imagine not buying $MCAC at a 400M valuation lol. Streetwear department is worth 1B alone imo.”
Considering the ridiculous Chinese growth as a lifestyle brand, he’s not wrong.
Current Cultural Significance and Meme Value: A year ago I wouldn’t have included this section but the events from the last several weeks (even going back to tsla) have proven that a company’s ability to meme and/or gain social network popularity can have an effect. Tik-tok, Snapchat, Twitch, Reddit, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter. They all have Playboy stuff on them. Kids in middle and highschool know what Playboy is but will likely never see or touch one of the magazines in person. They’ll have a Playboy hoodie though. Crazy huh? A lot like GME, PLBY would hugely benefit from meme-value stock interest to drive engagement towards their new business model while also building strategic coffers. This interest may not directly and/or significantly move the stock price but can generate significant interest from larger players who will.
Bull Case: The year is 2025. Playboy is now the world leader pleasure brand. They began by offering Playboy licensed gaming products, including gambling products, direct to consumers through existing names. By 2022, demand has skyrocketed and Playboy has designed and released their own gambling platforms. In 2025, they are also a leading cannabis brand in the United States and Canada with proprietary strains and products geared towards sexual wellness. Cannabis was legalized in the US in 2023 when President Biden got glaucoma but had success with cannabis treatment. He personally pushes for cannabis legalization as he steps out of office after his first term. Playboy has also grown their brand in China and India to multi-billion per year markets. The stock goes up from 11ish to 100ish and everyone makes big gains buying somewhere along the way.
Bear Case: The United States does a complete 180 on marijuana and gambling. President Biden overdoses on marijuana in the Lincoln bedroom when his FDs go tits up and he loses a ton of money in his sports book app after the Fighting Blue Hens narrowly lose the National Championship to Bama. Playboy is unable to expand their cannabis and gambling brands but still does well with their worldwide lifestyle brand. They gain and lose some interest in China and India but the markets are too large to ignore them completely. The stock goes up from 11ish to 13ish and everyone makes 15-20% gains.
TL;DR: Successful technology/e-commerce investment firm took over Playboy to turn it into a porn, online gambling/gaming, sports book, cannabis company, worldwide lifestyle brand that promotes sexual wellness, vetern access, women-ownership, minority-ownership, and “pleasure for all”. Does a successful online team reinventing an antiquated physical copy giant sound familiar? No options yet, shares only for now. $11.38 per share at time of writing. My guess? $20 by the end of February. $50 by EOY. This is not financial advice. I am not qualified to give financial advice. I’m just sayin’ I would personally use a Playboy sports book app while smoking a Playboy strain specific joint and it would be cool if they did that. Do your own research. You’d probably want to start here:
WARNING - POTENTIALLY NSFW - SEXY MODELS AHEAD - no actual nudity though
https://s26.q4cdn.com/895475556/files/doc_presentations/Playboy-Craig-Hallum-Conference-Investor-Presentation-11_17_20-compressed.pdf
Or here:
https://www.mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/default.aspx
Jimmy Chill: “Get into any SPAC at $10 or $11 and you are going to make money.”
STL;DR: Buy MCAC. MCAC > PLBY couple weeks. Rocketship. Moon.
Position: 5000 shares. I will buy short, medium, and long-dated calls once available.
submitted by jeromeBDpowell to SPACs [link] [comments]

Stokes's Bristol Nightclub incident in detail (From: The Comeback Summer by Geoff Lemon)

IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early.
The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster.
In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly.
The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged.
Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms.
The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist.
The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale.
‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing.
It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment.
Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge.
That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted.
The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions.
Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge.
Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it.
Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales.
Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others.
This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse.
Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away.
These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk.
If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced.
If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober.
The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs.
The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them.
This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame.
Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier.
There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language.
What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand.
That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough.
If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses.
As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial.
The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt.
Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame.
This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’
So Stokes punches him.
It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road.
Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks.
Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him.
Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended.
Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop.
Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance.
‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’
The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’.
The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back.
After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed.
If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence.
Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued.
‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass.
A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’.
The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now.
Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa.
It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’.
The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.
submitted by wingzero00 to Cricket [link] [comments]

“The Canadian Epstein” — Disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygard's own SON is helping police investigate his alleged sex crimes

Disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygard's own SON is helping police investigate his alleged sex crimes By Guy Adams Investigates For The Daily Mail
15 Jan 2021
Link to article
'He has become my arch-nemesis. I no longer regard him as my father . . . He is a monster. I am now here to serve in any way I can, to support survivors and the justice process and also to help expose the people who covered up his crimes.'
Kai Bickle's world came tumbling down one night in May 2019, when he attended a dinner party at a lavishly decorated mansion overlooking the golden sands of Venice Beach in Los Angeles.
The host was his father, Peter Nygard, a Canadian fashion tycoon famed for the hedonistic lifestyle he pursued at a global portfolio of high-end properties, including vast residences in Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal, as well as New York, and, most notoriously, a Mayan-themed 'private luxury resort' in the Bahamas.
Modelling himself on Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, the flamboyant Nygard, now 79, kept a revolving harem of girlfriends. Those caught up (often completely unwittingly) in this web had included actresses Susan Anton and Jennifer O'Neill, stripper-turned-reality star Anna Nicole Smith, and a former Wheel Of Fortune card turner by the name of Vanna White.
His Caribbean parties, meanwhile, tended to attract a better class of A-lister. Past visitors to the island property had ranged from Jane Seymour and Bo Derek to Robert De Niro, , Michael Jackson and Joan Collins, not to mention and , who were photographed there in the early 2000s on an innocuous family holiday.
The 2019 bash, during one of Peter's occasional business trips to LA, was to be a more down-to-earth affair. Roughly 20 guests, including Kai, 38, and his younger brother Jessar (one of roughly ten offspring Nygard has fathered via more than seven women) had been invited for food and drinks, followed by a late-night poker game.
That was the plan, at least. But Kai never made it to the card- table. Instead, he fled the lavish premises in a state of distress, shortly after dinner, believing that he had just witnessed his father attempting to sexually assault an eight-year-old girl.
Details of this ugly development are (it should be stressed) strongly disputed, and we shall examine them later. But the incident would kick-start an extraordinary chain of events that culminated just before Christmas, with the arrest of Peter Nygard on nine charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.
Currently behind bars, with his $900 million (£660 million) business empire in tatters and the FBI poring over his computer hard-drives, the fallen tycoon has now been accused of rape or sexual assault by at least 57 women. Several of Nygard's accusers were children when the alleged crimes took place, and many claim they were drugged.
At least 57 women have accused him.
He will appear in court in Canada next week, seeking bail as he fights extradition to the USA.
It is, perhaps, the most high-profile and shocking sex case since handcuffs were slapped on Jeffrey Epstein. And in a remarkable twist, it turns out that a leading figure in the increasingly public campaign to prosecute Mr Nygard is his aforementioned son, Kai.
Upcoming documentary: ‘Unseamly’ Canadian Designer Peter Nygård True Crime Documentary
Behind the scenes, I can reveal that Kai has spent the past 18 months secretly helping both the U.S. and Canadian authorities investigate his own father's alleged crimes. Keeping his role hidden from Nygard and his associates for several months, he has worked tirelessly to assist victims, and their legal teams.
On the personal front, he has changed his name (taking up his mother's surname to become Kai Zen Bickle) and used his influence over various Nygard companies to block efforts to move his assets offshore, fearing that would allow him to flee. 'We have been engaged in a brutal battle against my father and his enablers,' is how Kai summed things up when we spoke this week.
'He has become my arch-nemesis. I no longer regard him as my father . . . He is a monster. I am now here to serve in any way I can, to support survivors and the justice process and also to help expose the people who covered up his crimes.'
Perhaps most remarkably of all, Kai recently helped two of his younger siblings, one of whom remains a minor, to sue Peter Nygard over claims he 'engineered' the rape of his own sons. In an extraordinary lawsuit filed in August, the boys claimed that their leathery, multi-millionaire father instructed one of his long-standing girlfriends (who was also a sex worker) to 'make a man' out of them.
The first of these alleged attacks (which, again, are vehemently denied by Nygard) took place in the Bahamas 2004, when the son was 15 and the woman was in her mid-20s. The second occurred in Winnipeg in 2018, when the younger child was 14 and the woman was in her 40s. Court papers filed by the boys stated that the unnamed girlfriend was instructed to seduce Nygard's son by showering in his bathroom so that he 'could see her naked'. Then she raped him.
Afterwards, she allegedly told the boy he 'wasn't bad' for a 'baby.' The next morning, Nygard's girlfriend brought him breakfast in bed, kissing him on the lips and announcing: 'Mommy's got you.' Kai says he first became aware of this appalling incident last spring, and was 'sickened' to hear his brothers' claims.
He would often yell and scream at his staff.
'We all spoke and decided the best course of action was to file a lawsuit publicly in the hope that other survivors would feel safe to come forward and also file criminally against Nygard,' he says. 'We were originally going to have me in the suit as my young brother's guardian, but in the end decided not to because it would reveal to Nygard that I was working against him . . . At the time I was [secretly] doing everything I could to improve the odds that he would get arrested.'
To appreciate the extraordinary journey taken by Kai, we must wind the clock back to the mid-1980s, when his father was one of Canada's most talked-about self-made millionaires.
The son of penniless immigrants from Finland, Peter Nygard had launched his empire in the late 1960s, with an $8,000 (£6,000) investment in a struggling fashion firm. By the time he was 30, the company had become one of North America's most successful suppliers of leisure and sportswear, while his flamboyant eccentricities, which included keeping parrots in his office and filling the lobby of Nygard HQ with bronze busts of himself, turned him into an object of public fascination.
In 1987, the party-loving entrepreneur purchased a 4.5-acre patch of the island of New Providence in the Bahamas and set about turning it into a 'dream home' where he could indulge his champagne lifestyle. Over the ensuing years, he built 150,000 sq ft of Mayan-themed buildings, stretching over a dozen 'cabana-style' residences. The buildings at Nygard Cay eventually included a casino, a disco hut (with cameras beneath the dance floor, reportedly to shoot images of revellers from below), and the world's largest sauna, a 6,000 sq ft lodge made from 2ft-thick Canadian pine logs.
In the grounds were fake volcanoes that belched dry ice, a flock of peacocks, stone cobras which hissed steam at sunset, 60 ft towers festooned with hundreds of flaming torches (lit nightly by staff) and giant statues of nude women, purportedly modelled on some of Nygard's favourite girlfriends.
At weekends, he would host lavish parties, which appeared on various TV documentaries, including Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous.
The place became a magnet for freeloading celebrities and, while Kai believes they generally had the most fleeting and brief relationship with Nygard, photos of their visits were then plastered across company literature and websites.
Prince Andrew, to cite one example, was recorded for posterity wandering with the long-haired fashion magnate on the beach, wearing blue shorts and boat shoes.
Born in the 1980s, Kai spent the first three years of his life in the Bahamas until his mother, Patricia, left Nygard, with whom she'd had three children but never married.
They moved first to California and then to the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. Over subsequent years, he had almost no regular contact with the fashion tycoon aside from occasional visits during school holidays, where he met various half-siblings.
'He would have one family weekend per year at his lake cottage, and a few days set aside for Christmas,' says Kai of the somewhat unorthodox arrangement. 'During those times, the days were filled with activities like horseback riding or mini golf.
'He could be a very charismatic person when he wanted to be and the family weekends were very light and brief.'
In the very limited time he spent with his father during childhood, Kai saw nothing that gave him reason to suspect that Peter Nygard was guilty of criminality, though he did have a highly volatile personality.
'He would yell and scream at his staff often, and that always was upsetting to everyone around it, but he would describe his yelling as 'passion' because of his 'high standards',' Kai says.
Nygard's children were further told that he 'lived a consensual, non-monogamous lifestyle,' Kai says. 'He made speeches at dinner to family when we were together to talk about how he hoped everyone got a wonderful partner and wished that he could find that special someone, but that it wasn't the life for him.
'He also had girlfriends that were persistently with him, always two or three, and often they were around for years. He wasn't embarrassed about it. He flaunted it on TV, it was part of his brand, something he showed the whole world. He was proud of it.'
Be that as it may, rumours of predatory behaviour by Nygard —and worse — had occasionally reared their ugly head, only to be quickly suppressed: a relatively easy task before the internet.
In 1980, for example, he was charged with the rape of an 18-year-old, but the charge was dropped when the complainant refused to testify. In 1996, three female employees meanwhile filed sexual harassment complaints in the Canadian province of Manitoba.
It looked like his hand was on her thigh, rubbing.
One, a 39-year-old communications manager, said that, when called into Nygard's office, she would 'find him in a state of undress . . . with his hands down the front of his pants, fondling himself.' He settled by giving the women $18,500 (£13,600) and denied any wrongdoing.
Then, in 2010, a Canadian TV network put out a Panorama-style documentary about Nygard, focusing on alleged sex abuse and harassment of former employees.
It quoted a former stewardess on his private plane who alleged that on one journey — during which Nygard was accompanied by a troupe of topless women — he lost his temper with staff, shouting: 'You are nothing! You are garbage! I am God!'
The programme also alleged that Nygard had engaged in 'inappropriate sexual contact' with a young woman who had been brought to his home in 2003 from the Dominican Republic. Nygard denied that either incident had happened, and sued to stop the documentary being broadcast.
Fast forward to May 2019, however, and those ugly incidents were largely forgotten. Kai, who was by then in his late 30s, had worked for his father's companies for just over two years after leaving college, but quit to pursue a career in activism and health science.
Nygard's trip to Los Angeles afforded them a rare opportunity to catch up, so he attended the aforementioned dinner party in Venice Beach.
As the night wore on, he recalls becoming uncomfortable about his father's behaviour towards an eight-year-old girl, who was attending with her mother, one of Nygard's old girlfriends.
'He's got her sitting right next to him at dinner, which is usually his girlfriend chair. And he's a creature of routine. So I'm already thinking this is weird.
'He's trying to act like the Papa. It was just weird . . . I'm noticing things. I'm noticing that he's telling her little secrets at dinner. Putting his hand close to her ear and going all hush-hush.' At the end of dinner, most of the other 20-odd guests got up to adjourn to the card table. However, Kai adds: 'I'm still watching him. Her chair gets pushed back. He brings her round to him.
'She was on his right side. He brings her to his left side, with his arm around her waist, and I see his elbow change and start moving as if — it looked to me, I couldn't see, but it looked like his hand was on her upper thigh, and rubbing. That's what it looked like to me . . . Everything in my body told me he was doing something terrible.'
'I had a huge adrenaline rush and I immediately told the mother to get her daughter away from him,' he adds. 'I stood up next to him and looked in his eyes. At that moment, for me, it was like all the walls were crashing down around him . . . And I realised that, yeah, he's probably trying to groom that girl.'
Nygard vigorously denied wrongdoing, and even called Kai 'sick' for thinking as much. But Kai was unconvinced.
Then, in February last year, ten women filed a bombshell lawsuit in New York claiming that the fashion magnate had used wealth and status to 'entice underage girls' from 'young, impressionable and often impoverished backgrounds' into his home, where they would be 'plied with alcohol' and (some allege) date-rape drugs, before being taken to Nygard's private quarters, where he would 'assault, rape and sodomise' them. Court papers claimed they were then coerced into joining a globe-trotting harem of sex workers paid thousands of dollars from Nygard's company funds and trafficked around the world on his company's private jet, which reportedly boasts a stripper pole.
One alleged victim, who was just 14 at the time, claimed Nygard raped her and paid her $5,000 (£3,700).
Another said her encounter with Nygard began with him showing her pornography after which he raped her, 'causing her extraordinary trauma and pain', the suit states.
Three of his existing ten accusers were 14 at the time. Three more were 15.
Within days, dozens more alleged victims had come forward. By the summer, some 57 survivors were pursuing legal action — and the number of alleged victims had reached 100.
Kai again confronted his father, only to be told it was all 'lies' and asked to speak out publicly in his father's support. But days later a friend texted Kai to complain about a recent visit to Nygard's house in Los Angeles.
'He said he'd brought a female friend with him, who had one or two drinks and had started to feel very high. Nygard took her up to his room and aggressively had sex with her, not using a condom.
'When I heard that, I knew he was not only as bad as people said he was, but was a dangerous criminal and had to be stopped.' He duly alerted the authorities about the friend's message. In a podcast called Live To Walk Again, released this week, he revealed that he began helping both the police and the alleged victims' lawyers, who he regards as 'heroes'.
Over the summer, Kai also used official positions held in Nygard firms to block two apparent efforts to move assets overseas, amid concerns that the tycoon might flee to evade justice.
PODCAST EPISODE: Peter Nygard Discusses His Father
'Through the course of ten months I also helped several survivors to file criminally against him, and spent countless hours on the phone with survivors, lawyers and authorities,' he says. Last month Nygard was arrested on U.S. charges at a home in the Royalwood area of Winnipeg. He spent Christmas behind bars and has consistently denied any wrongdoing, saying he 'expects to be vindicated' in court.
Kai has renounced his inheritance and is working on 'making the world a better place' by campaigning to close legal loopholes exploited by sex offenders.
'I'm very happy earning my own money, as I have all my life. We've never had a trust fund or an allowance, and since his money has been made through pain and suffering, I won't accept a potential inheritance,' he says.
His father's cash, he says, should instead go towards compensating victims. 'My focus now is to help the healing process.'
submitted by ALiddleBiddle to Epstein [link] [comments]

