Monthly Archives: September 2020

Cubs Take Down Yankees In Strat-O-Matic’s 2020 Baseball Playoff Simulation

Anthony Rizzo (credit: Arturo Pardavillo III)

It has been more than eight decades since the Cubs and Yankees met in the World Series, but according to the simulation posted today by Strat-O-Matic (www.strat-o-matic.com), the leader in sports simulation games, those two storied franchises will survive three rounds of playoffs and match up for the title next month. Chicago, behind four home runs and 10 RBI by MVP Anthony Rizzo, won it in seven games, a two-run single by unlikely hero Victor Caratini in the eighth inning of the deciding contest providing the winning margin in what would be Chicago’s second crown in five years and fourth in its history.

After edging sixth-seeded Miami in the N.L. Wild Card round, two games to one, No. 3 Chicago won its next series more efficiently, 3-1 over Atlanta and 4-1 over San Diego. The Yankees, the A.L. No 5 seed, had a similar run to the Series, sweeping Cleveland in the Wild Card round, taking Toronto, three games to one, and Minnesota, four games to one.

In the World Series, the Cubs took a three games to one lead before the Yankees earned wins in games five and six to set up the winner-take-all finale. Despite two home runs by Giancarlo Stanton, Caratini’s pinch hit put the Cubs up for good in the 8-5 victory. Rizzo hit .483 and also scored seven runs in the series, which pitted the same franchises who were paired in 1932 and 1938.

“It’s been a season unlike any other in so many ways,” said Hal Richman, Strat-O-Matic President. “And while these may not be the favored teams in either league, anything can happen in a short series, and the Strat-O-Matic simulation, which has annually been a good predictor of the winner, reflect that.”

Each round’s series results are below; fans can see linescores for each contest at www.strat-o-matic.com.

2020 Strat-O-Matic Baseball Playoff Simulation Results:

A.L. Wild Card Round
Toronto 2, Tampa Bay 1
New York 2, Cleveland 0
Minnesota 2, Houston 0
Chicago 2, Oakland 0

N.L. Wild Card
Los Angeles 2, Milwaukee 0
San Diego 2, St. Louis 1
Chicago 2, Miami 1
Atlanta 2, Cincinnati 1

A.L. Division Series
New York 3, Toronto 1
Minnesota 3, Chicago 1

N.L. Division Series
San Diego 3, Los Angeles 2
Chicago 3, Atlanta 1

Championship Series
New York 4, Minnesota 1
Chicago 4, San Diego 1

World Series
Chicago 4, New York 3

Majority of online gambling ops ‘got used to’ COVID-19 impact

Malta-licensed Angler Gaming outperformed all online gambling rivals in revenue growth during the second quarter, but US-facing DraftKings and FanDuel are the best bets for future growth.

The COVID-19 pandemic took a significant toll on operators’ activity levels, but Online Gambling Quarterly’s latest report indicates a slim majority (51%) of operators now believe that they ultimately “got used to” the situation, and things were now “more or less” running smoothly again. Only 17% said COVID-19 remained “a big challenge” for their daily work activity.

Eternal optimism abounds, as the percentage of operators who believe the business climate was ‘poor’ fell from 36% in March to just 12% in September, while those who rated the climate ‘good’ rose from 19% to 33%. Nearly half (49%) expect the situation would be ‘good’ one year from now.  (Tune in next year, when we report on the number of operators who’ve been forced to eat their junior staff as the pandemic’s ninth wave disrupted food supply chains.)

PANDEMIC WINNERS

Global fantasy soccer platform Sorare officially launches out of Beta in the US as Paris-Saint Germain joins the platform

Paris Saint-Germain, the 2020 Champions League Finalist, and Sorare, the global fantasy soccer game, has signed a partnership to create digital collectibles of PSG players making it the 100th club to join Sorare

 The US ranks 2nd in terms of total number of Sorare users, and number two in terms of total time spent on the platform per user, a reflection of the country’s appetite for fantasy and card trading games

As part of this partnership with PSG, Sorare will gain the rights for ‘legendary players’ from 2013, including David Beckham

Paris, September 30th, 2020 – Global Fantasy Soccer platform Sorare announces today that it officially launches in the US, paving the way for significant partnerships with US-based soccer clubs after having announced a partnership with the Major League Soccer Players Association in June. Additionally, starting today and following PSG’s partnership with Sorare, collectors and gamers in the United States and elsewhere will now be able to freely buy, sell, and play with limited edition digital player cards of PSG players such as Neymar and Kylian Mbappé. This also includes historic players from 2013 such as David Beckham. Since its launch in early 2019, the platform has grown an average of 52% month on month, and today counts over 40.000 users worldwide.

