Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This entire post represents my personal views and opinions, and should not be taken as financial advice (or advice of any kind whatsoever). I encourage you to do your own research, take anything I write with a grain of salt, and hold me accountable for any mistakes you may catch. Also, full disclosure, I hold a net long position in GME, but my cost basis is very low (average ~$67--I have to admit, the drop today was too tasty so my cost basis went up from yesterday)/share with my later buys averaged in), and I'm using money I can absolutely lose. My capital at risk and tolerance for risk generally is likely substantially different than yours. In this post I will go a little further and speculate more than I'd normally do in a post due to the questions I've been getting, so fair warning, some of it might be very wrong. I suspect we'll learn some of the truth years from now when some investigative journalist writes a book about it.
Thank you everyone for the comments and questions on the first and second post on this topic.
Today was a study in the power of fear, courage, and the levers you can pull when you wield billions of dollars...
Woops, excuse me. I'm sorry hedge fund guys... I meant trillions of dollars--I just briefly forget you control not just your own but a lot of other peoples' money too for a moment there.
Also, for people still trading this on market-based rationale (as I am), it was a good day to measure the conviction behind your thesis. I like to think I have conviction, but in case you are somehow not yet familiar with the legend of DFV, you need to see these posts (fair warning, nsfw, and some may be offended/triggered by the crude language). The last two posts might be impressive, but you should follow it in chronological order and pay attention to the evolution of sentiment in the comments to experience true enlightenment.
Anyway, I apologize, but this post will be very long--there's just a lot to unpack.

Pre-Market

Disclaimer: given yesterday's pre-market action I didn't even pay attention to the screen until near retail pre-market. I'm less confident in my ability to read what's going on in a historical chart vs the feel I get watching live, but I'll try.
Early in the pre-market it looks to me like some momentum traders are taking profit, discounting the probability that the short-side will give them a deep discount later, which you can reasonably assume given the strategy they ran yesterday. If they're right they can sell some small volume into the pre-market top, wait for the hedge funds try to run the price back down, and then lever up the gains even higher buying the dip. Buy-side here look to me like people FOMOing and YOLOing in at any price to grab their slice of gainz, or what looks to be market history in the making. No way are short-side hedge funds trying to cover anything at these prices.
Mark Cuban--well said! Free markets baby!
Mohamed El-Erian is money in the bank as always. "upgrade in quality" on the pandemic drop was the best, clearest actionable call while most were at peak panic, and boy did it print. Your identifying the bubble as the excessive short (vs blaming retail activity) is money yet again. Also, The PAIN TRADE (sorry, later interview segment I only have on DVR, couldn't find on youtube--maybe someone else can)!
The short attack starts, but I'm hoping no one was panicking this time--we've seen it before. Looks like the momentum guys are minting money buying the double dip into market open.
CNBC, please get a good market technician to explain the market action. Buy-side dominance, sell-side share availability evaporating into nothing (look at day-by-day volume last few days), this thing is now at runaway supercritical mass. There is no changing the trajectory unless you can change the very fabric of the market and the rules behind it (woops, I guess I should have knocked on wood there).
If you know the mechanics, what's happening in the market with GME is not mysterious AT ALL. I feel like you guys are trying to scare retail out early "for their own good" (with all sincerity, to your credit) rather than explain what's happening. Possibly you also fear that explaining it would equate to enabling/encouraging people to keep trying to do it inappropriately (possibly fair point, but at least come out and say that if that's the case). Outside the market, however...wow.

You Thought Yesterday Was Fear? THIS is Fear!