Greater London in Coronavirus Tier 3 (Very high alert) from Weds 16th Dec 00:01

Due to a sharp rise in Coronavirus cases, Greater London (32 boroughs + the City of London) will move in to Tier 3 (Very high alert) on Wednesday Dec 16th at 00:01.
Most surrounding counties including all of Kent, most of Surrey, and parts of Beds, Bucks, and Essex are (or will be - as of Saturday) in Tier 3 as well.

The Usual Stuff

Stay 2m (6ft) away from people that you don't live with where practical, and at least 1m (3ft) away at all times. Do your very best to maintain hygiene, washing your hands and shared surfaces at every opportunity. And of course, you should only do what you're comfortable with.
If you have any symptoms of COVID-19, even mild, stay home for at least 10 days until you no-longer have a temperature. Get a test through the gov.uk testing website or calling 119. Others in your household must stay home for 14 days source.
Most coronavirus cases are mild, but if you're very ill, call 111, or in an emergency, call 999 - DO NOT go to a GP surgery, pharmacy or hospital with COVID-19. Continue to keep NHS appointments for other purposes unless your clinician tells you otherwise or the government changes the advice.

What are the restrictions?

Under Tier 3:
Single adult households can still form a (permanent) mutual support bubble with one other household.
There are various other exceptions for things like weddings (up to 15 people), funerals (30 people) and in a few other areas. You can read the full Tier 3 restrictions here.
You can leave your home to escape injury or harm.
If you break these rules you may be fined from £1000 or more, depending on the offence.

Making a Christmas Bubble

Between 23rd and 27th December the rules are being loosened so we can see close family and friends over the festive period. For these four days you can form an exclusive ‘Christmas bubble’ composed of people from no more than three households
Note that:

Can I visit London now?

Theoretically yes. Many of the typical tourist attractions will be closed during Tier 3 so make sure you check anything you want to do in advance and book the limited space available.
Many incoming foreign travellers from higher risk countries are subject to a mandatory two week quarantine. Check if your country is on the list.

Test to Release scheme

Starting on Dec 15th, you can reduce your time in isolation after arrival to 5 days (instead of 10 days) by paying for a coronavirus test.
This must be from a test provider participating in the government scheme and you have to opt in on your passenger locator form when you arrive in England from abroad. There are currently very few providers and the tests are quite expensive (£180) but this list will likely be expanded in the coming weeks. You will need to pre-book (there's considerable lead time).
The full guidance is here

Can I go somewhere else?

The government advises that you should not leave a Tier 3 area unless for work, education, or some other good reason, and if you normally live in a Tier 3 area you should not stay away from home overnight.

Face masks

Face coverings are compulsory on all forms of public transport and in all shops, takeaways, hospitals and care homes. This is a law and you can be fined if you do not comply. You don't need to buy a fancy respirator, instead think about buying or making your own from fabric, or use a scarf or bandana. As long as you wash them at a decent heat between uses this is much more environmentally friendly than disposable surgical masks.

The NHS App

The NHS COVID-19 app is now available. It uses Apple & Google's co-developed bluetooth protocol which does not transmit any of your personal details to anyone, including the government. It's been used as the basis for apps in privacy-conscious countries like Germany and Ireland, and is generally considered safe and secure.
The app is particularly effectively in dense urban areas, and NHS England's also includes features to help you check in to venues and get a test.
Download it!

Get help or give help

With the short days, the cold weather, and the lockdown restrictions, this is going to be a hard time for everyone.
This is not official advice - just our summary and might contain errors and omissions. Check gov.uk for the letter of the law. Please post any feedback or suggestions
submitted by ianjm to london [link] [comments]

🚀🚀 REAL LUCK GROUP - the next SCR.TO - $LUCK.V $LUCK 🚀🚀

Real Luck Group LTD CVE: LUCK TSX: LUCK.V
What does it do Real Luck Group Ltd (CVE:LUCK) is one of the first movers in the esports betting market and one of the few pure-play names. Its Luckbox operating business is a dedicated esports betting site currently accepting customers from about 80 territories globally. Luckbox was built from scratch by a team now led by chief executive Quentin Martin, a former top-ranking professional cardplayer and esports gamer in the UK and Canada. He and two ex-colleagues from Canada’s Pokerstars together co-founded Luckbox in 2018 and soft-launched a live product in spring 2019. The esports betting website and app are licensed by the Isle of Man, which from a player-protection perspective is one of the best gaming licences in the world.
Why esports betting? With Generation Z more likely to watch computer games than traditional sports, esports is becoming ever more mainstream and even before the coronavirus pandemic was predicted to be facing the highest growth potential of any sport. Luckbox has seen first-hand the spike in players moving from betting on sports to betting on esports in 2020 and has managed to lock up around 75% of its customer gains. Martin says esports betting, which uses the same licensing and infrastructure as the existing traditional sports betting industry, offers the potential for higher profits and has barriers to entry from the betting models.
What’s the latest In December, parent company Real Luck Group listed on the TSX Venture Exchange in Toronto. This followed a CA$6mln funding round from investors in the summer. Around the turn of the year, Luckbox has plans to add the option to bet on around 100 more traditional sports and other events, including football, baseball and tennis, as well as developing a casino offering in the following months. Looking ahead to 2021 at the time of the IPO, Martin said there remains “huge” potential for further organic growth through content marketing, affiliates, partnerships, influencers and direct media. There are also plans from a B2B perspective, bringing odds compilation in-house, with Martin saying a merger or acquisition would probably be the most effective way to achieve that.
article: https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/936987/real-luck-group-offers-chance-to-get-into-esports-betting-at-level-one-936987.html
submitted by ConnorPRose to Canadapennystocks [link] [comments]

🚀 Real Luck Group - $LUCK.V is a Canadian E-Sports Betting Giant Primed to Explode 🚀

