TL:DR

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

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

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

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

DraftKings (NASDAQ: DKNG) - Deep Dive Research - Part 1

TL:DR

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

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

Matchday Analysis - 6th February

Back with some more match day analysis!

For a detailed breakdown of Sunday's games, that will be made available from tomorrow at the Index Scholar Academy.

Bayer Leverkusen [5] – [2] VfB Stuttgart

Leon Bailey produced an impressive display in his side's 5- 2 win over Stuttgart with a well taken goal and an assist. He nearly scored after just 95 seconds, only to be denied by the glove of the opposition goalkeeper and the frame of the goal.
Bailey assisted Leverkusen's 2nd with a perfectly weighted through ball for Demirbay who slotted home. He then scored his 5th goal of the season to put Leverkusen 3-1 up.
Despite being positioned on the right-hand side, you could see Bailey cutting in from that wing and being involved in intricate pieces of play from the centre as well as the left.
74 minutes played, 3 shots on goal (2 on target), 4 key passes and 4 crosses marked a very good display from the Jamaican here.
Now he's just had a spike to £1.31 so I would let that settle down a bit. But he makes a decent case for portfolio inclusion nonetheless, with the ability to hit those peak scores evident on some of his notable past performances.

Kerem Demirbay hit 245 PB points with 2 goals here, scoring the 1st after converting a rebound in acrobatic fashion after a shot from Moussa Diaby was saved by the opposition keeper.
He nutmegged the goalkeeper for the 2nd with after being played through by Bailey.
Despite the performance, I would be wary of investing in Demirbay as his playing time this season has been sporadic to say the least. Although he's well capable of producing big scores as he has a decent enough base, at £1.18 I wouldn't be investing right at this moment.

Schalke 04 [0] – [3] RB Leipzig

Christopher Nkunku's minutes are being managed quite a bit this season which is frustrating to say the least for those that hold him.
He's a PB player through and through, and he showcased his ability once again today with a 218 score in 83 minutes with just the 1 assist.
Leipzig lined up in a 3-1-4-2 formation with Nkunku playing as a second striker of sorts in this game. His stats were very good, with 2 shots, 4 dribble attempts (3 successful), 8 key passes and 5 crosses.
Being on free kicks and left-hand-side corners also does Nkunku good. In this game his set piece delivery was impeccable, as he whipped in a great ball for Nordi Mukiele to get on the end of for Leipzig's 1st.
He also had a good chance to make it 2-0 after being played in by Angelino, but placed his shot just wide of the far post It's just a shame that he hasn't been able to complete 90 minutes from the 8th of December last year.
At the £1 mark and below however, he is a risk worth taking, as when he explodes with a 250+ score I have no doubt he will get a significant rise in price owing to the fact that he's still fairly young at 23 and plays for an attacking side under the stewardship of Nagelsmann.

Marcel Sabitzer made the score comfortable at 2-0 after being played a diagonal ball across the face of goal by Angelino.
Unlike Nkunku, Sabitzer is getting much more 90-minute games and having the captain's armband also suggests he's more likely to play a key role in games.
His PB threat is not as great as Nkunku’s, but he shows glimpses here and there as evidenced by the 178 points with no goals or assists he recorded on the 2nd of January.
At £1.05 I'd rather invest that money in his compatriot Nkunku or look to acquire him for 70p-80p on bids.

Willi Orban made it 3-0 to the visitors and he's an example of how stacked Leipzig's defence is.
Halstenberg, Upamecano, Klostermann, Mukiele and Orban all tussling for minutes in this side. They're all fairly good for PB so if you're looking for a defensive pick here, I'd opt for either Halstenberg or Upamecano, as the latter appears to be nailed on when compared with the others.

Mats Hummels [DEF – Borussia Dortmund]

Mats Hummels registered another very respectable PB score of 157 in a 2-1 away defeat at SC Freiburg.
103 accurate passes (87.3%), 2 key passes, 9 long balls (6 accurate), 7/9 aerial duels won and 4 clearances here.
His PB average in the last 7 games stands at an impressive 156.8 too.
Even a 69p buy price for a 32-year-old would not put me off with the scores he's been delivering.
He's a solid defensive option for any portfolio as he will almost surely win another match day or two this season barring injury or a calamitous collapse in form.

Huesca [1] – [2] Real Madrid

Raphael Varane delighted holders with a star man win in his sides 2-1 victory over Huesca.
261 points with 2 goals was a delight for holders who acquired him at the 35p-40p mark a few weeks prior.
There's no doubt he's under-priced, as he's at the prime stage of his career and plays for two of football's biggest teams in Real Madrid and France.
He realistically should be around 90p-£1, so even now at 65p I still believe there is capital appreciation to be made.
But I wouldn't be buying in on the back of a PB win as no doubt his price will fall back to the 40p-50p mark, which is when I'd be tempted to place the bet.

Toni Kroos* showed why he's a PB juggernaut on the Football Index, registering a score of 230 with no goals or assists and a yellow card!
118 touches, 95 accurate passes (96%), 6 key passes, 6 crosses and 12/13 accurate long balls
It really would only have taken a single goal involvement from him to top midfielder and possibly star man here, and at £2.07 he still looks to be very good value with Champions League fixtures and Euro 2021 on the horizon.

Sevilla [3] – [0] Getafe

Joan Jordan will have turned a couple of trader's heads with his display in this 3-0 win against Getafe. He played a pivotal role in Sevilla's disallowed 1st goal by making a well timed run and crossing the ball in from the by line. However, Lucas Ocampos was adjudged to have handled the ball with his arm so it was chalked off.
But that didn't deter Jordan as he delivered a sublime through ball over the top of the Getafe defence which Munir El Haddadi put past the keeper to make it 1-0.
Joan Jordan would be an excellent hold if he was guaranteed 90 minutes for the majority of games, but unfortunately that's not the case.
Today he managed to finish the game which makes such a difference for his stats and overall PB performance.
126 touches, 105 accurate passes (90.5%), 2 shots, 3 crosses, 13 long balls and 4 key passes
At a price of 65p (55p on bids) he is worth the outlay as he's a player who in my view should be trading around the £1 mark.

Jules Kounde produced a mammoth score of 229 with no goals or assists.
By numbers he made 94 accurate passes (94%), 1 key pass, 2 crosses, 3 long balls and 3 successful dribble attempts out of 3.
Manchester City were rumoured to have made a move for him before they eventually brought in Dias and it's clear to see why.
He's comfortable with the ball at his feet and finds it easy stepping out of the defensive strata with the ball.
Some of his previous PB scores also make for good reading, with a 173 against Cadiz (no goal involvements) and a 133 against the tougher Real Sociedad (no goal involvements).
At 99p I'd personally sit patiently and wait to see if he'll drop down in price just a little bit, but even so I like the look of him at £1 as he's got solid PB game and potential transfer links if he keeps this level up.

Alejandro Gomez also caught my attention with his performance coming off the bench.
He came on at 56 minutes and sealed the game on 87 minutes with a powerful left footed shot which took a big deflection on its way to the top corner of the net.
He looks to have taken over Banega's role in this Sevilla side, and his 152 points with only 33 minutes on the pitch are a good indicator that he will be able to replicate the Argentinian's performances in this creative midfield position.
At 32 years of age however, I'd err on the side of caution when it comes to investing here.
94p is an okay price to acquire Gomez considering that he's down from his 1 year high of £1.67, but I'd be a bit more comfortable picking him up at around the 50p-60p mark that he was trading at a few weeks prior.

Olympique Lyonnais [3] – [0] Strasbourg

Memphis Depay stole the show as his Lyon side were victorious against Strasbourg.
He played 72 minutes and came off with 2 goals and a PB score of 232 which was enough to win match day dividends on a gold day.
For the 1st goal he capitalised on a loose ball from the Strasbourg midfield to slot past the keeper on a 1v1, whereas the 2nd was a magnificently curled free kick into the top corner, which brought him to 13 league goals for the season. Memphis has been relatively quiet on the PB front ever since links to Barcelona surfaced so it's good to see him get back to the PB scoring heights that we know he is capable of.
His game by numbers included 4 shot attempts (all on target), 2/4 successful dribbles, 27 accurate passes (79.4%), 1 key pass and 2 crosses.
At the £1.90 mark however I would steer clear due to the fact that his future at Lyon is still uncertain. This is because the Barcelona move fell through due to the Spanish side not having the necessary funds to complete the deal.
His PB potential may take a hit if he were to join Barcelona and I wouldn't want to be left holding the short end of the stick with him.
However, with the Euro's coming up in the summer and him being Holland's main man up front I believe there is possibility for him to hit the £2.50 price point.

Leo Dubois performed once again as he delivered a 171 PB score without any goal contributions at the opposition end. 55 passes (87.3%), 2 key passes, 5 crosses and 3/6 accurate long balls shows that he's able to get involved on both ends of the pitch to good effect.
At the 80p mark however he's more or less reached his 1-year high and I'd not be buying in at this point with the current state of the overall market as it is.
I'd be much more inclined to wait for a drop to the 50p-60p mark or try and acquire him via bids within that ballpark range.

Nayef Aguerd [DEF – Stade Rennais]

The Moroccan born 24-year-old only managed 124 points against Lorient but his past scores give holders reason to be encouraged.
At the start of the year he delivered a score of 192 against Nantes with no goal involvement as well as a 168 against Lorient in the reverse fixture, again with no goals or assists in that game either.
With age on his side at 24 and the fact that he plays in a team that likes to keep hold of the ball, he looks a decent pick up at 78p.
You only need to look at the 312 score he managed with a goal against Stade Brestois to see that there's a good possibility that he can win on a gold day in the future.

