A-grade betting
Students all over the US are giving themselves even more reason to get good grades – money! There is now a website providing a platform for students to bet on the outcomes of their grades. The better their grades, the more they win.
The site has students from about 36 schools across the US betting on their own grades. The maximum they can bet is $25 per class but the more they play the higher the limit can grow to. The site then looks at the student’s academic history, the grade history of their school and their class and even the reputation of their tutor or professor to decide on the odds.
The students don’t just have to bet on doing exceptionally well either, they can bet on failing too – this is known as ‘grade insurance’.
Is this legal though? The CEO says it is because the power is in the hands of the students – they can choose whether they do well or fail.
How does the site make money then? Students are by nature fairly unpredictable – there are always variable like hangovers, illness, bad lecturers etc.
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Google+ launches Hangouts on Air
It seemed like Google+ had taken a bit of a back seat to social networks like Pinterest and Twitter but this all might be about to change with the announcement of Hangouts on Air, a feature that should take global social networking to a multifaceted level of interaction soon.
Hangouts on Air is not a new feature; it just hasn’t been available for most Google+ users. It was in fact launched last September and was set to allow users to engage in live video chat sessions with as many as 9 other users and then broadcast for others to watch. These were designed to offer live streaming broadcasts with multiple participants. Up until now users could view Hangouts on Air but couldn’t start their own, unless they were part of a select group of test users. This feature is now about to be available to all Google+ users.
Features of Hangouts of Air:
- Public broadcasts: users can use their Google+ page to broadcast their live Hangouts to the world. They can also use their company’s YouTube channel or pages in their business’ website to enbed the Hangout.
- Viewer tracking: the hosts of the Hangouts can see how many users are watching the Hangout live during the broadcast.
- Recordings: after each Hangout users’ recordings will be uploaded onto their YouTube channel and their Google+ post so that they can share video content after the live event ends.
Once your Hangout ends, Google+ will upload a recording to your YouTube channel and your original Google+ post so you can easily share your video content even after the live event ends.
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History of gambling in Britain: 1830 to 1900 – betting is everywhere
By the 1830′s there were gambling establishments all over London and they weren’t all as civilised as the gentleman’s clubs of the 1700′s. In 1833, The Times published this account:
“The generality of minor gambling houses are kept by prize-fighters and other desperate characters, who bully and hector the more timid out of their money by deciding that bets have been lost, when, in fact, they have been won. To these places thieves resort and such other loose characters as are lost to every feeling of honesty and shame.”
This article went on to talk of men losing their clothes and being sent home almost naked. This ‘bad’ behaviour resulted in The Gaming Act of 1845 which stipulated that wagers could no longer be legally binding contracts.
In the 1700’s, horseracing became a professional sport that people could bet on and by the mid-1800’s, there were more than 400 betting shops in London. The Attorney General recommended a bill to the House of Commons that would prohibit betting as “mischief arising from the existence of these betting shops is perfectly notorious”.
These betting houses were closed down but this didn’t seem to stop Britain from gambling. Street betting continued until it was banned in the Street Betting Act in 1906 – the only place where it was legal to bet was at the race course.
In September 1890, the Tranby Scandal, otherwise known as the Royal Baccarat Scandal, happened at the shipping magnate Arthur Wilson’s home. His guests, who included the Prince of Wales and Sir William Gordon-Cumming, were playing illegal baccarat when Gordon-Cumming was accused of cheating. The case went to court as slander and the future British king, King Edward VII had to testify. Gordon-Cumming lost the court battle and had to retire from the army in disgrace.
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History of gambling in Britain: 1700 to 1830 – rich and reckless gambling
Gambling during the Georgian era was commonplace in the upper class. Card games like piquet, faro, ving-et-un, whist and baccarat were the most popular choices of the rich. Vingt-et-un ultimately became what we know as blackjack while faro eventually disappeared because it was so easy to cheat in.
Gambling in gentlemen’s clubs became commonplace. The famous London gentlemen’s club, Whites, had a betting book that had records of all members’ bets, including a record of a bet between two young men on the number of cats to walk on opposite sides of a street.
Meanwhile, the Crockford gambling club was the haunt of the aristocratic. It was started in 1793 and grew to become the most infamous gambling club in Europe until its closure in 1845.
In the 1800’s the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, in order to continue gambling without having to stop for a meal break, asked his servant to bring him a slice of meat enclosed by two pieces of bread – this was how the sandwich was created.
Beau Brummel was a notorious gambler and trendsetter who accumulated so much debt that he had to flee across the sea to France.
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History of gambling in Britain: 1100 to 1700 – a pastime for the rich
In his book, The History of Gambling, John Aston states that in 1190 an edict was issued banning members of the army who were ranked below knights from playing games that required any form of betting. Clergymen and knights could play as long as they didn’t lost more than 20 shillings per day.
Bull baiting, the cruel blood sport in which bulls were ‘immobilised’ by dogs in a confined space, was a very popular choice to bet on. There was also racing and cockfighting to get the blood racing and the betting figures up. On the tamer side there were games of checkers that could be bet on, unsurprisingly these weren’t as popular.