Missed out on SCR.TO? RIDE $LUCK TO THE MOON! 🚀🚀🚀🚀
Real Luck Group LTD CVE: LUCK
What does it do Real Luck Group Ltd (CVE:LUCK) is one of the first movers in the esports betting market and one of the few pure-play names. Its Luckbox operating business is a dedicated esports betting site currently accepting customers from about 80 territories globally. Luckbox was built from scratch by a team now led by chief executive Quentin Martin, a former top-ranking professional cardplayer and esports gamer in the UK and Canada. He and two ex-colleagues from Canada’s Pokerstars together co-founded Luckbox in 2018 and soft-launched a live product in spring 2019. The esports betting website and app are licensed by the Isle of Man, which from a player-protection perspective is one of the best gaming licences in the world.
Why esports betting? With Generation Z more likely to watch computer games than traditional sports, esports is becoming ever more mainstream and even before the coronavirus pandemic was predicted to be facing the highest growth potential of any sport. Luckbox has seen first-hand the spike in players moving from betting on sports to betting on esports in 2020 and has managed to lock up around 75% of its customer gains. Martin says esports betting, which uses the same licensing and infrastructure as the existing traditional sports betting industry, offers the potential for higher profits and has barriers to entry from the betting models.
What’s the latest In December, parent company Real Luck Group listed on the TSX Venture Exchange in Toronto. This followed a CA$6mln funding round from investors in the summer. Around the turn of the year, Luckbox has plans to add the option to bet on around 100 more traditional sports and other events, including football, baseball and tennis, as well as developing a casino offering in the following months. Looking ahead to 2021 at the time of the IPO, Martin said there remains “huge” potential for further organic growth through content marketing, affiliates, partnerships, influencers and direct media. There are also plans from a B2B perspective, bringing odds compilation in-house, with Martin saying a merger or acquisition would probably be the most effective way to achieve that.
submitted by ConnorPRose to Baystreetbets [link] [comments]

Ultimate Casino Cashback Guide - Earn over £500 - Every Offer Explained!

This guide aims to outline all of the best gambling cashback offers available over a range of sites, following this guide you should be able to make over £500 in cashback
Note - Cashback often takes a while to payout, bear this in mind when completing offers as you may have to wait to cashout your earnings
When completing these offers don't chase any loses as the cashback will give you a profit with nerly every offer
A short review of each site and some referral links
Topcashback - Cashback will show as tracked within a few days, can take a few weeks to become payable, in some cases even longer, asides from gambling they have great offers for car insurance and mobile phone contracts, worth taking a look to save some extra money!
Ref - Extra £5 when you make £10 cashback
Non-Ref - No reward
Quidco - Much the same as Topcashback
Ref
Non-Ref
Minimum payment - £10
Ohmydosh - Faster Payouts but less offers
Ref - Extra £1
Non-Ref - No reward
Minimum payout - Any
Cashback Earners - A lesser known site in need of a fresh look, this site also has some bad reviews, referal income is paid to the site on a monthly basis with the dates for each site being different, offers don't seem to show as tracked until the website receive their payment, cashback should appear in your account within 1 month of completing an offer. Cashout amounts are specific, its best to build up a balance and then withdraw. Payment takes around 3 weeks.
Ref - Sign up bonus £6.5
Non-Ref - Sign up bonus £6.5
Minimum payout is £20
Payment Proof - Payments for all sites can be seen here, quidco isn't shown as i have signed up for all the casinos on offer through topcashback

How to Maximize Profit - IMPORTANT - READ THIS

For the majority of these offers you want to play blackjack following the chart found here
Any blackjack game will do, look for a normal version of the game at the site you are playing on and make sure it is a non live game as the hand sizes will be lower.
When playing blackjack there will often be more than one spot that you can bet on, allowing the player to bet more than one hand at a time, Its important to only bet on one spot at a time as it reduces the variance of the game and will ensure you get the maximum return possible from the game, stick to £1 hand sizes when playing and dont be tempted to bet larger amounts as you will be getting a nice amount of cashback from every offer
Through playing blackjack this way the player will get a return of around 98%, meaning for every £100 staked you will lose around £2. If you make a loss on a casino site after completing the required wagering amount, withdraw your remaining balance, don't chase loses as the cashback will make up for loses and give you a profit in most cases.
All offers are updated fairly regularly, make sure to check the terms for each offer as information in this post may become outdated. Also check for other offers every now and then as new casinos are added!

TopCashBack Offers - £400+ Profit

Topcashback Referral - Get an extra £5 - See the Ref Link at the top of the page!
If you dont already have an account at top cashback, you can sign up through my referral to get an extra £5 added to you account once you make £10 cashback
Lottoland - Cashback £15
Add £11 and play 11 separate £1 hands, following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Betfair Casino - Cashback £70
Note this is not the poker offer
Add £50 to your account and play 50 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Quidco are offering £100 for this offer
Party Casino - Cashback £26.5
Deposit and play 30 single £1 hand son blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Tombola - Cashback £24.5
Deposit £10 and open the tombola roulette game, choose a £1 chip size and choose 5 spots, repeat this twice, withdraw any remaining balance, you will likely lose money here but the cashback will give you a profit
Coral - Cashback £46
Add £10 and play 10 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Bingoport - Cashback £3
Sign up to bingoport to get an easy £3
Ladbrokes - Cashback £42
Add £10 to your account and play 10 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Pokerstars - Cashback £32
Add £25 and play 25 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
STS - Cashback £21
Add £30 to your account and play 30 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
William Hill - Cashback £54
add £25 and play 25 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Megacasino - £15.75
Add £25 - Play 25 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
LottoGo - Cashback £3.18
Buy a euromillions ticket
Slingo - Cashback £24.75
Add £10 play 10 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
PaddyPower Games - Cashback £20
Add £10 play 10 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
The Football Pools - Cashback £24.75
Sign up for the £10 a month subscription, cancel this after 30 days
Lottomart - Cashback £18
Add £10 - Play 10 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Genting Slots - Cashback £25
Add £30 play 30 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
OhMyDosh - Cashback £40+
Referral gives an extra £1, sign up through the ref link at the top of the post to get the bonus!
Gala Bingo - Cashback £17.50
Deposit at least £5, you'll get a £10 slots bonus and 100 free spins, these carry hefty wagering requirements, Open any slot and play the minimum spin size, play until you lose all of the money in your account or complete the wagering requirements on the bonus funds. Withdraw any remaining balance.
BGO - £10 Cashback
Deposit at least £15. Play 15 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance. DONT ACCEPT the welcome bonus from BGO.
Lottosocial - Cashback £4
Sign up to Lotto Social - Use your correct phone number when joining as it is the only way to login to your account. Purchase 10 lines for £1, after making a purchase go to your account page and find the list of syndicates your are in, leave the syndicates to avoid making any more payments.
Cheeky Bingo - £10 Cashback
Deposit £10 and get a £40 welcome bonus, just play bingo with all of your funds and hope to get some wins, bonus has 4x wagering requirements.

Quidco - Cashback £100+

Quidco don't offer a sign up bonus, find my ref link at the top of the post if you want to help me out!
All of the offers on quidco are much the same as topcashback, the only offer worth noting is the betfair casino offer which pays £100
Betfair - £100 cashback
Add £100 and play 100 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.

Cashbackearners - Cashback £180+

Sign up Bonus
Get a £6.5 sign up bonus, think this works with or without the ref link, links are at the top of the post!
To find these offers just search for casino on the site.
All of these offers state that you only need to make a deposit, its best to play through the deposit 1x to ensure that the cashback is paid.
LuckyMeSlots - Cashback £15
Add £15 and play 15 single £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Spin Genie - Cashback £12.5
Add £12.5 and play 12.5 £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Cashmo - Cashback £10
Add £10 and play through £10 on any slot staking the minimum amount per spin. Don't spin the wheel that pops up after signing up or accept any other bonuses.
Ice36 -Cashback £15
Add £15 and play 15 £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Spinhill Casino - Cashback £15
Add £15 and play 15 £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Galacasino - Cashback £30
add £30 and play 30 £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Casino765 - Cashback £12.5
Add £12.5 and play 12.5 £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
Casinosuperwins - Not recommended, bad site, awful support
Casino2020 - Cashback £15
Add £15 and play through £15 on any slot staking the minimum amount per spin. Keep track of spins and quit the slot after wagering the required amount. Don't spin the wheel that pops up after signing up or accept any other bonuses.
Pocketwin - Cashback £10
Add £10 and play through £10 on any slot staking the minimum amount per spin. Keep track of spins and quit the slot after wagering the required amount. Don't spin the wheel that pops up after signing up or accept any other bonuses.
The Sun Vegas - Cashback £15
Add £15 and play 15 £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
DrSlot - Cashback £10
Add £10 and play through £10 on any slot staking the minimum amount per spin. Keep track of spins and quit the slot after wagering the required amount. Don't spin the wheel that pops up after signing up or accept any other bonuses.
MrSpin - Cashback £10
Add £10 and play through £10 on any slot staking the minimum amount per spin. Keep track of spins and quit the slot after wagering the required amount. Don't spin the wheel that pops up after signing up or accept any other bonuses.
PrimeCasino - Cashback £15
Add £15 and play 15 £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
ConquestAdor - Cashback £10
Add £10 play 10 £1 hands on blackjack following the strategy outlined at the top of the post, withdraw any remaining balance.
MFortune - Cashback £10
Add £10 and play through £10 on any slot staking the minimum amount per spin. Keep track of spins and quit the slot after wagering the required amount. Don't spin the wheel that pops up after signing up or accept any other bonuses.
Thanks for reading, hope this of use to some people, happy earning!
submitted by Leth96 to beermoneyuk [link] [comments]