Wojciech Szczęsny [GK – Juventus]

Szczęsny* is beginning to deliver on the PB front. He claimed top goalkeeper here with a PB score of 174.
Some notable stats here include 3 saves, 42 accurate passes, and 10 long balls (4 accurate).
I like him as a hold because Pirlo encourages the team to play out of the back and also due to the fact that they're not rock solid in defence and give away multiple chances in games, which allows Szczęsny the opportunity to make some saves as opposed to being barely tested in games like other top keepers.
Juventus have undoubtedly been well short of their usual clean sheet tally by this stage of the season and it's only in the past 3 games that they've begun to shore up, with 3 shut outs in the last 3 now.
Before this good spell, a Szczęsny holder would have to go all the way back to a 3-0 home win against Sampdoria on the 20th of September for the Polish international's last clean sheet.
Even with the removal of clean sheet IPDs he looks a solid shout in the Goalkeeper category, as at the 40p mark he's not as expensive as the other options out there playing for top teams like Alisson, Ederson and Neuer.

Bukayo Saka [MID – Arsenal]

Arsenal are underperforming but one player who is carrying the London side from game to game is Saka. He's posted some notable scores in the last couple of games which are worth pointing out.
174 in a 1-0 loss to Aston Villa, 201 with a goal and assist against Southampton, and 154 in a 0-0 with Crystal Palace.
Now he has spiked recently and at £2.50 I wouldn't be taking my wallet out as I'm sure his price will dip again, but he is one to keep an eye on.
A better entry point would be at the £1.50 - £1.70 mark in my opinion, but if he dropped to anywhere near the £1.02 mark that he was on the 22nd of December last year, I would be buying in swiftly.

Dwight McNeil [MID – Burnley]

Now Burnley are not a side renowned for playing swashbuckling football, which is why it's all the more impressive when Dwight McNeil continues to put up these decent scores from time to time.
163 points against Brighton here with no goals or assists, 10 crosses, 4 long balls, 2 shots and 2 dribble attempts.
He's a player that probably needs a move to a more attacking side in order to fulfil that potential, but on the flip side a move away to such a team could lead to less playing time.
At 55p there's not much risk here as he's young, English and Burnley should be safe from relegation, as well as the fact that he could garner interest from a few clubs in the summer window. However, his contract is set to expire in 2024 so Burnley won't necessarily be in a desperate position to sell.

And that marks the end of this weekend's analysis, so I'll see you next weekend!

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.

No Deposit bonuses/Signup bonus – Many players are still NDB (No Deposit Bonus) hunters and register simply for these reasons. Please read the NDB/Signup Bonus terms carefully to make sure your country is eligible to receive the NDB/Signup bonus. We had many players getting upset about this factor and then end up closing their accounts immediately out of anger which leads to SE (Self Exclusion) at times. which I will address later in this thread. However, we do have instances where a casino does not list the eligible countries that can or cannot receive the NDB/Signup bonuses.
More than one player in 1 house Hold – Many casinos only allow one player per house/IP address to register at a casino. You can ask a casino if you and your partnesibling who stays together can both signup and some casinos would give the "Ok". Just make sure you have this in written confirmation via email or something and not live chat.

Claiming Bonuses
Read the bonus terms carefully before claiming any bonuses and look for the following pointers when reading the bonuses rules:

Wagering – Many casinos have increased their wagering on bonuses lately which makes bonus wagering very difficult to complete these days. Decide whether the wagering attach to the bonus is high or low for you since you know your game play and strategies. Many factors can influence whether you will be able to meet wagering, which is the x amount of wagering, game providers availability and deposit amount just to name a few. Also note that wagering for "certain countries" are higher than others. For me personally I think wagering between x35 – x50 on the "Bonus" amount "Only" is reasonable and fair.
Max Bet – 99% of casinos have a max bet rule in place when claiming a bonus. Note what the max bet is for the specific casinos as it can range anything from 1 – 5 euro/$ per Spin. Deposit methods can affect the max bet as well as some casinos limit the max bet rule between 1 – 2 euro per spin for deposits using e-wallets, however that same casinos allow a max bet up to 5 euro per spin for credit card/Alternative deposits. Even though a casino state the max bet rule another tricky rule in the terms that we tend to miss is the coin value. Some casinos state that the max "Coin domination/value" should be $0.20 or $0.50 per spin which means if you want to bet higher you would need to adjust the "Level" portion in the slot if the coin domination/value limit is reached according to the terms. If you breach the Max bet rule and it is stated in their terms, you do not have a case, period. There are some casinos who you can explain your situation if it was a mistake and they do sometimes make exceptions.
Deposit methods – Many casinos lately have restricted the claiming of bonuses using e-wallet deposit methods such as Neteller, Skrill etc. Note they mention these 2 as they are most popular, but that also means any other form of e-wallets are not eligible to claim bonuses. I have seen a lot of players complain that they did not receive the bonus simply because they did not read the terms before claiming the bonus and the deposit has already been made. Also make sure you deposit using your own card, do not use your parents or any other siblings credit card to make deposits as this would cause a problem during verification which in the end results in to winnings not being paid out.
Deposit Methods Additional Info – Many deposits are available from Casinos or let's say most casinos have the same deposit methods available, however the country that you reside in has the influence on what deposit methods are available and the same counts for withdrawals. So, for instance if AskGamblers website state deposit by phone which is "Boku" is available at that specific casino it does not mean that it will be available for all players, as that is depending on your country. Deposit by phone is mostly available for the UK players basically as an example.
Max Cash-Out – Many players claim bonuses and after they complete wager, they tend to withdraw immediately. Some players are left with substantial amounts only to find out they can only get x2 the bonus amount (Casinos like "Viks" casino and "Quasar Gaming" have this rule) or x10 their deposit. I understand this is frustrating and upsetting, but the problem is with the player itself. Stop blaming casinos because you could not do the simplest thing in the world which is just take 5 minutes to read the bonus terms.
Restricted games – Please check which games are allowed and not allowed to be played with bonus funds. Some casinos have a feature where bonus money is not even visible on the restricted games, but other casinos bonus money will show on restricted games. In many instances these would not lead to confiscation of winnings, it just that it would not count towards wagering. They also have a term where they would say that bets place on all "Other" games other that "Slot machines" will be deemed in violation of the terms and condition and your bonus winnings will be voided – So watch out for this one.
Double up feature – The only thing to say here is that this will not counts towards wagering.
Cashable and Non-Cashable bonuses – This one is another tricky one, some people call it a "Sticky bonus". This just means where you receive the bonus you can use it to place bets and for wagering purposes, but the bonus amount can never be withdrawn. I find this term ridiculous and always avoid this type of bonuses.
Bonus Abuse – This is a very complex/broad subject but mention the basic ones (Thanks for forum members tips which I included on this one), the rest you can do your own research about the rest associated with bonus abuse as we all have different opinions
Bonus per player, per account, per IP address etc. If you take that same bonus twice or more times, using different accounts under your name, then it's an abuse.
Claiming free spins offers – Deposit to get free spins and withdrawing deposit after claiming free spins but continue to play free spins is also some form of bonus abuse.
Accumulating bonus rounds and start playing them when your bonus balance reach zero, and you win those money as real cash.
Anything you can think of that disadvantages the house (Casino).
Bonus wagering period – This never really is a problem, but just make sure you complete you bonus wagering with the set time frame the casino provided. This can range anything from 3 – 30 days otherwise winnings will be voided.

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:

Verification – This is standard procedure and you have to do this if the casino request it.
Time-frames – This one I feel can be interpreted in many ways but let me give you my version of how I View things. When a casino says e-wallets 0 – 1 or 0 – 24 hours. This means that the casinos use that time-frame to process your withdrawal and after it being processed your money should be instantly available. Credit cards that state 3 – 7 business days and this is where some newbies get this wrong – This simply state the time frame they take to process the payment to your card, it does not mean you will get your money within 3 – 7 days, however this is possible. Prepare yourself for the longest waiting period to avoid becoming impatient and upset – So if a casino says 3 – 7 days expect to get it in 10 days max, however you can get it within 4 days, but sometimes casinos just stretch it to process it on the last day possible with the hopes you would reverse the withdrawal and continue to play. This technique of casinos sometimes works. So, if they process your withdrawal it can take another 3 – 5 days to hit your account based on your location and the banks in your country as they have internal controls with foreign currency. There are however hiccups with payment providers/processors etc. but these are at times out of the casinos control. My best is advice is "Patience".
Reversing Withdrawals – With the timeframes explanation I just gave above and being impatient, players tend to reverse their withdrawals. They continue playing and end up losing their winnings. Stop blaming casinos as this is your own fault that you Lost the funds. You made the decision to reverse the withdrawal. If you really need to play, make a deposit at another casino or sister website and play there while you patiently wait for you withdrawal. Some casinos have the lock feature, so lock down your withdrawal so you do not reverse the withdrawal or play at other casinos which has quicker withdrawal time frames of 0 – 1 hour instead of days. The key here is "Patience".

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.