Cards rapidly surpassed dice as the preferred gambling tool in the 14th century when they made their way from Asia to Europe. The deck of cards was adored by royalty – James IV of Scotland wooed his future bride, Princess Margaret, with a deck when he visited her for the first time.
Princess Margaret’s brother, Henry VIII, banned cards and dice from being played by working class people. His reason: it made men turn to drink and crime.
During the Elizabethan era a card game called Primero was developed. This is the game that is believed to be the precursor to poker. The first version of the British Lottery was also introduced during this era. Queen Elizabeth had the idea of offering 400,000 tickets to the public with prizes that included china and cash. The first London-based lottery event was organised by King James in 1612.
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The British have always loved a good gamble
The British have been occupied by gambling for thousands of years. Whether it’s been with dice, horses, cards, balls and even cats, a good bet seems to be irresistible to the British. Let’s take a look at the pastime that has ancient roots and is now a multi-million pound industry, whether in front of or behind closed doors.
Pre 1100 – primitive gambling
Ceremonies to try to predict the future like the throwing of bones, sticks and stones started off as religious rituals evolved into a primitive form of gambling that even involved, shock horror, human sacrifice. Bets were placed and stakes offered for ‘positive’ results. This often happened after a big hunt with an offering of the best piece of meat – of the animal.
In Ancient Rome, gambling was banned apart from during the week-long Saturnalia festival during which betting on chariots was allowed. While the Romans didn’t introduce gambling to Britain they did introduce it to dice.
The Anglo-Saxons thoroughly enjoyed throwing the dice that the Romans introduced them to and created games like Knucklebones. This game was played by throwing sheep or pig knuckles up in the air and players trying to catch the knuckles on the back of their hands. Bets would be placed on the result and whoever caught the most knuckles would be the winner. Knucklebones was so popular that 50 gaming bones and two deer-antler dice were found in a royal grave.
Read more in in our next post about the history of gambling in Britain where we look at how gambling fast spread to the parlours of the rich from 1100 to 1700.
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Codename Apollo – Windows 8 phone specs
The Lumia range of Windows phones from Nokia were a hit and now the Windows 8 range are set to be real scorchers!
The platform for these phones has been named “Apollo” and the focus is to have a broad range of phones to choose from, ranging from economical to expensive so that everybody can get a taste of the goodness.
The phone features include a total of four new screen resolutions, dual-core CPU’s, MicroSD support, and NFC (which was not a feature of Lumia smartphones).
With the US$8.5-billion purchase of Skype by Microsoft, the Lumia range is a great place to put it to good use. Skype will be incorporated into the Apollo OS at such a deep level that users won’t be able to tell the difference between VoIP calls and analogue.
More features:
- No more Zune desktop integration with a synching app replacing it
- A camera app that supports “lenses”, now third parties can add features like “skins” to the photo app
- Carrier-owned hotspots with automatic connection
- Bitlocker encryption will be a part of the Apollo range
- SkyDrive will be integrated into all of the Apollo devices
- There might also be an equivalent to Google Wallet depending on the network operator
Strip poker on display in New York art gallery window
If you’re looking for even more excitement in your live poker games you’ve just missed out on a great opportunity!
A game of strip poker ran throughout November last year in the shop window of the Art in General Gallery in Manhatten. There was no cash on the table but there were plenty of clothes in this installation piece by Zefrey Throwel who is well known for pushing nudity in his art that sometimes result in arrests.
In August 2011 he also got a group of about 50 people to dress up as office workers in a piece called Ocularpation: Wall Street. The ‘office workers’ then stripped down to nothing, giving morning commuters something different to look at.
The strip-poker installation was apparently a comment on capitalism – what exactly it was trying to say is beyond us though. Throwel did say that he was “trying to illuminate a dark cranny in the financial world.”
Throwel invited people without stimpulating any dress requirements so many arrived with 10 extra layers while some just wore jeans and t-shirts so that they could get down to the ‘bare essentials’ sooner.
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This week’s hot games
Take a look at the hot games at Platinum Play for this week:
- Dubya Money: this 3-reel, 1-payline fruit slot is simple but powerful with a 500 x multiplier.
- Track and FieldMouse: be the best in this 3-reel, 1-payline game and get a gold medal worth 500 coins.
- Apocalypse Cow: this 3-reeler fruit slot has a max jackpot of 2,000 coins.
- Crazy Chameleons: join these loopy lizards for a summer showdown with multiple surfboard symbols and gnarly payouts.
- Game On: this soccer-themed slot game has 3 reels and 1 payline plus bonus games, wilds, multipliers and free points to score.
- Pub Fruity: win a max jackpot of 10,000 coins with 100 and 500 multipliers.
- The Grand Circus: this 5-rell, 20-payline video slot game invites you to join a travelling circus that could make you 50,000 coins richer.
- Cosmic Cat: these are some seriously cool cats with some seriously cool rewards of over 1,000 coins.
- Muchos Grande: this 5-reel, 15-payline Mexican-themed game will spice things up nicely with huge jackpot potential.