Ok short-side people, my hat is off to you. Just when I thought shouting fire in a locked theater was fear mongering poetry in motion, you went and took it to 11. What's even better? Yelling fire in a theater with only one exit. That way people can cause the financial equivalent of stampede casualties. Absolutely brilliant.
Robin Hood disables buying of GME, AMC, and a few of the other WSB favorites. Other brokerages do the same. Even for people on 0% margin. Man, and here I thought I had seen it all yesterday.
Side note: I will give a shout out to TD Ameritrade. You guys got erroneously lumped together with RH during an early CNBC segment, but you telegraphed the volatility risk management changes and gradually ramped up margin requirements over the past week. No one on your platform should have been surprised if they were paying attention. And you didn't stop anyone from trading their own money at any point in time. My account balance thanks you. I heard others may have had problems, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt given the DDOS attacks that were flyiing around
Robin Hood. Seriously WTF. I'm sure it was TOTALLY coincidence that your big announcements happen almost precisely when what has to be one of the best and most aggressive short ladder attacks of all time starts painting the tape, what looked like a DDOS attack on Reddit's CDN infrastructure (pretty certain it was the CDN because other stuff got taken out at the same time too), and a flood of bots hit social media (ok, short-side, this last one is getting old).
Taking out a large-scale cloud CDN is real big boy stuff though, so I wouldn't entirely rule out nation state type action--those guys are good at sniffing out opportunities to foment social unrest.
Anyway, at this point, as the market dives, I have to admit I was worried for a moment. Not that somehow the short-side would win (hah! the long-side whales in the pond know what's up), but that a lot of retail would get hurt in the action. That concern subsided quite a bit on the third halt on that slide. But first...
A side lesson on market orders
Someone printed bonus bank big time (and someone lost--I feel your pain, whoever you are).
During the face-ripping volatility my play money account briefly ascended to rarified heights of 7 figures. It took me a second to realize it, then another second to process it. Then, as soon as it clicked, that one, glorious moment in time was gone.
What happened?
During the insane chop of the short ladder attack, someone decided to sweep the 29 Jan 21 115 Call contracts, but they couldn't get a grip on the price, which was going coast to coast as IV blew up and the price was being slammed around. So whoever was trying to buy said "F it, MARKET ORDER" (i.e. buy up to $X,XXX,XXX worth of contracts at any price). This is referred to as a sweep if funded to buy all/most of the contracts on offer (HFT shops snipe every contract at each specific price with a shotgun of limit orders, which is far safer, but something only near-market compute resources can do really well). For retail, or old-tech pros, if you want all the contracts quickly, you drop a market order loaded with big bucks and see what you get... BUT, some clever shark had contracts available for the reasonable sum of... $4,400, or something around that. I was too stunned to grab a screencap. The buy market order swept the book clean and ran right into that glorious, nigh-obscene backstop limit. So someone got nearly $440,000 PER CONTRACT that was, at the time theoretically priced at around $15,000. $425,000 loss... PER CONTRACT. Maybe I'm not giving the buyer enough credit.. you can get sniped like that even if you try to do a safety check of the order book first, but, especially in low liquidity environments, if a HFT can peak into your order flow (or maybe just observes a high volume of sweeps occurring), they can end up front running your sweep, pick off the reasonable contracts, and slam a ridiculous limit sell order into place before your order makes it to the exchange. Either way, I hope that sweep wasn't loaded for bear into the millions. If so... OUCH. Someone got cleaned out.
So, the lesson here folks... in a super high volatility, low-liquidity market, a market order will just run up the ladder into the first sell order it can find, and some very brutal people will put limit sells like that out there just in case they hit the jackpot. And someone did. If you're on the winning side, great. It can basically bankrupt you if you're on the losing side. My recommendation: Just don't try it. I wouldn't be surprised if really shady shenanigans were involved in this, but no way to know (normally that's crazy-type talk, but after today....peeking at order flow and sniping sweeps is one of the fastest, most financially devastating ways to bleed big long-side players, just sayin').
edit *so while I was too busy trying not to spit out my coffee to grab a screenshot, piddlesthethug was faster on the draw and captured this: https://imgur.com/gallery/RI1WOuu
Ok, so I guess my in-the-moment mental math was off by about 10%. Man, that hurts just thinking about the guy who lost on that trade.*
Back to the market action..