Israel Bonds an example of Israeli corruption and Netanyahu's clean up

I want to give an example of corruption that actually does exist on the Israel side but might have been fixed by Netanyahu. Netanyahu spent a lot of time in the United States: 1956-8, 63-7, 72-8 (with about a year in Israel), 82-8, There is a reason he feels so native that American politicians joking refer to him as the "The Republican Senator from Israel". He understands deeply the plusses and minus of the USA economic model. At the same time Israelis are security and social issues focused economics doesn't get you the top slot. So while he often is quite effective in shifting the Israeli economy to something more like the USA economy eliminating many of the structures the Labour Party created he doesn't rhetorically focus on this.
A good example of this is "Israel Bonds". Israel like any other economy with its own currency issues Shekel denominated bonds that trade on international markets with a market interest rate. From the 1950s to the 1980s that interest rate was quite high because Israel was a financial mess. The Yishuv had been able to do several bond issues with USA Jews help (briefly mentioned in the article on Henry Morgenthau). Ben Gurion had another idea for financing and in 1950 created an institution to sell what are effectively Certificate of Deposit to American Jews to get financing. The mechanism for this is literally a USA FINRA regulated brokerage called the Development Corporation for Israel (DCI). These bonds (again really more like CDs functionally) because they were dollar denominated created a large inflow of foreign currency without the need for Israel to sell dollar denominated debt at a what would have been then a high rate.
From the start this worked well, the initial issue was supposed to be $25m and Israel quickly sold $52m. Getting Israel below market rate financing and allowing American Jews to feel they were contributing to Israel. This idea worked well so a similar company was established in the UK. By 1957 35% of the State of Israel's development budget was being covered by these middle class Jewish investments. There were wartime surges in 1967, 1973 and 1991 (Gulf War).
By the 1980s Israel began cleaning up its finances and the market rate of interest over treasuries that Israel needed to pay dropped dramatically. Israel Bonds cut their rates but not as quickly as the market was cutting. The Israeli Bonds went from below market rates to above market rates. That is to say that from mid 1980s till 2019 the DCI became a corporation existing to convince American Jews and other interested parties to buy CDs (with admittedly somewhat worse than typical bank terms) backed in the full faith and credit of a sound central bank at well above market rates. Needless to say not a hard sales job and the Israel Bonds continued to do well not just with individuals but with institutional investors as well. While they are still primarily sold to Jewish affiliated institutions like synagogue endowment or Jewish college pension plans even some non-Jewish institutions are willing to take free money.
Selling dollars for ninety-five cents is not a difficult job and thus rather enjoyable. So today what the DCI does is pay Israeli politicians very generous fees to go on fundraising / speaking tours to sell these bonds. Again the ones sold on speaking tours are are substantially higher than what the Israeli Central Bank (בנק ישראל) could sell dollar denominated bonds with no sales effort or administrative expenses at all. Needless to say this setup is very popular with Israeli politicians who are effectively charging Israeli taxpayers extra on loans and then taking a sales fee. It would be far cheaper for Israeli taxpayers if these politicians they just stole twice (or quince or 20x) as much from the Israeli treasury. Killing this ridiculous subsidy from Israeli Jews to American Jews and American Jewish institutions is the sort of issue where all the financially sound politicians from Yossi Beilin to Benjamin Netanyahu are on the same side. OTOH the mainstream left (Labour) tends to like this program so for example Shimon Peres was a big advocate for keeping the program when he was President of Israel.
It appears that since March 2020, the Covid Crisis, the rates have changed. Looking at the Israel Bond website rates. The only CDs I see that look even mildly interesting are the eMitzah ($90 / mo) and the Mazel Tov ($2500 / mo) which both have limits too small to be interesting to the wealthy or institutions i,e. probably aimed at kids or retired middle class Jews.
I think Israeli Bonds is a really simple example of the politics of the corruption that exists in Israel where it is easy to see how Israelis lose out. I originally wanted to cover something more complex like Israeli dairy which is a larger sum, but explaining how and why Israelis are getting ripped off would have been a bit more complex. I think still think dairy worth talking about and might do a follow up. In general Israelis have a completely distorted view of the level of corruption among their politicians who by global and Western standards are very honest. While at the same Israelis often don't understanding how incredibly expensive their regulatory regime is. I think Israeli Bonds is an example of Netanyahu's subtle removal of corruption that happens all the time, not as aggressively as I like but killing one every month or two isn't bad. And that's regardless if he personally cheats on bottle deposits and takes expensive cigars as gifts.
Western Leftists accuse Netanyahu of corruption all the time. But as far as I can tell his rulership he's been removing very expensive structural sources of corruption. I think this accusation is very misplaced. And I hope the honest Netanyahu critics who make this charge evaluate how misplaced it is. Anyway lots of possible topics related to Israel's regulatory expenses and the fight against structural corruption. So I look forward to input.
As far as the tie to the Palestinians three things:

The PA has a ton of these sorts of schemes in other areas and they are often even more destructive. A lot of the people fighting against Israeli regulation are fighting for corruption.
Regulatory burdens like this on real estate are one of the primary reasons permitting is so difficult in Israel including Area-C t get permitted construction (which deserves its own follow up post)
The Palestinian banking system in the West Bank, in Gaza and among Israeli-Arab criminals is genuinely distinct from the Israeli one partially because the Israeli banking system has historically been so dysfunctional. (The differences also deserves its own post which I do have in the queue).

2020 Emilia Romagna GP Free Practice and Qualifying Debrief - r/Formula1 Editorial Team

2020 Emilia Romagna GP Free Practice and Qualifying Debrief

Free Practice by UnmeshDatta26, showstopperNL, and DeathPig
Qualifying by redbullcat, ZeroSuitFalcon, and Felix_670
Editor's note: we have a special piece paying tribute to Senna to start our report today so be sure to check that out!

Live Session Discussion Threads

Remembering 1994: A Tribute to Ratzenberger and Senna

by flipjj
Twenty-six years ago, the fatal accidents of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna occurred at this very track. As Formula 1 returns to Imola for the first time in recent memory, the shadow of “the blackest day of grand prix racing”, and of Senna in particular, loom large over this weekend.
Senna has passed solidly into legend now, his exploits being subtly increased with each telling of his stories. But to those of us who saw it happening, they are not mythological events remembered with shaky on-board cameras and some of Murray Walker's finest work: they are memories of a magical time in Formula 1.
His loss cut deeply not just because a transcendent talent was taken early. With Prost's retirement at the end of 1993 and with Michael Schumacher still a young upstart, Senna was the top driver in the sport, and he was into the wise and experienced phase of his career, poised to follow in the footsteps of Sir Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, and Alain Prost, where being the best driver also meant battling FOM (Bernie) and FIA (Balestre before and Mosley in 1994) in matters of safety, competition standards, and more.
But it is on the racetrack where his loss was most apparent. His feats behind the wheel, the ones that are now discussed in hallowed tones, were awe-inspiring as they happened. His utter dominance of Monaco. His unbelievable qualifying laps. His crash because a wall moved (my favourite Senna story). His never give up attitude, taking cars with missing gears or failed cylinders to the line or willing his body through the toll of driving the car to the finish even if he would not have the strength to lift his trophy afterwards. There are so many amazing tales that the fans that were there for it will never forget.
I knew of him early, back when I was karting. When he moved to England, I hoped he would do well, but by the time he reached F1, I hated him. I saw him as the main challenge to Nelson Piquet's status as Brazil's #1 Formula 1 driver and even 8-year-old me could see he was faster, more charismatic — the national press fawned on him before 1984 started and Piquet himself made fun of the TV crew from Brazil mercilessly — and would be the end of my childhood driver’s title winning days (thankfully we still got 1987).
But no childish hate could prevent this eager 8-year-old from watching the Toleman in the 1984 Monaco GP. Or deny the brilliance when that black Lotus conquered Estoril in the rain. Or refuse those shaky on-board laps where he put one second on everyone else (I still have a Suzuka qualifying lap saved on my phone, for convenient re-watching). He was a marvel to watch. He was a magician in the cockpit, his skill is still breathtaking to watch, three decades later. My favourite on track moment of his, however, involves him stopping.
During qualifying for the 1992 Belgian GP, Erik Comas crashed his Ligier heavily at Blanchimont and was knocked unconscious with his foot pressing the throttle. The engine was likely to blow up if it was not cut and Comas was in serious danger, but with a live track, the marshals could not reach him quickly. As Senna passed the accident, he realized what was happening, and even as other cars were going around the debris, he jumped out of his McLaren onto a live race track, found the kill switch to Comas' car and held his head still until the medics arrived, likely saving his life. Intelligence, wisdom, courage, empathy, selflessness when helping others, Senna displayed so many of his finest qualities in that moment. That, above all, is what Formula 1 was robbed of 26 years ago. And, in a tragic twist of fate, Comas tried to do the same for his friend in Imola in 94, but sadly was unable to help.
And no talk about Senna would be complete without mentioning his impact in Brazil. He was more than a sports figure: he was a beacon of hope, a metaphor for what we, as a country, could be if we harnessed our energy towards progress. Senna did so much for the poor and marginalized of our country, most of it in silence, that it is impossible to properly measure the impact his efforts to improve the country have had to this day. (The work he started continues today through the Instituto Ayrton Senna).
He was, and still is in the eyes of many, one of the best humans our country has ever produced. A man who could be caring and daring, devoted to what he believed in, never shying away from taking on more responsibilities if he had to, and never afraid to fight for others, in Formula 1 or outside racing entirely, while still excelling in an extremely difficult career.
Senna was no saint. He was hard on the people he worked with, he demanded effort, sacrifice, and excellence. He would push you into the wall if it could gain him one tenth. There are several skeletons in his closet, both personal and professional.
But when we weigh the pros and cons, there is no question Ayrton Senna da Silva, bearer of one of Brazil's most common surnames, was an uncommon and excellent man. Flawed no doubt, as we all are, but Senna was never afraid to recognize and work on his flaws and, most importantly, never afraid to strive to be the best he could be, pulling his team, his sport, his country, towards the same goals with him.
Few have reached the level of excellence he did. And that is why he will be even more sorely missed as Formula 1 returns to Imola this weekend.
PS: If you want to contribute to Instituto Ayrton Senna and help further its goals, you can do so here.