Greater London under Tier 2 from tomorrow, Weds 2nd Dec

London (and the rest of England) will be returning to the Tier system. Initially we'll be under Tier 2 (High alert) along with most of the rest of England.
Notable Tier 3 areas near London include all of Kent* and Slough.
(*the administrative county, not Bromley and Bexley that still sometimes claim to be in it)

The Usual Stuff

Stay 2m (6ft) away from people that you don't live with where practical, and at least 1m (3ft) away at all times. Do your very best to maintain hygiene, washing your hands and shared surfaces at every opportunity. And of course, you should only do what you're comfortable with.
If you have any symptoms of COVID-19, even mild, stay home for at least 10 days until you no-longer have a temperature. Get a test through the gov.uk testing website or calling 119. Others in your household must stay home for 14 days source.
Most coronavirus cases are mild, but if you're very ill, call 111, or in an emergency, call 999 - DO NOT go to a GP surgery, pharmacy or hospital with COVID-19. Continue to keep NHS appointments for other purposes unless your clinician tells you otherwise or the government changes the advice.

What are the restrictions?

Almost everything should now be reopening, except for nightclubs.
However there are restrictions under Tier 2:
Single adult households can still form a (permanent) mutual support bubble with one other household.
There are various other exceptions for things like weddings (up to 15 people), funerals (30 people) and in a few other areas. You can read the full Tier 2 restrictions here.
You can leave your home to escape injury or harm.
If you break these rules you may be fined from £1000 or more, depending on the offence.

Can I visit London now?

Theoretically yes. Many of the typical tourist attractions will have reduced capacity so make sure you book anything you want to do in advance. Many incoming foreign travellers from higher risk countries are subject to a mandatory two week quarantine. Check if your country is on the list.

Can I go somewhere else?

You can travel to Tier 1 or Tier 2 areas. When in a Tier 1 area, you must continue to obey Tier 2 rules. The government advises against travel to Tier 3 areas for all but essential purposes.
There are different rules for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We will need to confirm what they are over the next few days.

Face masks

Face coverings are compulsory on all forms of public transport and in all shops, takeaways, hospitals and care homes. This is a law and you can be fined if you do not comply. You don't need to buy a fancy respirator, instead think about buying or making your own from fabric, or use a scarf or bandana. As long as you wash them at a decent heat between uses this is much more environmentally friendly than disposable surgical masks.

The NHS App

The NHS COVID-19 app is now available. It uses Apple & Google's co-developed bluetooth protocol which does not transmit any of your personal details to anyone, including the government. It's been used as the basis for apps in privacy-conscious countries like Germany and Ireland, and is generally considered safe and secure.
The app is particularly effectively in dense urban areas, and NHS England's also includes features to help you check in to venues and get a test.
Download it!

Get help or give help

With the short days, the cold weather, and the lockdown restrictions, this is going to be a hard time for everyone.
This is not official advice - just our summary and might contain errors and omissions. Check gov.uk for the letter of the law. Please post any feedback or suggestions
submitted by ianjm to london [link] [comments]

For interest this is the response of the (Labor) Premier of Western Australia after one report of community transition

--- IMPORTANT UPDATE REGARDING COVID-19 IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA, AND PERTH, PEEL AND SOUTH-WEST FIVE-DAY LOCKDOWN ---
This morning, I convened an urgent meeting of the Emergency Management Team.
We have a serious update to provide the WA community.
This morning we received news of a positive COVID-19 test result.
That positive result has come from a male hotel quarantine security guard, in his 20s.
The information we have is fast-evolving. As you can understand, immediately our teams moved into place to begin contact tracing and put in place emergency response systems.
This is all underway, and I ask everyone to be cooperative and understanding of what is going to take place.
Here is what we know about the male who tested positive:
He was working at one of the State’s hotel quarantine facilities – the Sheraton Four Points in the city.
He had tested negative for COVID-19 on January Friday 15, January Sunday 17 and Saturday January 23 – as part of the weekly testing system in place.
When the man was working at this hotel, there were four active cases of COVID-19.
Of those four cases, we have at least three confirmed variant strains, two UK and one South African.
We are told the guard was working on the same floor, as a positive UK variant case.
The guard completed two 12-hours shifts on both the 26th and 27th of January.
Exactly how the infection was acquired remains under investigation.
The Health Department contact tracing team has pulled together a list of potential exposure sites of where this positive case has been in recent days.
These locations currently include: -Coles Maylands supermarket on 25 January from 8pm to 10pm -KFC Maylands on 27 January from 6pm to midnight -Mitsubishi Motors car dealership in Midland on 27 January from 7pm to close -Spudshed, Coventry Village in Morley on 27 January from 8pm to midnight -ECU Joondalup on 28 January from 11am to 2pm -Consulate General of India on St Georges Terrace in Perth on 28 January from 12pm to 5pm -Halal Grocery Store in Cloverdale on 28 January from 7pm to 9pm -Venus Ladies and Gentleman Hair Design Maylands hairdressers on 29 January from 1pm to 3pm -Perth Convention Centre on 29 January from 4pm to 6pm -Nedlands Family Practice GP surgery on 29 January from 5pm to 6pm -Chemist Warehouse North Perth Pharmacy on 29 January from 5.30pm to 7.30pm -7-Eleven Ascot petrol station on 29 January from 8pm to 9pm -Coles Maylands supermarket on 29 January from 8pm 9pm -Puma Service Station in Burswood on 30 January from 11am to 12 midday. -Coles Express/Shell Service Station in Cloverdale on 30 January from 12 midday to 3pm -Pharmacy 777 at Maylands Park Shopping Centre 30 January from 2.30pm to 4pm.
People who have been to these venues on these dates and times must get tested.
In addition, people who live or work in the Falkirk Avenue, Maylands area including Coles, Liquorland and the Maylands shopping precinct should present for a test.
They must then go home and isolate until their negative test results are returned.
The investigation is on-going by our public health team, and it is likely more locations will be added following further discussions with the man.
Close contacts will be contacted by public health officials and asked to quarantine for 14 days.
More information on testing clinics will be available on our website – the WA Health and WA Gov websites.
The man’s immediate household contacts have been contacted, tested and placed in isolation at State managed quarantine facilities to complete a 14-day quarantine period in a quarantine facility.
All three have tested negative this morning. However, we can expect that they will become positive in coming days.
Genome sequencing is underway on the positive case and results will be known by Tuesday morning.
However, based on the information we have, it appears possible that this new positive case has the highly transmissible UK variant.
The past year has been unlike any other – Western Australia has done an incredible job. It’s something I am so proud of.
But as we have always known with COVID – it can change very quickly.
Today – we need to go back to what we know best, to ensure we limit community transmission of COVID-19 in our State.
Even though it was nearly 10 months ago – WA has experienced community transmission of this virus before.
We all did the right thing and we crushed it.
And it worked.
So beginning at 6pm tonight, the whole Perth metropolitan area, the Peel region and the South West region will be going into a full lockdown.
This lockdown will run until 6pm on Friday.
A five-day lockdown.
It’s crucial we act quickly, to keep the community safe.
We cannot forget how quickly this virus can spread, nor the devastation it can cause.
Following our discussions with the Chief Health Officer and Police Commissioner, the following measures will be put in place from 6pm for people in Perth, Peel and the South West:
People in these regions are required to stay home, except for the following four reasons: - Shopping for essentials like groceries, medicine and necessary supplies. - Medical or health care needs including compassionate requirements and looking after the vulnerable. - Exercise, within their neighbourhood, but only with one other person and only for one hour per day. - Work, where you cannot work from home or remotely.
In addition to this Stay Home rule.
If you do leave home, for one of the four reasons you will be required to wear a mask at all times outside and if you need to work indoors, then wearing a mask in the workplace is also mandatory.
To be clear, mask wearing on public transport is also mandatory.
People in the Perth, Peel or South West region need to stay inside their region for the next five days, unless for an essential reason.
We are strongly encouraging that everyone in this area, who is from another WA region, stay here and do not travel further outside of this area until the lockdown is over.
If you do need to travel outside the region you are in now, that can only occur if you need to return to your place of residence or exceptional circumstances.
The transport of essential goods into this region, is permitted, under our existing transport guidelines.
This lockdown means the following businesses, venues and locations in the relevant regions need to close for the next five days: - Pubs, bars and clubs - Gyms and indoor sporting venues - Playgrounds, skate parks and outdoor recreational facilities - Cinemas, entertainment venues, and casinos - Large religious gatherings and places of worship - Libraries and cultural institutions
Restaurants and cafes will close, and provide takeaway service only.
10 people can attend funerals, weddings are cancelled for the next five days.
No visitors are permitted to your home, unless caring for someone vulnerable or an emergency.
No visitors will be allowed in aged care homes, unless exceptional circumstances.
No visitors to hospitals and/or disability facilities, unless exceptional circumstances.
Elective surgery and procedures for categories 2 and 3 will be suspended from Tuesday, 2 February. Category 1 and urgent category 2 surgery will continue.
For a majority of schools in these regions, school was due to start tomorrow.
That has now been put on hold and schools will be closed until next week – following the lockdown measures.
It is, in effect, an extension of the school holidays.
I have been in contact with the Prime Minister and my fellow State and Territory colleagues to advise them of this situation.
I have recommended that they put a stop to any travel into WA – as an extra precautionary measure.
Border controls are important here – and I 100% support them to ensure we can get through this.
All these measures will be reviewed regularly and the Chief Health Officer will continue to monitor the serious situation and provide more ongoing advice.
This is an extremely fast-moving situation.
I know for many Western Australians this is going to come as a shock.
Western Australians have done so well for so long but this week it is absolutely crucial that we stay home, maintain physical distancing and personal hygiene and get tested if you have symptoms.
This is a very serious situation and each and every one of us has to do everything we personally can to help stop the spread in the community.
We have acted decisively and swiftly given these circumstances.
I want to thank everyone in advance for their patience.
In effect, for a short period of time, we are going back to what we experienced in March and April.
This is a highly unpredictable virus. But it is important to act calmly and take sensible precautions.
Leaving your home to purchase food and essentials will be permitted during the lockdown.
I say this, so people understand that you do not need to rush to the supermarket today.
Take care of your loved ones and be respectful of others including those who are working, to keep essential services and supplies ticking over.
Our State is well equipped to handle this situation.
We have systems in place throughout the health system that are swinging into action as we speak.
We have the capacity to manage this situation.
Throughout the pandemic, the response of Western Australians has been second-to-none.
The community has done everything we have asked of them.
They have made great sacrifices, and it has kept our State safe.
I could not be more proud and thankful of the way Western Australians have carried themselves.
Now we’re asking for your help once again.
We will provide further updates as they come to hand.
All relevant information will be posted on websites as it comes to hand.
Thank you WA.
submitted by SlightlyCatlike to LabourUK [link] [comments]