A Ray of Light Through the Darkness

So I was worried watching the crazy downward movement for two different reasons.
On the one hand, I was worried the momentum pros would get the best discounts on the dip (I'll admit, I FOMO'd in too early, unnecessarily raising my cost basis).
On the other hand, I was worried for the retail people on Robin Hood who might be bailing out into incredibly steep losses because they had only two options: Watch the slide, or bail. All while dealing with what looked to me like a broad-based cloud CDN outage as they tried to get info from WSB HQ, and wondering if the insta-flood of bot messages were actually real people this time, and that everyone else was bailing on them to leave them holding the bag.
But I saw the retail flag flying high on the 3rd market halt (IIRC), and I knew most would be ok. What did I see, you ask? Why, the glorious $211.00 / $5,000 bid/ask spread. WSB Reddit is down? Those crazy mofos give you the finger right on the ticker tape. I've been asked many times in the last few hours about why I was so sure shorts weren't covering on the down move. THIS is how I knew. For sure. It's in the market data itself.
edit So, there's feedback in the comments that this is likely more of a technical glitch. Man, at least it was hilarious in the moment. But also now I know maybe not to trust price updates when the spread between orders being posted is so wide. Maybe a technical limitation of TOS
I'll admit, I tried to one-up those bros with a 4206.90 limit sell order, but it never made it through. I'm impressed that the HFT guys at the hedge fund must have realized really quickly what a morale booster that kind of thing would have been, and kept a lower backstop ask in place almost continuously from then on I'm sure others tried the same thing. Occasionally $1,000 and other high-dollar asks would peak through from time to time from then on, which told me the long-side HFTs were probably successfully sniping the backstops regularly.
So, translating for those of you who found that confusing. First, such a high ask is basically a FU to the short-side (who, as you remember, need to eventually buy shares to cover their short positions). More importantly, as an indicator of retail sentiment, it meant that NO ONE ELSE WAS TRYING TO SELL AT ANY PRICE LOWER THAN $5,000. Absolutely no one was bailing out.
I laughed for a minute, then started getting a little worried. Holy cow.. NO retail selling into the fear? How are they resisting that kind of price move??
The answer, as we all know now... they weren't afraid... they weren't even worried. They were F*CKING PISSED.
Meanwhile the momentum guys and long-side HFTs keep gobbling up the generously donated shares that the short-side are plowing into their ladder attack. Lots of HFT duels going on as long-side HFTs try to intercept shares meant to travel between short-side HFT accounts for their ladder. You can tell when you see prices like $227.0001 constantly flying across the tape. Retail can't even attempt to enter an order like that--those are for the big boys with privileged low-latency access.
The fact that you can even see that on the tape with human eyes is really bad for the short-side people.
Why, you ask? Because it means liquidity is drying up, and fast.

The Liquidity Tide is Flowing Out Quickly. Who's Naked (short)?

Market technicals time. I still wish this sub would allow pictures so I could throw up a chart, but I guess a table will do fine.

Date	Volume	Price at US Market Close
Friday, 1/22/21	197,157,196	$65.01
Monday, 1/25/21	177,874,00	$76.79
Tuesday, 1/26/21	178,587,974	$147.98
Wednesday, 1/27/21	93,396,666	$347.51
Thursday, 1/28/21	58,815,805	$193.60

What do I see? I see the shares available to trade dropping so fast that all the near-exchange compute power in the world won't let the short-side HFTs maintain order flow volume for their attacks. Many retail people asking me questions thought today was the heaviest trading. Nope--it was just the craziest.
What about the price dropping on Thursday? Is that a sign that the short-side pulled a miracle out and pushed price down against a parabolic move on even less volume than Wednesday? Is the long side running out of capital?
Nope. It means the short-side hedge funds are just about finished.
But wait, I thought the price needed to be higher for them to be taken out? How is it that price being lower is bad for them? Won't that allow them to cover at a lower price?
No, the volume is so low that they can't cover any meaningful fraction of their position without spiking the price parabolic almost instantly. Just not enough shares on offer at reasonable prices (especially when WSB keeps flashing you 6942.00s).
It's true, a higher price hurts, but the interest charge for one more day is just noise at this point. The only tick that will REALLY count is the last tick of trading on Friday.
In the meantime, the price drop (and watching the sparring in real time) tells me that the long-side whales and their HFT quants are so certain of the squeeze that they're no longer worried AT ALL about whether it will happen, and they aren't even worried at all about retail morale to help carry the water anymore.
Instead, they're now really, really worried about how CHEAPLY they can make it happen.
They are wondering if they can't edge out just a sliver more alpha out of what will already be a blow-out trade for the history books (probably). You see, to make it happen they just have to keep hoovering up shares. It doesn't matter what those shares cost. If you're certain that the squeeze is now locked in, why push the price up and pay more than you have to? Just keep pressing hard enough to force short-side to keep sending those tasty shares your way, but not so much you move the price. Short-side realizes this and doesn't try to drive price down too aggressively. They can't afford to let price run away, so they have to keep some pressure on at the lowest volume they can manage, but they don't want to push down too hard and give the long-side HFTs too deep of a discount and bleed their ammo out even faster. That dynamic keeps price within a narrow (for GME today, anyway) trading range for the rest of the day into the close.
Good plan guys, but those after market people are pushing the price up again. Damnit WSB bros and Euros, you're costing those poor long-side whales their extra 0.0000001% of alpha on this trade just so you can run up your green rockets... See, that's the kind of nonsense that just validates Lee Cooperman's concerns.
On a totally unrelated note, I have to say that I appreciate the shift in CNBC's reporting. Much more thoughtful and informed. Just please get a good market technician in there who will be willing to talk about what is going on under the hood if possible. A lot of people watching on the sidelines are far more terrified than they need to be because it all looks random to them. And they're worried that you guys look confused and worried--and if the experts on the news are worried....??!
You should be able to find one who has access to the really good data that we retailers can only guess at, who can explain it to us unwashed masses.