ICYMI

Kimi Räikkönen and Antonio Giovinazzi sign for 2021, Sauber extends their partnership

Alfa Romeo have now announced that they are retaining their driver lineup for the upcoming season, putting an end to the rumors of Giovinazzi losing his drive at the end of this season. This news comes on the heels of the team announcing that Sauber will be extending their name partnership for another season.
During the Eifel GP at the Nürburgring, Räikkönen vehemently denied having signed a contract and yesterday we learned that he had only signed his contract this week. He is already the oldest driver on the grid with the most GPs in history under his belt, and he will definitely look to extend that record further.
Giovinazzi has a difficult year ahead of him. While he has equaled his teammate in qualifying head-to-head, he has had a hard time getting the better of his more experienced teammate on Sundays, with Kimi finishing ahead of him in all but 3 races. Only time will tell the direction the team, and the drivers, will take as they head into new regulations in 2022.

Williams reconfirm duo for next season

After swirling rumors that Russell was about to lose his drive at Williams after being confirmed under Claire Williams’ management, the team reconfirmed their lineup for next season. Nicholas Latifi and George Russell will be driving for Williams in the 2021 season. Russell denied any rumors that he was going to be replaced with Perez, chalking the rumors to Perez’s camp sowing confusion to distract the media from his real move.

Silly Season 2020 Still In Progress

by u/ZeroSuitFalcon
Following Alfa Romeo and Williams’ driver lineup announcements, the number of open seats shrinks yet again. At this point, the only open seats on the grid are both seats at Haas, one seat each at Red Bull and Alpha Tauri, and Lewis Hamilton’s seat at Mercedes. Of these five, the only obvious shoe-in is Hamilton. Here are my predictions for the remaining four seats:
The remaining Red Bull seat will go to Hulkenberg. He is known to be one of the better drivers at setting up cars and providing feedback on updates and I feel that RB would be keen on his recommendations to move towards a more stable platform. I do wish that Albon would be able to come close to Verstappen, but the results just aren't there and I doubt that he can put together a string of results convincing enough for RB to keep him before Turkey.
The remaining AlphaTauri seat will go to Albon as he gets demoted from RB. I think that Gasly and Albon will be made to fight to see where they are in regards to each other - a very close battle already as both had similar gaps to Verstappen in quali and in the race. I think Marko/Mateschitz will wait for Tsunoda to develop more in F2, to see if he can put together a stronger campaign for the F2 championship.
The first Haas seat will go to Perez. Haas is in desperate need of capital, the aero/chassis of the car is nowhere and they have to undertake that challenge while Ferrari sorts out their engine woes. I think Perez's association with Carlos Slim for money and the US/Mexico connection for PR poses great attractive qualities. The money Perez brings to the table in terms of sponsorships cannot be ignored.
The final Haas seat will go to Mick Schumacher. He is definitely going to close out the F2 championship and find himself promoted. Magnussen himself stated that his seat is open to a Ferrari junior and I believe they will choose Mick. While his pace and skill relative to his father is unknown, he can still drive and the association of his last name with Formula 1 again is going to be huge.

Track and Tech Talk

Pirelli have chosen to bring the middling set of tires, the C2, C3 and C4 tires to the track this weekend. Instead of the usual 13 tires provided to teams over a weekend, as this is a shortened weekend, the teams will only be running with 10 tires in total, two sets of hard, two sets of medium and six sets of soft tires. Three of the used tires from practice will be returned to ensure that the teams have the same amount of tires as they would following FP3 on other race weekends.
Pirelli expects the track to be quite bumpy and that could cause significant lateral forces on the tire as drivers correct their steering movements. The track has been resurfaced since the last time Formula 1 came to Imola, so the surface will be quite smooth, similar to Portimão. That said, running softer tires this week will mean the drivers will struggle less for grip than last time out.
The track is quite narrow, which will reduce overtaking opportunities across the track. Many corners are too tight for two cars to go side by side, so may be in for another DRS fest on the main straight. Team strategy will be key to jumping spots in the race. Expect to see many cars running lower downforce levels depending on how much they can sacrifice, as the track has strictly enforced track limits on two of the most technical corner exits.
Following the trend of the stewards this whole season, they have decided to enact very strict track extension rules at the exit of Turns 9 and 15. From Free Practice, we have seen how many cars and drivers couldn’t meet the strict track limits, with 60 lap time deletions in the session alone. This could throw a spanner in qualifying if the drivers can’t keep the car on track.

Free Practice

Free Practice at the legendary Imola circuit started with the teams gingerly exploring the historic tarmac. We only had a single practice session before Qualifying, with F1 exploring a new approach to weekends that are spread out across just two days, rather than three.
However, it wasn’t long before the drivers started to push, with Sainz going out on the gravel at Rivazza 2 - the last turn on the circuit and Alex Albon losing lap times with the particularly tight track limits six times. With the midfield battle still the only battle this year, every weekend is an opportunity for the teams to secure a better standing in the Constructors’ championship. The competition appeared to get to the drivers’ heads, with Ocon driving through the McLaren pitbox clipping a low board and almost hitting a cameraman before rolling into his slot.
Things were going wrong down the roster as well, with Latifi’s Williams getting BBW failure. The camaraderie at Williams was evident, as the mechanics and staff formed an intuitive human wall to prevent prying eyes and cameras from getting a look at the coveted innards. Ferrari’s Leclerc was also running afoul of the tires, with the young Monegasque not liking his red walled softs. However, he was still able to keep his understeering Ferrari ahead of his teammates’. Max Verstappen was also seeing red with the Red Bull, the RB16 apparently not feeling good. This was evident as he almost bungled a pit lane entry, stopping at the entry line and then going into the pits.
Max battled with one of his usual podium compatriots Valterri Bottas as the duo ran the softs. With limited information and just one practice session, most teams were having drivers do qualifying sprints as well as longer race runs to understand as much as they could about the track.
Renaults were back up the field after a strange weekend in Portugal last weekend, which undoubtedly left them wanting more, especially the Honey Badger. With the Renaults finishing P6 and P7 out of practice, this weekend looks more promising than last. Ricciardo looks particularly confident, and he is sure to be faster than his teammate this weekend if this session was anything to go by.
Gasly also had a strong showing, as he returned with a deal with AT in hand for 2021. Leclerc, for all his troubles, was also able to finish P5. He has shown his ability to drive beyond the obvious ability of the car, and although he has been struggling for understeer, he could put the car in a comfortable position.
However, the top of the standings were still the usual Mercedes duo, Lewis ahead of Bottas. Curiously, not all Mercedes cars were looking good, with the RP20 looking substantially off its usual pace if Free Practice was anything to go by.
The Haas duo had vastly different sessions as well: Magnussen got racey with Norris into the final two turns while Grosjean enjoyed his morning driving through the Italian countryside.
With the lack of historical data from previous years, it was a massive challenge for teams to collect data on the degradation of the tires. All of the drivers outside of Vettel, Perez, and Magnussen have driven here in some capacity, with Kimi being the only driver having driven here in an F1 car. From what we can see, the teams expect the drivers to use two charging laps to gain some temperature on the red-walled soft tires during qualifying.

Qualifying

Renault Leave It to the Last Minute

On track traffic was absolutely horrid this time out, the twisting and winding of the track coupled with the short width of the track doing little to abate matters. Subsequently, drivers had to back off more than usual to avoid dirty air affecting their fast runs.
At the start of Q1, the Scuderia’s Charles Leclerc was out on track first and consequently, briefly set the fastest lap, before Red Bull’s Max Verstappen predictably passed him on the timing sheets.
Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas attempted to set the teams first benchmark, but was unable to adhere to the track limits set at Turn 9 and found his lap time deleted. Alex Albon’s on track struggles continued visibly from Free Practice into Qualifying as he ran wide at Turn 9 as well.
Sebastian Vettel’s struggles with his car have been a huge theme this season and this session was no different. He was clearly struggling to keep his car on track and a run in with some rumble strip caused him to lose some carbon from his car. Ferrari’s current strategy seems to be weight reduction over aerodynamics - a strategy that does not favor Vettel’s driving style.
Ocon and Ricciardo were P13 and P19 as the session was coming to a close. They waited until there was less than a minute remaining to start their hot laps and found themselves promoted to Q2 in P7 and P11 respectively - close call for the Renaults.
Also in the closing stages of the sub-session, Magnussen found himself in the gravel on the exit of Turn 15. He knew his day was done and promptly rode the pasture into the pit lane to park his car in his pit box. His lap would have been deleted anyway if he chose to finish, as the cameras found him over track limits at Turn 9 as well. Romain Grosjean finished an unremarkable P16 to accompany Magnussen’s P17.
Lewis Hamilton had a final run in Q1 that placed him 4 tenths ahead of his teammate, however that lap time was deleted as well, relegating him down to a lowly second and a massive 0.004 seconds behind his teammate.
Despite some signs of life from Nicholas Latifi, he ultimately failed to beat his teammate George Russell once again. Russell found himself as high as P11 during his final run but finished P14, making it into Q2 once again. Russell and Latifi were separated by 2 tenths but Stroll, Grosjean, Magnussen and Räikkönen fit into that gap with Giovinazzi rounding out the field.