New to online Slots? - Starter guide/tips for newbies playing online slots

Okay so I decided to create this guide with the hopes of it becoming a sticky thread for all newbies to the online slots world, to read as we deal with the same topics repeatedly and the same answers/advice are given repeatedly. Not that we do not want to help, but these would prevent you from getting into situations before its too late, or blaming casinos when you were in the wrong.
Signing up or Registration
Registration – Please carefully read the general terms and conditions about every "Right" the casino has and please note that you accepted these terms upon signing up, which means you are saying you are okay with it and agree with what the casino state about what they can and cannot do.
Claiming Bonuses
Read the bonus terms carefully before claiming any bonuses and look for the following pointers when reading the bonuses rules:
There are other bonus terms that I have not mentioned but I think the above ones are the most important as these could affect you in terms of confiscation of your winnings should you breach any of them.
Verification
This is pretty much standard for a casino to ask for some form of Identification, proof of address and proof of deposit when requesting a withdrawal. Depending on the amount win, some casinos might not need documents, however when a substantial amount has been won additional verification or security checks might be done which means a longer withdrawal time frame. Verification or KYC is necessary, however I feel when casinos ask for selfies with your ID next to you etc. in my opinion is just ridiculous. Also, I have noticed some casinos requesting your source of income to see where you get the money to make deposits etc. This seems standard and you would need to do it to get your withdrawal, however all of us have different opinions about this verification procedure.
Withdrawals
Many casinos have different withdrawal time frames and when you accept the general terms and conditions you have to a abide by them, by this I mean stop being impatient and complain that the casinos withdrawal time frames are the worst etc. As you knew this before you started playing provided you have read the terms and condition. You decided to deposit and play so then wait for your money, eventually it will come unless you breached some rule, or the casino is a rogue casino.
Here are some of the tips you should note when it comes to withdrawals at casinos:
Self-Exclusion
Self-Exclusion is a big thing these days and most cases substantial amounts are involved that are being confiscated. There are at times very little that us forum members or even AskGamblers can do when a player self-excluded and played at a sister website or similar, as we know the result and of course the house is kind of right. However, I think it's bad that a casino only realizes the self-exclusion portion on a player profile once it reaches withdrawal stage, because I feel they should have something in place that can detect that you self-excluded upon registration or before you even make your first deposit. People with gambling problems tend to self-exclude but the alternative is to read this guide - https://www.askgamblers.com/forum/topic/2152-sos-i-am-addicted-to-gambling-what-to-do/ . My advice is to keep your casino account open and do not play there anymore, because even if you request a permanent account closure, some casinos tend to self-exclude you without you knowing it and this would cause problems in future since you opened another account at their sister website or something.
submitted by Sea_Yogurtcloset_752 to bestcasinoscanada [link] [comments]

Former investment bank FX trader: some thoughts

Former investment bank FX trader: some thoughts
Hi guys,
I have been using reddit for years in my personal life (not trading!) and wanted to give something back in an area where i am an expert.
I worked at an investment bank for seven years and joined them as a graduate FX trader so have lots of professional experience, by which i mean I was trained and paid by a big institution to trade on their behalf. This is very different to being a full-time home trader, although that is not to discredit those guys, who can accumulate a good amount of experience/wisdom through self learning.
When I get time I'm going to write a mid-length posts on each topic for you guys along the lines of how i was trained. I guess there would be 15-20 topics in total so about 50-60 posts. Feel free to comment or ask questions.
The first topic is Risk Management and we'll cover it in three parts
Part I
  • Why it matters
  • Position sizing
  • Kelly
  • Using stops sensibly
  • Picking a clear level

Why it matters

The first rule of making money through trading is to ensure you do not lose money. Look at any serious hedge fund’s website and they’ll talk about their first priority being “preservation of investor capital.”
You have to keep it before you grow it.
Strangely, if you look at retail trading websites, for every one article on risk management there are probably fifty on trade selection. This is completely the wrong way around.
The great news is that this stuff is pretty simple and process-driven. Anyone can learn and follow best practices.
Seriously, avoiding mistakes is one of the most important things: there's not some holy grail system for finding winning trades, rather a routine and fairly boring set of processes that ensure that you are profitable, despite having plenty of losing trades alongside the winners.