Ok, So.. Questions

There is no market justification for this. How can you tell me is this fundamentally sound and not just straight throwing money away irresponsibly?? (side note: not that that should matter--if you want to throw your money away why shouldn't you be allowed to?)
We're not trading in your securities pricing model. This isn't irrational just because your model says long and short positions are the same thing. The model is not a real market. There is asymmetrical counterparty risk here given the shorts are on the hook for all the money they have, and possibly all the money their brokers have, and possibly anyone with exposure to the broker too! You may want people to trade by the rules you want them to follow. But the rest of us trade in the real market as it is actually implemented. Remember? That's what you tell the retailers who take their accounts to zero. Remember what you told the KBIO short-squeezed people? They had fair warning that short positions carry infinite risk, including more than your initial investment. You guys know this. It's literally part of your job to know this.
But-but-the systemic risk!! This is Madness!
...Madness?
THIS. IS. THE MARKET!!! *Retail kicks the short-side hedge funds down an infinity loss black hole\*.
Ok, seriously though, that is actually a fundamentally sound, and properly profit-driven answer at least as justifiable as the hedge funds' justification for going >100% of float short. If they can be allowed to gamble INFINITE LOSSES because they expect to make profit on the possibility the company goes bankrupt, can't others do the inverse on the possibility the company I don't know.. doesn't go bankrupt and gets a better strategy from the team that created what is now a $43bn market cap company (CHWY) that does exactly some of the things GME needs to do (digital revenue growth) maybe? I mean, I first bought in on that fundamental value thesis in the 30s and then upped my cost basis given the asymmetry of risk in the technical analysis as an obvious no-brainer momentum trade. The squeeze is just, as WSB people might say, tendies raining down from on high as an added bonus.
I get that you disagree on the fundamental viability of GME. Great. Isn't that what makes a market?
Regarding the consequences of a squeeze, in practice my expectation was maybe at worst some kind of ex-market settlement after liquidation of the funds with exposure to keep things nice and orderly for the rest of the market. I mean, they handled the VW thing somehow right? I see now that I just underestimated elite hedge fund managers though--those guys are so hardcore (I'll explain why I think so a bit lower down).
If hedge fund people are so hardcore, how did the retail long side ever have a chance of winning this squeeze trade they're talking about?
Because it's an asymmetrical battle once you have short interest cornered. And the risk is also crazily asymmetrical in favor of the long side if short interest is what it is in GME. In fact, the hedge funds essentially cornered themselves without anyone even doing anything. They just dug themselves right in there. Kind of impressive really, in a weird way.
What does the short side need to cover? They need the price to be low, and they need to buy shares.
How does price move lower? You have to push share volume such that supply overwhelms demand and price therefore goes down (man, I knew econ 101 would come in handy someday).
But wait... if you have to sell shares to push the price down.. won't you just undo all your work when you have to buy it back to actually cover?
The trick is you have to push price down so hard, so fast, so unpredictably, that you SCARE OTHER PEOPLE into selling their shares too, because they're scared of taking losses. Their sales help push the price down for free! and then you scoop them up at discount price! Also, there are ways to make people scared other than price movement and fear of losses, when you get right down to it. So, you know, you just need to get really, really, really good at making people scared. Remember to add a line item to your budget to make sure you can really do it right.
On the other hand..
What does the long side need to do? They need to own as much of the shares as they can get their hands on. And then they need to hold on to them. They can't be weak hands either. They need to be hands that will hold even under the most intense heat of battle, and the immense pressure of mind-numbing fear... they need to be as if they were made of... diamond... (oh wow, maybe those WSB people kind of have a point here).
Why does this matter? Because at some point the sell side will eventually run out of shares to borrow. They simply won't be there, because they'll be safely tucked away in the long-side's accounts. Once you run out of shares to borrow and sell, you have no way to move the price anymore. You can't just drop a fat stack--excuse me, I mean suitcase (we're talking hedge fund money here after all)--of Benjamins on the ticker tape directly. Only shares. No more shares, no way to have any direct effect on the price whatsoever.
Ok, doesn't that just mean trading stops? Can't you just out-wait the long side then?
Well, you could.. until someone on the long side puts 1 share up on a 69420 ask, and an even crazier person actually buys at that price on the last tick on a Friday. Let's just say it gets really bad at that point.
Ok.. but how do the retail people actually get paid?
Well, to be quite honest, it's entirely up to each of them individually. You've seen the volumes being thrown around the past week+. I guarantee you every single retailer out there could have printed money multiple times trading that flow. If they choose to, and time it well. Or they could lose it all--this is the market. Some of them apparently seem to have some plan, or an implicit trust in certain individuals to help them know when to punch out. Maybe it works out, but maybe not. There will be financial casualties on the field for sure--this is the bare-knuckled capitalist jungle after all, remember? But everyone ponied up to the table with their own money somehow, so they all get to play in the big leagues just like everyone else. In theory, anyway.
And now, Probably the #1 question I've been asked on all of these posts has been: So what happens next? Do we get the infinity squeeze? Do the hedge funds go down?
Great questions. I don't know. No one does. That's what I've said every time, but I get that's a frustrating answer, so I'll write a bit more and speculate further. Please again understand these are my opinions with a degree of speculation I wouldn't normally put in a post.