Red Bull Team Shows Their Worth, Yet Again

Into Q2 and most teams went out on the medium tire, hoping to be able to start the race on the more favourable compound, instead of the short-lasting soft. However, early on his first lap out of the pits, Verstappen complained (re: yelled into the radio) to his pit wall that he had “no power”, boxing immediately with the car pushed into the garage.
His teammate Albon, meanwhile, under pressure to keep his seat for next year, was pushing hard. This caused him to overdrive, spinning at Variante Alta, the chicane near the end of the lap, and flatspotting his medium tires.
Other drivers had started to set times, however, with Vettel setting the first competitive lap. However, this was later deleted as the beleaguered German extended the track at Rivazza #2, the last corner, spreading gravel over the racing line which wasn’t swept away until after the session ended.
The Red Bull team were working feverishly to fix Verstappen’s car to get him back on track. Team Principal Christian Horner said on the world feed that it had been diagnosed as a spark plug malfunction, which typically takes 15 minutes to fix. Minutes later, however, Verstappen was back on track and at full tilt, raising the question - can Red Bull mechanics replace a spark plug quicker than Albon can set a lap time?
Back on track, Hamilton and Bottas were setting their final lap times, with Bottas once again beating Hamilton by a mere half a tenth of a second. Gasly, in an impressive showing, and foreshadowing Q3, put his Alpha Tauri third, with Albon fourth, two tenths ahead of his wunderkid teammate. Ricciardo took fifth, with Verstappen sixth - a good effort considering it was his only Q2 flying lap following his mechanics’ master class. Leclerc was 7th, with Kyvat an excellent 8th in his first Q3 appearance of the year. Sainz and Norris rounded out the top 10 qualifiers for the final part of qualifying.
In a surprise twist, both the Racing Points of Stroll and Perez failed to get into Q3, the first time both pink cars failed to get into Q3 since the Styrain Grand Prix. With Perez 11th, Ocon posted a disappointing lap time, good for only 12th and two tenths off his Aussie teammate. For the second time in two races, Russell, in an ever-improving Williams FW43, out-qualified Vettel, while Stroll rounded out the top 15.

Bottas Pips Hamilton

With just over 10 minutes of track time left for the day, the cars went out on this glorious circuit for the final time of the afternoon. Lewis Hamilton was the first man to put a lap on the board, doing so in a scrappy manner after dipping his tyres into the gravel in the final sector.
This Q3 session brought us something we haven’t seen since the Mexican Grand Prix last year, Daniil Kyvat. The Russian did a great job to not only bring his Alpha Tauri into Q3 but also to put himself in a very respectable P8 to start the Grand Prix tomorrow. His teammate Pierre Gasly qualified in fourth place, another superb performance from the Frenchman who has been having a stellar season bouncing back from chaos in 2019.
Meanwhile at Mclaren, the day was not as good. Carlos Sainz, who we typically see outperforming his younger teammate, qualified down in 10th with Lando Norris just one spot ahead of him. The Woking team’s new upgrades appeared to not work as they intended. Although their qualifying was not up to par, they are still in a good position to get solid points on Sunday especially with the Racing Points a few grid spots back.
Today Charles Leclerc was once again the only Ferrari to make it into Q3. The Ferrari driver will be starting in P7 after wrestling his SF1000 into the top 10. After an excellent performance in Portugal last week, young Charles will be hoping to deliver the best result he can at the Scuderia’s third home race of the season.
Just ahead of Leclerc in P6 is Alexander Albon. The Thai driver had a frustrating afternoon with track limits, with multiple laptimes of his being deleted during the course of the three sessions. Nevertheless, he put in a solid lap that will give him an opportunity to capitalize on some points and make an effort in order to save his seat at the Red Bull team.
Daniel Ricciardo, like Pierre Gasly, also had a great day. Despite a brief scare in the pit lane, the Aussie star put in a nice lap to place his Renault in the top 5. He will be starting the race tomorrow alongside Gasly.
Now to the top 3, where we caught a glimpse of some true competition amongst the big teams. Lewis Hamilton put in a 1:14.229 which ultimately was not enough as his teammate Valtteri Bottas, unlike last week in Portugal, was able to conquer the Briton. The Finn pipped Hamilton from pole position by a margin of 8 hundredths of a second and is looking forward to a secret meeting with Toto later tonight. Max Verstappen will be starting behind the Mercedes duo in P3.

Looking Forward to the Race

In the post qualifying interviews, Lewis Hamilton told Johnny Herbert that it will likely be a boring race tomorrow, emphasizing the difficulty of overtaking at this circuit. Jeremy Clarkson, who is not shy of expressing his opinions on modern F1, disagreed. If some middle-aged men can overtake each other in big supercars at Imola, surely the 20 best drivers in the world in Formula 1 cars can make it happen, too.
Banter aside, we genuinely have a recipe for an interesting Grand Prix tomorrow. Max Verstappen, Pierre Gasly, Daniel Ricciardo, and Alexander Albon are all starting together which should make for a spectacle. Elsewhere there is the fight for the remaining points between Esteban Ocon, the McLarens, and the Racing Points in addition to the potential scrap for the win between the two Mercedes drivers. Imola is undoubtedly one of the best circuits in the world. For it’s sake and ours, let’s hope Formula 1 can deliver a race that is worthy of this legendary place.

Predictions

By redbullcat
If Lewis can get a good start tomorrow and overtake his teammate on the long run down to Tamburello, the race at the front is as good as done, with overtaking at Imola being so tricky. Barring any more power unit issues Verstappen should coast to third, or second if he can leapfrog Bottas with an alternative strategy.
The race for the final points positions should be close, with the McLarens, Perez in the Racing Point, and Ocon in the Renault starting on the 5th and 6th row. While I hope Gasly can hold on to his stunning 4th, I feel like he may begin to slip back, especially with Ricciardo right behind and Leclerc continually outperforming the SF1000 relative to his ultra-successful teammate.
As ever, I would love to see George Russell get his first F1 points. All he needs is a few good overtaking moves - tricky at Imola, but a lad of George’s skill can pull it off - some clever defending, and a retirement or two. C’mon George!
By Felix_670
With overtaking very difficult here at Imola, if Valtteri Bottas can hold off Hamilton and potentially Verstappen into turn 1, he could have a shot at winning this race. However, if that doesn’t happen and Lewis pips him into T1, it’s over. Alternatively, I think if Max gets an electric start he could take the lead into T1 and hold off the Mercs at least for a good few laps, nothing more than that unfortunately. It would be cool to see.
In the midfield, especially from P4-P7 I think we could get a fantastic fight and spectacle. Gasly, Danny Ricc, Albon, and Leclerc all starting next to each other?! Sign me up.
Elsewhere I think the fight for the last points positions should also be pretty good. The two RPs will be hungry to recover from their disappointing quali in addition to the McLarens and Ocon. I believe one of these guys will retire and Sebastian Vettel will be there to pick up the scraps for another points finish. Nothing more than P9, but I bet he’d sure as hell prefer that then 13th.
Editor’s note: if you missed flipjj‘s ebook on Lewis Hamilton’s 92 win career, be sure to check it out here.

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From someone who is vulnerable, MS, Nintendo & Sony don't care about making gaming safer for us so don't say they do

TLDR; Don't applaud the companies for caring about vulnerable gamers, between profits and caring, they are most likely still going to side with profits and abuse us for money.

Hi, first off, I wish to clarify that if there's a profit in it for them to care then they do care, and as people rather than companies they probably do care anyway. There's probably going to be some actual good come from their commitments but there are two major ways they and others take advantage of vulnerable gamers and people shouldn't say they care until these at least stop. They are loot boxes of course and advertising, yes advertising not microtransactions and I don't know what battle passes are exactly and hope to never look at them.

Start with the easier one, loot boxes. Just because there is a random chance doesn't mean its abusive which is the same as slot machines, there's the lights, sounds, suspense, I want this particular thing, etc. that come together to help make it addicting. A complication arises in that different people are also affected by different things; suspense might be a main factor for one person but irrelevant for another for instance. For some reason governments don't seem to want to legislate against it either, the Australian government did tests with thousands of adults addicted to gambling (outside of gaming) and found that loot boxes triggered the same part of the brain/endorphins that gambling does and the UK government/courts decided that because you can't get real money from them then they aren't gambling while ignoring they have other abusive parts in them and that vulnerable adults or any child can be sold something with zero value and no chance of profit.

Next is advertising, this took a long time for me to realise and I'll do my best to explain, also again different people are affected by different things. I like racing games and Forza Horizon 3 & 4 are some of my favourites but there is also plenty of advertising as you're playing the game. Loading screens, menu, map, interruptions in gameplay all come together to be constantly reminding you you can be spending money. On a good day this doesn't worry me but on a bad day when I'm depressed then it does, the more depressed you are the more vulnerable you are to advertising. At first, I had no idea it was the advertising that was making things worse, I downloaded GT Sport after not playing it for ages and looked at the store, there was like 300+ microtransactions on there so I backed out and loaded up the game, I was depressed a bit at the time and the game was helping. About a week later I realised the lack of advertising and constant annoyances Forza would give me were helping greatly. This does not mean GT Sport doesn't have advertising, just that I never noticed it and don't intent to try or go to other parts of the game to find it.

Advertising is arguable the worst thing on this list, when your fine it isn't abusive even though your still affected by it but when your depressed especially heavily depressed it's a completely different story as it is abusive and dragging you down. So far loot boxes/gambling sound worse as its worse at both times and can itself make you depressed when you're not but the bad thing about advertising is that it's pretty much everywhere TV, games, internet, etc. even billboards, signs, walls, etc. while walking down the street shopping can be painful or at least hurting. It is so widely accepted that being exposed to it while trying to recover from depression is so much more likely and that makes it worse, when your being hit from all sides and die from it, you can't just look at the big sticks and say the smaller ones don't matter. For example, being raped by itself would have a low death rate, not getting the chance to recover increases it to a much higher death rate, that makes the smaller sticks worse to me. Not to mention that some advertising specifically targets us like Coke selling happiness but instead all it does is help make you fat and even more depressed.