Capital and position sizing

The first thing you have to know is how much capital you are working with. Let’s say you have $100,000 deposited. This is your maximum trading capital. Your trading capital is not the leveraged amount. It is the amount of money you have deposited and can withdraw or lose.
Position sizing is what ensures that a losing streak does not take you out of the market.
A rule of thumb is that one should risk no more than 2% of one’s account balance on an individual trade and no more than 8% of one’s account balance on a specific theme. We’ll look at why that’s a rule of thumb later. For now let’s just accept those numbers and look at examples.
So we have $100,000 in our account. And we wish to buy EURUSD. We should therefore not be risking more than 2% which $2,000.
We look at a technical chart and decide to leave a stop below the monthly low, which is 55 pips below market. We’ll come back to this in a bit. So what should our position size be?
We go to the calculator page, select Position Size and enter our details. There are many such calculators online - just google "Pip calculator".
​
https://preview.redd.it/y38zb666e5h51.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26e4fe569dc5c1f43ce4c746230c49b138691d14
So the appropriate size is a buy position of 363,636 EURUSD. If it reaches our stop level we know we’ll lose precisely $2,000 or 2% of our capital.
You should be using this calculator (or something similar) on every single trade so that you know your risk.
Now imagine that we have similar bets on EURJPY and EURGBP, which have also broken above moving averages. Clearly this EUR-momentum is a theme. If it works all three bets are likely to pay off. But if it goes wrong we are likely to lose on all three at once. We are going to look at this concept of correlation in more detail later.
The total amount of risk in our portfolio - if all of the trades on this EUR-momentum theme were to hit their stops - should not exceed $8,000 or 8% of total capital. This allows us to go big on themes we like without going bust when the theme does not work.
As we’ll see later, many traders only win on 40-60% of trades. So you have to accept losing trades will be common and ensure you size trades so they cannot ruin you.
Similarly, like poker players, we should risk more on trades we feel confident about and less on trades that seem less compelling. However, this should always be subject to overall position sizing constraints.
For example before you put on each trade you might rate the strength of your conviction in the trade and allocate a position size accordingly:
​
https://preview.redd.it/q2ea6rgae5h51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=4332cb8d0bbbc3d8db972c1f28e8189105393e5b
To keep yourself disciplined you should try to ensure that no more than one in twenty trades are graded exceptional and allocated 5% of account balance risk. It really should be a rare moment when all the stars align for you.
Notice that the nice thing about dealing in percentages is that it scales. Say you start out with $100,000 but end the year up 50% at $150,000. Now a 1% bet will risk $1,500 rather than $1,000. That makes sense as your capital has grown.
It is extremely common for retail accounts to blow-up by making only 4-5 losing trades because they are leveraged at 50:1 and have taken on far too large a position, relative to their account balance.
Consider that GBPUSD tends to move 1% each day. If you have an account balance of $10k then it would be crazy to take a position of $500k (50:1 leveraged). A 1% move on $500k is $5k.
Two perfectly regular down days in a row — or a single day’s move of 2% — and you will receive a margin call from the broker, have the account closed out, and have lost all your money.
Do not let this happen to you. Use position sizing discipline to protect yourself.
​

Kelly Criterion

If you’re wondering - why “about 2%” per trade? - that’s a fair question. Why not 0.5% or 10% or any other number?
The Kelly Criterion is a formula that was adapted for use in casinos. If you know the odds of winning and the expected pay-off, it tells you how much you should bet in each round.
This is harder than it sounds. Let’s say you could bet on a weighted coin flip, where it lands on heads 60% of the time and tails 40% of the time. The payout is $2 per $1 bet.
Well, absolutely you should bet. The odds are in your favour. But if you have, say, $100 it is less obvious how much you should bet to avoid ruin.
Say you bet $50, the odds that it could land on tails twice in a row are 16%. You could easily be out after the first two flips.
Equally, betting $1 is not going to maximise your advantage. The odds are 60/40 in your favour so only betting $1 is likely too conservative. The Kelly Criterion is a formula that produces the long-run optimal bet size, given the odds.
Applying the formula to forex trading looks like this:
Position size % = Winning trade % - ( (1- Winning trade %) / Risk-reward ratio
If you have recorded hundreds of trades in your journal - see next chapter - you can calculate what this outputs for you specifically.
If you don't have hundreds of trades then let’s assume some realistic defaults of Winning trade % being 30% and Risk-reward ratio being 3. The 3 implies your TP is 3x the distance of your stop from entry e.g. 300 pips take profit and 100 pips stop loss.
So that’s 0.3 - (1 - 0.3) / 3 = 6.6%.
Hold on a second. 6.6% of your account probably feels like a LOT to risk per trade.This is the main observation people have on Kelly: whilst it may optimise the long-run results it doesn’t take into account the pain of drawdowns. It is better thought of as the rational maximum limit. You needn’t go right up to the limit!
With a 30% winning trade ratio, the odds of you losing on four trades in a row is nearly one in four. That would result in a drawdown of nearly a quarter of your starting account balance. Could you really stomach that and put on the fifth trade, cool as ice? Most of us could not.
Accordingly people tend to reduce the bet size. For example, let’s say you know you would feel emotionally affected by losing 25% of your account.
Well, the simplest way is to divide the Kelly output by four. You have effectively hidden 75% of your account balance from Kelly and it is now optimised to avoid a total wipeout of just the 25% it can see.
This gives 6.6% / 4 = 1.65%. Of course different trading approaches and different risk appetites will provide different optimal bet sizes but as a rule of thumb something between 1-2% is appropriate for the style and risk appetite of most retail traders.
Incidentally be very wary of systems or traders who claim high winning trade % like 80%. Invariably these don’t pass a basic sense-check:
  • How many live trades have you done? Often they’ll have done only a handful of real trades and the rest are simulated backtests, which are overfitted. The model will soon die.
  • What is your risk-reward ratio on each trade? If you have a take profit $3 away and a stop loss $100 away, of course most trades will be winners. You will not be making money, however! In general most traders should trade smaller position sizes and less frequently than they do. If you are going to bias one way or the other, far better to start off too small.

How to use stop losses sensibly

Stop losses have a bad reputation amongst the retail community but are absolutely essential to risk management. No serious discretionary trader can operate without them.
A stop loss is a resting order, left with the broker, to automatically close your position if it reaches a certain price. For a recap on the various order types visit this chapter.
The valid concern with stop losses is that disreputable brokers look for a concentration of stops and then, when the market is close, whipsaw the price through the stop levels so that the clients ‘stop out’ and sell to the broker at a low rate before the market naturally comes back higher. This is referred to as ‘stop hunting’.
This would be extremely immoral behaviour and the way to guard against it is to use a highly reputable top-tier broker in a well regulated region such as the UK.
Why are stop losses so important? Well, there is no other way to manage risk with certainty.
You should always have a pre-determined stop loss before you put on a trade. Not having one is a recipe for disaster: you will find yourself emotionally attached to the trade as it goes against you and it will be extremely hard to cut the loss. This is a well known behavioural bias that we’ll explore in a later chapter.
Learning to take a loss and move on rationally is a key lesson for new traders.
A common mistake is to think of the market as a personal nemesis. The market, of course, is totally impersonal; it doesn’t care whether you make money or not.
Bruce Kovner, founder of the hedge fund Caxton Associates
There is an old saying amongst bank traders which is “losers average losers”.
It is tempting, having bought EURUSD and seeing it go lower, to buy more. Your average price will improve if you keep buying as it goes lower. If it was cheap before it must be a bargain now, right? Wrong.
Where does that end? Always have a pre-determined cut-off point which limits your risk. A level where you know the reason for the trade was proved ‘wrong’ ... and stick to it strictly. If you trade using discretion, use stops.