7 reasons to attend the Gaming in Germany Conference, Oct. 19 2020

Join us on October 19, 2020 at the Grand Hyatt Berlin for the first major English-language conference to take an in-depth look at the soon-to-be regulated German online gambling market.

The 2020 Gaming in Germany Conference will be organized in a safe and responsible manner – above and beyond all applicable local anti-Covid-19 measures.

Visit our conference website for more information, or register now: https://bit.ly/3jtJtSc

Here are seven more reasons why you can’t afford to miss this event:

NFL odds roundup: Week 4 lines & trends

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

All NFL teams will reach the quarter point of their regular-season schedule in Week 4, and thankfully there have been no major COVID-19 issues in terms of players sidelined or games postponed – unlike college football, which has a lot of virus-related issues and cancellations.

Teams that are 0-3 can essentially forget about the playoffs as just six clubs to start a season that way since 1980 made the postseason. The last was the 2018 Houston Texans (who are 0-3 again). On the flip side, more than 75 percent of teams over the past 40 years to start 3-0 reached the playoffs.

While Week 3 had a handful of marquee matchups, Week 4 is lacking a bit. Clearly the biggest one is a 4:25 p.m. ET kickoff between the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs from Arrowhead Stadium in a potential AFC playoff preview. Both teams come off facing tough opponents, with the Patriots beating the Las Vegas Raiders 36-20 and the Chiefs largely dominating 34-20 in Baltimore on Monday night.

CalvinAyre.com October 2020 Featured Conferences & Events

CoinGeek Live

CoinGeek returns with its latest conference, CoinGeek Live! Hosted from hubs in New York and London, this conference will reveal the superpowers of the Bitcoin SV blockchain.

This three-day conference will offer talks from over 50 speakers, showing off the latest from the Bitcoin industry while demonstrating the power of Satoshi’s original vision of Bitcoin. It’s the perfect opportunity for developers to learn the endless possibilities that Bitcoin SV creates, and for investors to see budding new businesses creating innovation new solutions on the blockchain.

No matter what industry you’re into, this is a conference you need to see. And there’s no reason to miss it, it’s free!

Premier League review – gameweek #3 – Man City torn to shreds by Fabulous Foxes

Premier League Review – Gameweek #3 – Man City Torn to Shreds by Fabulous Foxes

The third gameweek of the Premier League season had it all. Shock results, penalty drama after the final whistle and controversy in virtually every game due to the new handball laws. It was one for the books, but what happened at each ground? Let’s digest the results in full.

Brighton & Hove Albion 2-3 Manchester United 

A truly remarkable game took place at the Amex Stadium as the Seagulls were undone after the final whistle. The match kicked off with Brighton taking apart United time and time again, particularly on the counter-attack. With the pace and trickery of players such as Tariq Lamptey and Leandro Trossard, The Seagulls could easily have led by more than the one goal they scored after 40 minutes through Neal Maupay from the penalty spot. 

Poker Pros get conned in online swap scam

A cautionary tale for poker professionals looking to trade account funds for digital currencies for poker account funds. Two users, James Romero and an unidentified user using the nickname Gravydas, were conned.

Gravydas incurred a $20,000 loss from his American Cardroom account that was played out online. Both the users had a passion for trading their account funds for digital currencies.

One of the more interesting scams I’ve ever seen in poker- curious what other people think regarding who is responsible for lost funds. To anyone who is lackadaisical when sending 2nd in transaction I think you could benefit from reading about this scamhttps://t.co/BqP1RzSiKA

— Mike McDonald (@MikeMcDonald89) September 20, 2020https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

CoinGeek Live Conference (September 30 – October 2) set for several Bitcoin SV product announcements

September 29, 2020 – This week’s CoinGeek Live, the three-day blockchain conference broadcasting live from New York and London (September 30 – October 2), is set to be a major source of blockchain and Bitcoin industry news.  Reflecting rapid development on the Bitcoin SV blockchain, several companies are slated to use the conference to make major announcements, unveil new product and service offerings, as well as provide further detail on recently revealed news.

Companies confirmed to be making announcements at CoinGeek Live include:

Omniscape – CoinGeek Live will serve as the world’s introduction to Omniscape, an Experiential Reality (XR) platform that combines Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) experiences, while also integrating location and blockchain-based features.  For conference attendees, Omniscape technology will power an AR experience involving Bitcoin SV-based tokens, with more information on the expanded vision for the XR Metaverse set to be revealed during CoinGeek Live.

– Robert Rice, Founder and CEO of Transmira Inc. (Omniscape) is scheduled to present XR (Experiential Reality) Applications: Greater Power with Bitcoin SV on the first day of the conference (September 30, 9:50-10:15am EDT).