If you got this far, thanks for reading, this took a day or two as I kept coming back to it to do some more and feels hopefully good to get it off my chest and maybe help someone like I've been helped, I'm using a dummy account and email so I may or may not look at this again as I expect most people to not care and/or whine, most people benefit from advertising with free to air tv, free to play games, websites they look at, etc. and most I'm guessing just refuse to believe one can be negatively affected by advertising but think of this if you're not depressed. Do you look at an add and think I'm going to buy that, and I don't mean something you would have bought anyway they're just letting you know it can be purchased, I mean you wouldn't have purchased it but the advertising convinced you to buy it. If the answer is yes, then how are we not more affected by it then you are purchasing more things and getting into money troubles. If the answer is no, why are companies spending hundreds of millions and for really big companies a billion + on advertising if it doesn't make a difference to their sales. No matter what though they will always say advertising is OK as even when depressed, you have no interest in this or that so the advertising won't affect you no matter how depressed you are, but it doesn't change the fact that this or that also won't help you recover from depression either, you still don't have a place to turn to.

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ May 30, 1988

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words, continuing in the footsteps of daprice82. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
• PREVIOUS •
1987
FUTURE YEARS ARCHIVE:
The Complete Observer Rewind Archive by daprice82


1-4-1988	1-11-1988	1-18-1988	1-25-1988
2-1-1988	2-8-1988	2-15-1988	2-22-1988
2-29-1988	3-7-1988	3-14-1988	3-21-1988
3-28-1988	4-4-1988	4-11-1988	4-18-1988
4-25-1988	5-2-1988	5-9-1988	5-16-1988
5-23-1988	*	*	*

The NWA is the nexus of the three biggest stories this week, and the possible Turner buyout of the promotion may be the biggest story of the year. It’s been rumored for weeks that the Crockett family will sell the majority of their shares to Turner Entertainment, and Dave can confirm that such a deal is currently awaiting approval from Turner’s acquisitions committee. If all looks good, we should know within a week. We're not going to know within a week, this is going to take more time.
If Turner does buy the NWA, Jim Crockett is likely to remain in charge of day-to-day operations. The rest of the family would be divesting themselves of their interest in the company, and Turner will be in charge of promotion, PR, and other business activities. This should theoretically result in a “more professional and business-like approach.” Peers into the future HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Anyway, Dave thinks it’s foolish to speculate at this point about possible ramifications of the deal. And getting out of speculation and into fact: if the deal doesn’t go through, NWA is in a lot of trouble going into the summer, and they need to make major changes to how they conduct business no matter the outcome of the deal. There are wrestlers in the NWA who are owed money, and they’re not going to work for free.
Thanks to Turner’s help, the NWA has already cleared availability for over 8.5 million homes for the Great American Bash ppv on July 10. Vince McMahon’s attempt to monopolize ppv wrestling has failed, at least for the moment. This is the second widest potential audience for a ppv wrestling event ever (Wrestlemania IV cleared 10 million potential homes). With WWF running a ppv (the Summerslam) from Madison Square Garden on August 29, that means most ppv providers have elected to ignore Vince’s ultimatum prohibiting competing wrestling ppvs 60 days before and 21 days after a WWF ppv. That ultimatum killed Starrcade last year, but let’s be thankful it’s pretty much dusted. This all means WWF has failed to kill Crockett’s ability to run ppv events, which was one of their goals.
The card for the Great American Bash is set. Flair vs. Luger for the NWA Title; Windham vs. Rhodes for the U.S. Title; Triple tower of doom featuring the Road Warriors, Garvins, and Steve Williams vs. Kevin Sullivan, Al Perez, Mike Rotunda, Warlord, and Barbarian (yep, they’re going forward with it); Tully and Arn vs. Sting and Koloff for the world tag titles; and Midnights vs. Fantastics for the U.S. tag titles.
The income potential is big for the Great American Bash. If they equal their previous buyrates, they should clear over a quarter million homes and take in ppv sales of over $4 million (ppv for the show will be $15.95), which will at the most conservative estimate give the NWA a cool $1 million in revenue after all the other splits on the ppv total revenue.
The FCC ruled in favor of syndicated exclusivity this past week, and this has some potential consequences for the NWA. Syndicated exclusivity means that any program carried in your local market (so a show that’s put on free tv) cannot be shown on cable by bringing it in from another market. Dave gives the example of how if your local channel 7 carries the Beverly Hillbillies, then your cable company can’t show Beverly Hillbillies by pulling it in from another station in a different market, even if it's in another time slot. This is a potential catastrophe for WTBS, because so much of their programming is old network reruns which duplicate stuff shown in most markets, meaning they have to completely change up their programming or have so little of their material picked up by cable companies that they drop the station altogether. This is effective a year from now (plus any time that might get it stalled by court appeals), so there’s probably a couple years before it really goes into effect, but this is the main reason Turner is starting the TNT network and why eventually you’ll see wrestling get on there alongside the sports and movies and there won’t be old network tv reruns on it.
Curiously, the NWA was doing the hard sell of the May 22 Omni house show on this past Saturday’s TBS show. The press boxes were really full (they’re usually totally empty), and Dave supposes they were probably filled with Turner executives checking out what they’re considering buying. It worked, by the way - 7,300 fans turned up for the Omni show, triple the crowd at last month’s show (and no, the card wasn’t any more enticing than last month’s either).
Reborn UWF had their first show on May 12 and the fans flooded in. They sold out Korauken Hall in 15 minutes about a month ago, with all seats priced at $40 (a $92,000 gate). The first match of the three match show had Nobuhiko Takada vs. Shigeo Miyato in a ten minute exhibition, where Takada won with two submissions to nothing for Miyato. Tetsuo Nakano made Yoji Anjo submit in a 24 minute match for the second match of the show. Lastly, Akira Maeda and Kazuo Yamazaki had a match with tremendous heat and it is clear that there is no man in wrestling as over as Maeda is. Maeda hasn’t wrestled since he shot on Riki Choshu in November last year, and as a result he wasn’t quite in top condition and blew up part of the way through the match, but they went 25 minutes and Maeda won by submission. Dave was told American fans would likely be bored by the match, but the fans there were eating it up. UWF’s next show is set for June 11 in Sapporo, and all 6,000 seats sold out on the weekend of May 13. The real test is coming, though: will they be able to maintain interest with only three major stars and no regular foreigners? They’ll have foreigners in Sapporo, with those guys probably doing singles matches against Takada, Yamazaki, and Maeda.

Watch: Maeda vs. Yamazaki

Former wrestler and referee Fred Atkins passed away at the age of 77 on May 13. He was originally from New Zealand and refereed for Frank Tunney in the Toronto area for a long time. He also managed Giant Baba in the 1960s during Baba’s heel tours of the U.S. His biggest match as a referee was the Terry Funk/Harley Race NWA World Title change at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1977.