Picking a clear level

Where you leave your stop loss is key.
Typically traders will leave them at big technical levels such as recent highs or lows. For example if EURUSD is trading at 1.1250 and the recent month’s low is 1.1205 then leaving it just below at 1.1200 seems sensible.
​
If you were going long, just below the double bottom support zone seems like a sensible area to leave a stop
You want to give it a bit of breathing room as we know support zones often get challenged before the price rallies. This is because lots of traders identify the same zones. You won’t be the only one selling around 1.1200.
The “weak hands” who leave their sell stop order at exactly the level are likely to get taken out as the market tests the support. Those who leave it ten or fifteen pips below the level have more breathing room and will survive a quick test of the level before a resumed run-up.
Your timeframe and trading style clearly play a part. Here’s a candlestick chart (one candle is one day) for GBPUSD.
​
https://preview.redd.it/moyngdy4f5h51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=91af88da00dd3a09e202880d8029b0ddf04fb802
If you are putting on a trend-following trade you expect to hold for weeks then you need to have a stop loss that can withstand the daily noise. Look at the downtrend on the chart. There were plenty of days in which the price rallied 60 pips or more during the wider downtrend.
So having a really tight stop of, say, 25 pips that gets chopped up in noisy short-term moves is not going to work for this kind of trade. You need to use a wider stop and take a smaller position size, determined by the stop level.
There are several tools you can use to help you estimate what is a safe distance and we’ll look at those in the next section.
There are of course exceptions. For example, if you are doing range-break style trading you might have a really tight stop, set just below the previous range high.
​
https://preview.redd.it/ygy0tko7f5h51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=34af49da61c911befdc0db26af66f6c313556c81
Clearly then where you set stops will depend on your trading style as well as your holding horizons and the volatility of each instrument.
Here are some guidelines that can help:
  1. Use technical analysis to pick important levels (support, resistance, previous high/lows, moving averages etc.) as these provide clear exit and entry points on a trade.
  2. Ensure that the stop gives your trade enough room to breathe and reflects your timeframe and typical volatility of each pair. See next section.
  3. Always pick your stop level first. Then use a calculator to determine the appropriate lot size for the position, based on the % of your account balance you wish to risk on the trade.
So far we have talked about price-based stops. There is another sort which is more of a fundamental stop, used alongside - not instead of - price stops. If either breaks you’re out.
For example if you stop understanding why a product is going up or down and your fundamental thesis has been confirmed wrong, get out. For example, if you are long because you think the central bank is turning hawkish and AUDUSD is going to play catch up with rates … then you hear dovish noises from the central bank and the bond yields retrace lower and back in line with the currency - close your AUDUSD position. You already know your thesis was wrong. No need to give away more money to the market.

Coming up in part II

EDIT: part II here
Letting stops breathe
When to change a stop
Entering and exiting winning positions
Risk:reward ratios
Risk-adjusted returns

Coming up in part III

Squeezes and other risks
Market positioning
Bet correlation
Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits
​
***
Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.
submitted by getmrmarket to Forex [link] [comments]

best casino website uk video

best casino websites in uk - YouTube Best Online Casinos USA 2020 - Best Online Casinos For USA ... Best Online Casino Reviews 2020 🔥 Trusted Casino Sites To ... TOP 5 Online Casinos for 2018 (WHY You Should Play Here ... Best online casino sites: UK Edition - YouTube what is the best online casino site uk ! - YouTube Top Casino Sites Uk - YouTube what is the best online casino site uk ! - YouTube Top 5 Online Casino - YouTube

We shall offer you elucidations regarding what we take into consideration when we say that a website is one of the best casino sites from the UK. For a better understanding of our system, we shall explain each criterion through tables, examples and schemes. Online casino sites review system. Our rating & the system behind . It goes without question that we categorise casino sites as top only With five years of experience in the UK gambling market, Fun Casino is one of the most trustworthy and best online casinos currently available. In our Fun Casino review we found there are 870 games to choose from, all from renowned casino game developers. Your money and your data are more than safe with this casino, as they have top-grade security measures in place. Registration takes seconds Best casino sites in the UK. Best casino sites in Canada. Best casino sites in Ireland. Best casino sites in New Zealand. Best casino sites in Kenya . Best casino sites in India. Casino Sites Top List For February 2021. 1. Review. 100% up to €200 with Free Spins. T&Cs apply. 100% up to €200 Welcome Bonus with 40x wagering within 30 days, meaning we will double any deposit you make from € Plenty of things go into a great casino, but only the best UK casino sites are listed below. They have all been subject to our tough review criteria, and have come out on top. 1. 100% up to £50 & 100 Bonus Spins. 4.8 rating. 4.8. Claim Bonus Read Review. Terms and conditions apply. New players only. 18+ and a minimum deposit of £10. Welcome package is split over 3 deposits. 35x wagering Our current best UK online casino is Grand Ivy Casino which has: A Valid UK Gambling Licence – which ensures legal compliance; Secure Payment Methods – encryption protects players and their personal data; Fair and Fun Games – that are tested and have high return-to-player rates (RTPs) On this site, you’ll also find a list of some of the other top online casinos in the United Kingdom as See our selection of best casino sites below and choose the one that is right for you. 18+ New Players only. Gamble responsibly. www.begambleaware.org Terms Apply × 18+. New players only. Valid for 15 days after 1st deposit. Min Deposit £20 Max Bonus Bet £5 Winnings from spins capped at £50 Why the sites on our list are the best online casinos in the UK. All the online casino sites that made our list are brilliant all-rounders where you will find an excellent selection of card games Topics Include: Best Payout Casinos UK Criteria Games RTP Slots Payout Software RTP Bonus FAQs Discover the Best Payout Online Casino Sites UK. When gambling online with real money, it’s best to stick to sites that have generous payout rates, so this page will take you through the top 10 sites with the best return statistics.We take into account all games in each of their catalogues in order Best Online Casino Payouts UK Players Have Won. The biggest win on record (from a UK online casino) is a whopping £13.2m. This was won in October 2015 by a British man playing the infamous Mega Moolah Slot, made popular by its massive, life-changing jackpot which never goes lower than £1m. Another Brit playing the Dark Knight themed Slot won £5.8m in 2012. But these wins are dwarfed by the Topics Include: 🏆 Top 10 UK Casinos ️ Review Criteria 🎰 Casino Games 🎁 Best Casino Offers 🛡️ Safe Online Casinos 🥇 Award Winners 2021 Best Online Casino Sites in the UK: Top Casinos & Thorough Casino Reviews in 2021. Welcome to Online-Casinos.com, the number one comparison site for internet casinos available to British players.. Are you looking for the best online casino

best casino website uk top

[index] [4433] [2493] [4945] [7616] [6014] [4588] [9946] [6966] [481] [8088]

best casino websites in uk - YouTube

Top Casino Sites UK is here to make your day brighter, and be your helping hand. Basically, anything casino, we've got you covered! Basically, anything casino, we've got you covered! Find some amazing bonus codes here: https://bit.ly/39JKzYsSubscribe and turn on notifications to get the latest scoop on the best online casinos for USA play... https://24casino.ruClick hyperlink directly above and look at internet casino which wishes to present you entirely free dollars! Just best online casino site... ПОЛУЧАЙ ФРИ СПИН ПО ССЫЛКЕ!!! http://hottopnow.com/BUR what is the best online casino site uk, us online casino real money no deposit bonus, 3 ... ПОЛУЧАЙ ФРИ СПИН ПО ССЫЛКЕ!!! http://hottopnow.com/BUR what is the best online casino site uk, online casino 60 freispiele ohne einzahlung ... Best Online Casino Reviews 2020, from this video: http://topcasinz.com/Best online casinos for USA players: http://topcasinz.com/countries/usa/Only Top Onlin... Top 5 Online Casino from this video: USA NOT Accepted: 1) SlotV Casino --- http://slotvs.com - Up to 175 FreeSpins + 100% Match Bonus 2) Frank Casino --- htt... What are THE BEST casinos for 2018? Here’s the TOP 5 online casinos where you should be playing. ↓↓↓ WINNERS (AND HOW TO GET STARTED) ↓↓↓ ♛ SlotsMillion Casi... ПОЛУЧАЙ ФРИ СПИН ПО ССЫЛКЕ!!! http://hottopnow.com/BUR what is the best online casino site uk, online casino 400 welcome bonus, online casino ... live roulette download online casino live casino online casino games best online casino sites casinos online slot online slots online roulette best casino on...

best casino website uk

Copyright © 2024 m.realtopmoneygame.xyz