William Hill should turn down Caesars’ offer

It’s getting hard to watch what is going on in the gambling capital markets. Fundamentally, we are in an environment of widespread economic devastation from lockdowns, riddled with mines like a possible contested US election and an imminent hard break in the existing European political order and a highly likely ensuing European banking crisis in that event. And yet thanks to stratospheric levels of liquidity flooding the entire financial system, mergers and leveraged buyouts and extreme valuations just keep coming and accelerating, creating a feedback loop of ridiculous optimism that is sucking retail investors in while market-making banks continue to pull out of the game. The latest market maker to pull out is Citigroup, which will no longer be providing market-making services in retail options. We’ll get back to market-making in a minute.

The latest would-be victim of this massive and dangerous consolidation trend is William Hill, which has until now been spared getting sucked in to this dizzying leveraged buyout game and has managed to maintain itself as a relatively focused, tight company with relatively orderly finances. That may now be coming to an end thanks to a huge $3.73 billion bid from the undisputed king of untimely embarrassing mergers, Caesars.

Part of me is just wide-eyed, can’t believe what I’m seeing, but the other part isn’t surprised at all. This is what happens when there’s too much loose money floating around that needs something to fall on. Caesars, already up past its eyeballs in triple net lease liabilities from all its commercial real estate collapsing in value, is putting in an offer at a 23% premium to buy William Hill specifically now, while the United Kingdom is stuck in lockdown and a hard break from the European Union looks imminent and massive capital exodus from London is already underway. JPMorgan, the biggest and healthiest G-SIB bank in the world, is already moving $230 billion out of Europe’s financial capital, and it won’t be the last. What do the people at Caesars think is going to happen to William Hill as a result of a massive capital drain out of London?

If you’ve been following my periodic coverage of William Hill the past few years, I turned cautiously positive on the stock at around 250 pence in September 2017 as an income play for dividend reinvestment that would automatically buy the dips. I called it an outright long term buy and hold at 160 in April 2019, and urged buying more in February 2020 at 180. Now trading at 280, it is a clear and unequivocal sell. Either the deal goes through and the giant it gets melted into will fall over whenever the global liquidity flood finally stops, or the deal does not go through and the premium just tacked on to the shares gets reduced or erased. I see no sustainable upside from here. Buying shares at this point is nothing more than a speculation that the current liquidity bubble will continue expanding. Maybe it will, but that is not sound investing in my opinion.

Gambling Industry Announcement and Partnership Roundup – September 29, 2020

In the fast-moving world of gambling, sometimes you might miss news that could be important to you. To make sure you’re all caught up on gaming industry news, be it online or brick and mortar, we’re rounding up the some of the announcements and partnerships from the last week that you might have missed.

Don’t miss out on all of the latest announcements. Our Press Release section is updated constantly.

Pariplay Diversifies Fusion with Content from Five New Software Providers

Aggregation platform’s integration of online casino games from content providers serving multiple markets consolidates Pariplay’s presence in Europe and beyond

Flutter to hang onto Scientific Games for another five years

Scientific Games Corp. may have run into a little trouble with its revenue recently, but the gaming technology supplier will bounce back stronger than ever if it keeps doing what it’s doing. It’s already hooked up with FanDuel, and, this past July, it announced that Tipico, the sportsbook and iGaming operator, had tapped the company to provide tech solutions as it looked to enter the growing U.S. market. Earlier this month, Resorts Digital Gaming signed a multi-year deal with Sci Games that extended an existing partnership. Now, Flutter Entertainment has determined that switching providers wouldn’t make a lot of sense at this point and will hang onto Sci Games a little longer. 

According to a press release from yesterday, Sci Games is now locked in with Flutter for another five years. It will continue to give the iGaming operator access to its OpenSports solution for use across all its global brands, and the agreement comes following a partnership that was first signed in 2000. At the time, Sci Games began working with Flutter and Paddy Power, and the renewal marks a huge milestone for both Sci Games and Flutter. 

Explains Rik Barker, the chief information officer for Flutter Entertainment UK & Ireland Division, “We’re very pleased to renew our partnership with Scientific Games. Whilst we take great pride in our proprietary technology and product development capabilities, Scientific Games’ OpenSports technology has been a key part of our sports betting platforms for many years. The reliability and scalability of their technology provides us with a robust platform to deliver on our strategic goals. As we enter a new era of sports betting, we’re looking forward to working with their world-class teams and technology to capitalize on the opportunities across our sector.”

Despite Sci Games seeing a fair amount of turmoil this year, it is setting itself up to rebound higher. Just recently, the company announced that chairman Ronald Perelman was stepping down after having agreed to sell his controlling stake. Coming in is a group of investors that include former Aristocrat Leisure heavyweights, and this could prove to be the injection of energy and fresh talent the company needs.