Watch: the final ten minutes of Funk/Race

Financial News Network, which debuts Continental Wrestling Federation on May 29, announced that they’ll be airing World Wrestling Council’s anniversary show this fall. WWC’s show drew 42,000 fans to three locations last fall, and will be aired live starting at 8 EST on September 10. Just an aside, but that means the card starts at 9 pm in Puerto Rico. Billed for the show are 12 championship matches featuring the likes of the Road Warriors, Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, Iron Sheik, Bruiser Brody, and more. Sadly, we’re going to have very different news related to Brody soon. As far as Dave knows, this is the first time an international big show is being broadcast live in the U.S.
Dave got a chance to see the tv from the Oregon promotions and there’s a lot of sly remarks about the other promotions going on. Haynes’ OWF (Oregon Wrestling Federation, the Washington part isn’t there anymore) is emphasizing the size of their wrestlers and how they’re trying to put Oregon on the Map. Don Owen’s Big Time Wrestling, on the other hand, is emphasizing action as well as touting how they have only a 3.5 hour delay between taping and airing, as opposed to the OWF taping a week in advance. Dave says it pretty much is a battle of action vs. size from watching the shows. And if you know Dave, he prefers action to size.
On Big Time Wrestling, they announced Curt Hennig would defend the AWA World Title against Col. DeBeers on May 19. Two reasons for that to be silly. First, Hennig lost the title five days before they announced this. Second, why are they billing DeBeers with his South African gimmick when he was a major headliner here for years as Ed Wiskoski?
Turns out Abdullah the Butcher had gallbladder and ulcer surgery, not kidney surgery. He was released from the hospital on May 19, and should be back in action in late July. This really hurts the current All Japan tour, since he was set as one of the big headliners for the tour.
All Japan will be unifying the tag team titles rather than the singles titles on June 10. Tentatively, they have Tenryu and Ashura Hara putting up their World tag titles against the Road Warriors and their International tag titles. But first they have a world tag title defense scheduled for June 6 in Sapporo (just 5 days before UWF’s show there, so note the timing and how they’re dealing with competition) against Jumbo Tsuruta and Yoshiaki Yatsu. Most expect Tsuruta and Yatsu to win and go on to the unification. And All Japan will deliver on expectation.
JWP, the younger of the two women’s promotions in Japan, will be closing up shop after their May 29 Korauken Hall show. The wrestlers haven’t been getting paid lately because there’s just no money coming in for them. The promotion debuted in 1986 and just never got a television foothold established to ensure survival and cash flow.
All Japan Women is limping along after the retirements of Dump Matsumoto and Yukari Omori, which has led to their ratings being cut in half. There are even rumors that Chigusa Nagayo may retire out of shame that the company’s business has fallen so far and that she hasn’t been able to keep ratings up.
In other news about All Japan Women, some of the owners (the Matsunaga brothers, the last of whom died in February 2020), are trying to sell stock and divest themselves of a portion of the company. They thought bringing in the Jumping Bomb Angels as WWF tag champions would drum up interest, but they haven’t proven to be drawing and really what they are drawing is pretty much down to Chigusa Nagayo. So if Chigusa leaves, the whole company’s in major trouble. On June 8, the Jumping Bomb Angels defend the WWF women’s tag titles against the Glamour Girls, and spoiler alert - that’s going to be an unauthorized title change and kill the women’s tag division as a thing in WWF.
[Stampede]: Steve Blackman’s nickname is Rambo. Just thought that was funny.
Owen Hart wrestled his last match in Calgary for Stampede before going to his Japan tour. It was an absolutely wild brawl against Makhan Singh for the North American title. The finish had Hart thrown onto the floor and Singh’s manager Abdul Wizal started choking him with a chain, only for Hart to escape and tuck the chain in his trunks, which led to him using it to KO Singh and pin him. Then Vulcan Singh (Gary Allbright), dressed as Jason the Terrible, came and attacked Hart and told the referee to check Hart’s trunks, where he found the chain and reversed the decision.
Jerry Lawler’s first defense of the AWA World title against Bill Dundee drew only 2,200 on May 16. Face vs. face and Lawler used a chain to win. Other matches included Robert Fuller beating Jeff Jarrett and Max Pain beating Curt Hennig by disqualification in a CWA title match.
Dave got a chance to watch the tv from the week before the AWA World title change in Memphis and is amazed they didn’t sell out the show with the title change. They hyped the show great, but it’s clear Memphis is trending downward, and no amount of local news coverage or having the mayor on air begging people to come support Lawler seemed to get them there. All the local stations, bar one, covered the title change as just straight up news without even being tongue in cheek about it, and you never see that in tv news these days. When ESPN and CNN and ABC radio covered Wrestlemania, all of them were treating it like a joke. Memphis is really the last bastion of kayfabe, in a way.
Visiting Memphis on the May 23 tv show and making his Rewind debut is Bob Holly. He’s teaming with Pat Rose in an AWA Tag title match, and they’re coming in from World Organization Wrestling in Pensacola. Nobody knows who Holly is, and nobody in the area remembers Rose, so they’re not going to be exciting anyone at the show.
Missy Hyatt is gone from Memphis. There seems to be heat, but Dave’s not sure what the story is. Robert Fuller has twice stolen angles of Eddie Gilbert’s design for Continental and used them days later in Memphis, so that’s probably part of it. The planned Lawler vs. Gilbert AWA title defense set for May 29 has been canceled.
Missy Hyatt is in Continental now as a tv announcer. Also newly added are Mr. Olympia and Willie B. Hurt. Willie is Pez Whatley doing a comedy gimmick where he tells the fans they know his real name and who he is and where he’s been, but now he’s Willie B. He’s a comedy gimmick who won his debut in a squash, though, so that’s different.

Watch: Willie B. Hurt

Gone from Continental are Steve Armstrong and Robert Fuller, who both no-showed. Dutch Mantell also appears to be gone.
In USA Wrestling, Terry Gordy and Wendell Cooley did a 20 minute draw on May 14. The match itself was so-so, but they brawled for another 20 minutes after the match and went all over the building, and that was great.
They also did a big heart attack angle with Ron Wright in USA that was all taped for tv. It all came on the heels of a match where Mongolian Stomper wrestled the Bullet and if Bullet lost, he’d have to unmask. Well, Bullet lost, and under the mask was the Bullet! Yeah, he wore a mask under his mask.

Watch: The Bullet unmasks and causes a Ron Wright heart attack

Word from Larry Sharpe’s Monster Factory are that Futahaguro’s training drills showed him to be really agile for a 350 lb guy. Word in Japan is that if he does go into pro wrestling he’ll go with All Japan over New Japan. Inoki doesn’t sign sumo wrestlers because TV-Asahi holds the purse, and they have a good relationship with the sumo world (they even have a weekly show called Sumo World). Bringing Futahaguro in would be highly disrespectful of New Japan, considering that he was banned from sumo, so yeah. Koji Kitao will not be likely to head to New Japan.
Before he left for the U.S., Riki Choshu banned two major Japanese magazines from conducting interviews and taking photos of himself and the other wrestlers under his banner. That means Super Strong Machine, Hiroshi Hase, Kenta Kobayashi, and more. The magazines? Weekly Fight and Weekly Pro Wrestling. This seems to be in retaliation for positive and strong coverage of UWF, with Weekly Pro in particular getting strongly behind them and even saying things like NJPW doesn’t have top heavyweights and saying Choshu jumping back and forth between All Japan and New Japan has caused the recent hard times in the business in Japan. This got Choshu upset and he’s already hard to deal with at the best of times, but he really didn’t care for being told he’s past his prime or hurting the business. And yet… they kind of have a point.
WWF also has press issues of late related to Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth. They’ve been trying to get Elizabeth and Savage featured in newspapers and on tv to get him over in the media as the face of WWF while Hogan’s gone. It has not gone well. The very first interview, which Dave believes was with a Boston paper, called Elizabeth an airhead, and all subsequent interviews have been canceled. While she may not be a great actress, Miss Elizabeth is definitely a character and Elizabeth Hulette Poffo is not an airhead, according to those who know her well.
World Class now has a committee handling booking. You’ve got Bill Irwin, Eric Embry, Scandor Akbar, Michael Hayes, and Ken Mantell handling booking. Dave’s never seen booking by committee work in the past because you have too many cooks in the kitchen. Their three shows this past weekend drew under 400 fans each, so at least they’re trying something.
Jerry Lawler is working on a deal to do AWA vs. WCCW title vs. title matches with Kerry Von Erich in Dallas, Memphis, and Kansas City. This is the beginning of the eventual formation of the USWA.
Roddy Piper’s next two movies out in theaters have completely opposite word of mouth about them. Buy and Cell, according to someone who saw a preview showing, is absolutely terrible. They Live, however, is good and genuinely scary. If it does well, expect Piper to do more films with Carpenter. If it flops, he’s probably done as an actor.
World Class has gone to the WWF school of crowd estimation. Mark Lowrance called the crowd at Texas Stadium “20,000 fans” while Kerry von Erich said “15,000.” The reality was they had 5,900 paid.
Scott McGhee, who suffered a stroke in January and was thought would never wrestle again, may return to the ring. Dave got a report that he’s starting up or soon to be starting up in Florida. Unfortunately, it’s a false alarm. McGhee will have a match in 1989, but he’s done.
There’s a lot of heat between Verne Gagne and the Rockers. So much so that Verne wants to put together a new team under the name the Midnight Rockers since he owns the trademark (that’s why they wrestle as the Midnight Rock & Rollers in Continental). What's with companies wanting to put knockoff guys in Kliq guys' gimmicks?
Deep South wins the “lowest class act of the month” award. They have a segment with the reader mailbag, which Dave has always assumed was largely kayfabed. Well, some subscriber wrote a letter in and it was highly critical, particularly of the cheap shots they take at Joe Pedicino on tv. Well, they read the letter on the air. Only they changed all the content to make it highly complimentary to Deep South. So there you have it, they kayfabe the letters to make themselves look good. I feel like this is more Dave being offended on behalf of a subscriber than something shocking and truly low, though.
Dale Gagner, who used to work for Eddie Sharkey in Minnesota, now books for Billy Haynes as booker in OWF. When he worked for Sharkey, his manager name was Diamond D. You might know him as the guy who tries to claim a relationship to Verne Gagne and use the AWA name in the late 90s (check the Feb. 22, 1999 and March 21, 1999 rewinds for more on that business). Dude’s a snake, and not in a fun Randy Orton or intimidating Jake the kind of way.
One of Buddy Rose’s former “Playgirls” is now suing Hugh Heffner. Okay, so back in 1983 Buddy Rose was “Playboy” Buddy Rose and his valets were his “Playgirls.” Well, one of them was a model named Carrie Leigh, and she eventually moved in with Hugh Heffner and is suing him, which has made news lately. We’re never going to talk about this again, so here’s the brief: she’s suing for palimony (basically, they were not married, but she felt they had a relationship of marriage-level significance and then the same basic idea behind suing for alimony goes forward). She alleges Hugh told her he wanted to marry her, have kids with her, etc. and now that’s not happening and they’ve separated and she’s suing. And this won’t even get a settlement, but this was apparently a trendy kind of lawsuit in the 80s. They never worked.
ITV in the UK will be dropping wrestling by the end of the year. It’s part of an effort to “polish up” their image. Wrestling audiences on ITV have fallen from over 7 million to 2.5 million in the past few years, and production costs for wrestling have been costing the station almost $2 annually, so time to cut costs. The big reasons for the drop off in ratings and interest is the death of Mal Kirk via heart attack in the ring and the public revelation that Big Daddy, whom Dave calls a 50 year old, 350 lb version of Dusty Rhodes, was really the promoter’s brother. Kirk’s heart attack happened right after Daddy splashed him, too. It’s also come out just how poorly promotions have been paying wrestlers in England. In short: Britwres has always been an absolute shitshow, and I’d say the only difference between then and now is how many nonces they have today, but they had Jimmy Saville back in the day so fuck it, Britwres is and always has been proper fucked.
A couple weeks back Big Bubba Rogers debuted as the Big Boss Man on WWF “C” team shows. He’s still got the sunglasses, but he’s now being billed as a prison guard and squashing Jose Estrada. Until he’s facing bigger guys, he’s been told not to sell a thing. Expect him to debut on tv in mid-June.
WWF managers are officially said not to be traveling except for tv nights. So now Fuji and Heenan will make the shows they’re supposed to wrestle on and Jimmy Hart, due to his gimmick, will show up to some of the shows in buildings he’s supposedly banned from. Slick and Humperdink will only be used on tv, and Humperdink may even be at risk of being let go. Elizabeth will be on all Randy’s shows due to her importance to his act.
WWF is reviving the weasel suit angle for Heenan vs. Ultimate Warrior in Philadelphia next month. The weasel suit originates in Heenan's AWA days.

Watch: Bobby Heenan vs. Greg Gagne and the birth of the weasel suit

Wrestlers in the NWA were due their big payments on May 1 and they still haven’t come in. Lots of disgruntled wrestlers, now. Also the Main Event show hasn’t resulted in any payments either beyond standard tv money, which is like $100, and those shows were put together to be bigger paydays for the guys in the neighborhood of a few thousand per show.
Loads of NWA guys rumored to jump ship to WWF, but that’s always the case. Dave’s only heard three names from WWF people, and only one of them is an NWA guy (probably Sting, I’d guess).
Dave’s not seen the whole schedule for the Bash tour, but NWA is about to start promoting it heavily. There’s going to be something like 19 scaffold matches and 15 War Games matches between June 26 and August 7. There will even be a triple tower of doom or two. FlaiLuger for the NWA title on July 10 is set to be the only NWA title match on the tour. They’ll be put in tag matches otherwise, including War Games matches.
At an NWA show in Houston taped for the local market, Steve Williams apparently looked directly into the camera during his match and asked “How did you like that, Vince?” Not a clue what that’s about.
Dave’s got complaints about NWA tv. They didn’t follow up on either main event angle from last weekend. Instead they did a bit where Kevin Sullivan kidnapped Precious for all of 90 seconds, because they had the Garvins find her under a table shortly after the kidnapping, at which point she shouted "You stay away from me, Jimmy Garvin." That's some fast-action brainwashing right there. They also did a Road Warriors vs. Powers of Pain match that had Hawk do a stretcher job, but they didn’t show it on tv and never followed up. They also haven’t announced a single match for the second Clash on tv yet. That’s only two and a half weeks away. Stop showing palm trees in your commercials and start advertising matches.
Larry Young, an umpire for the American League, writes in to say he’s happy to have discovered a newsletter for smart wrestling fans. He talks a bit about pro wrestlers who had baseball careers. Mostly I bring him up because during the 1995 umpire lockout he winds up refereeing Undertaker vs. King Kong Bundy at Wrestlemania 11.
More letter writers are big mad about the letter in the May 9 issue that thought Dave was off the mark about Clash vs. Wrestlemania. They're upset about the letter being insulting to Dave and disagreeing with them about what wrestling was good that night and honestly Dave doesn't need them to defend him.
A letter asks about the whereabouts of a bunch of wrestlers from the old California promotion Big Time Wrestling. Dave gives an overview. It was run by Roy Shires from ~1961 through 1981 and occasionally did shows in Hawai’i, Samoa, and Nevada as well. It wound up folding because when their top talent got stale, they replaced them with cheaper talent and the fans could tell the difference in quality and stopped supporting them. When AWA started running in the area, they pretty much gave up. Dave says he always thought it was ironic Verne would complain about Vince’s business practices, when Verne did the same thing to Big Time Wrestling. Anyway, Dave goes and gives some updates on the wrestlers. Pepper Martin is an actor. Kinji Shibuya has been retired for a decade and lives in the Bay Area. Masa Saito is still a big star in Japan. Raul Mata trains wrestlers in Florida. Dutch Savage does color commentary for Don Owen in Portland. Paul DeMarco still occasionally wrestles independent cards. Lars Anderson hasn’t been heard from since he booked for Mrs. Maivia in Hawai’i two years back and it went poorly. No clue where Mephisto is. Lonnie Mayne died in a car accident about ten years back. No idea what became of Bobby Garrett and Jim Starr.

NEXT WEEK: Turner buying NWA news, WCCW and AWA to do title unification matches, Electronic Media Magazine story on wrestling, and more

deathly worried about the future of me and my gf [tw: abuse, self-harm, substance abuse]

So this is my first ever time posting to any forum like ever, let alone reddit but i guess the lack of friends and family connections I've had have lead me to seek advice elsewhere so here it goes...
[disclaimer i've been told i cant focus properly on points when i write so i do apologise if this is a bit all over the place]
I [21M] met Edith [20MtF] (obv not her name) about two years ago off a popular dating app for the LGBT community. We got together officially on New Years Day.
Through the first lockdown in the UK, I stayed at hers. She was grappling her female identity for some of the first times in her life, as well as dealing with what is suspected C-PTSD from family issues and past abuse [she takes medication for it]. She ended up being massively dependent on me, having no comfortable means of work or real socialisation outside the house. A lot was said, I suffered a lot of verbal abuse from her and i felt some of the worst pain I have felt in my life. She barely left the house and drank and blazed every day which that left me to deal with uni, my job and practically all the chores for her room, cooking and cleaning and shopping, et cetera et cetera. I did my fair bit of substance use along with her to cope with the pain and stress of everything. I was constantly bombarded with accusations that i wasnt supporting her properly and it felt like her opinion, no matter how subjective, had to reign true and wouldnt let me out these tense confrontational situations until i admitted she was right. I was constantly told that "you don't care about me" despite all the things I said and did solely for her and I never felt any sort of fulfillment in the relationship. I would harm myself through cutting, alcohol abuse and just repeatedly punching myself in the face over and over, all the while I justified and never blamed her for causing it. I always scapegoated it to be my fault or just "you can't control your trauma, Edith" but in reality I feel I couldnt be honest about how i felt about her part in my suffering.
I basically did all the shopping, housework and cleaning and since I was out the house, most of the mess came from her. I would clean her room to a T (no pun intended) before work and id come back to clothes emptied on the floor, pee in cups and ashtray spill everywhere. Hygienically, it was a nightmare for me but i never really brought it up because I felt it was my duty to make sure she was okay during one of the toughest identity crises she's ever had to go through. Although I understood and respected her when she couldnt leave the room without feeling gender-affirmed, I was always perplexed by her not being able to leave to even pee in the toilet meters down the hallway, hence the aforementioned 'pee cups'. She has explained to me that if random straight people are in the house, she has a tendency to avoid confrontation, worried that transphobia will occur. This has continued till present day, as with the 'pee cups', and its been real annoyance to me that i have to socialise at times on her behalf all because her flatmates are with strangers who 'may or may not be transphobic'. All kind of questions i try and ask about it she just says that i wouldnt understand as im cis.

That being said, we've been back together for almost 3 months, talked things out and things are substantially better. I got her working online for one of my family members, she's cut down on substances somewhat and shes demonstrated a real effort to try and calm her angers, do things for herself and realise when shes taking things too far. But now she wants to move in with me come next year, and i have a few reservations building up that I dont know how to bring up to her...
Firstly, I have already had to spend an absurd amount of money solely supporting her and her drug habits (albeit the habits are better, still end up paying for her sometimes). I'm worried that moving in with her is just gonna open a new door to more and more reliance. This is considering that at the moment, although shes getting some positive independence, i still see her for 5 hours minimum every day and considering how late i work and how late I awaken, I effectively spend more time out of my house and own time than in it and im not massively enjoying it.
Secondly, I have real reservations about her hygiene issues and although cause I'm not living with her now I dont have to deal with it as much, I'm worried moving in is gonna put this problem right in my face. There are times where I almost feel sick at the smell and sight of the 'cups' and I really don't want that to be in our house together. We dont know if we're getting separate rooms or not but i just worry that OUR house is just gonna be HER mess.
Thirdly, I just have a feeling that I wish i could have more actual free-time to myself and I just don't see how moving in with her is gonna fulfill that. Most of my free time is in the mornings nowadays and it basically consists of house-work, eating, getting ready for work etc. There isnt really any free-time i can slot in and considering how often i see Edith, there isnt a day where i dont see her. Whenever I suggest going home early or earlier than expected or perhaps a day to myself, she get upset, her voice becomes confrontational and she does nothing but blankly list off how alone shes going to be. I feel like I've committed a major felony every time I want to have some time alone and I dont know if i should feel bad since she cant fully look after herself considering her lack of work, parental support and motivation in general.
I just wanted to ask those who have trans partners or are trans themselves to give any advice on anything said thus far. Is this a relationship that can actually be healthy or am I deluded? Can a move in together improve the relationship? Am I crazy for forgiving the verbal onslaught i endured for months?
I am constantly in a state of evaluating how much is just my fault for letting it get this way and (because of all shes been through) I find it hard to actually bring up when she has done something thats hurt me. Edith has been really improving since lockdown but I just dont know how to tell her I wish things were better despite all the improvements.
Messages are open to anything, I don't care if its a reality check or just a little advice. I really dont have the social skills in person to detail what I've been through to my limited social circle and am just looking for any postiive or negative interraction from this sub cause I really am in a burning point in life and don't know what to do. Any questions or clarifications y'all need I'm willing to give context etc.
Thanks y'all x

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