The Market and the Economy. Main Street, Wall Street, and Washington

The pandemic has hurt so many people that it's hard to comprehend. Honestly, I don't even pretend to be able to. I have been crazy fortunate enough to almost not be affected at all. Honestly, it is a little unnerving to me how great the disconnect is between people who are doing fine (or better than fine, looking at my IRA) versus the people who are on the opposite side of the ever-widening divide that, let's be honest, has been growing wider since long before the pandemic.
People on the other side--who have been told they cannot work even if they want to, who wonder if congress will get it together to at least keep them from getting thrown out of their house if they have to keep taking one for the team for the good of all, are wondering if they're even living in the same reality.
Because all they see on the news each day is that the stock market is at record highs, or some amazing tech stocks have 10x'd in the last 6 months. How can that be happening during a pandemic? Because The Market is not The Economy. The Market looks forward to that brighter future that Economy types just need to wait for. Don't worry--it'll be here sometime before the end of the year. We think. We're making money on that assumption right now, anyway. Oh, by the way, if you're in The Market, you get to get richer as a minor, unearned side-effect of the solutions our governments have come up with to fight the pandemic.
Wow. That sounds amazing. How do I get to part of that world?
Retail fintech, baby. Physical assets like real estate might be a bit out of reach at the moment, but stocks will do. I can even buy fractional shares of BRK/A LOL.
Finally, I can trade for my own slice of heaven, watching that balance go up (and up--go stonks!!). Now I too get to dream the dream. I get to feel connected to that mythical world, The Market, rather than being stuck in the plain old Economy. Sure, I might blow up my account, but that's because it's the jungle. Bare-knuckled, big league capitalism going on right here, and at least I get to show up an put my shares on the table with everyone else. At least I'm playing the same game. Everyone has to start somewhere--at least now I get to start, even if I have to learn my lesson by zeroing my account a few times. I've basically had to deal with what felt like my life zeroing out a few times before. This is number on a screen going to 0 is nothing.
Laugh or cry, right? I'll post my losses on WSB and at least get some laughs.
Geez, some of the people here are making bank. I better learn from them and see if they'll let me in on their trades. Wow... this actually might work. I don't understand yet, but I trust these guys telling me to hold onto this crazy trade. I don't understand it, but all the memes say it's going to be big.
...WOW... I can pay off my credit card with this number. Do I punch out now? No? Hold?... Ok, getting nervous watching the number go down but I trust you freaks. We're still in the jungle, but at least I'm in with with my posse now. Market open tomorrow--we ride the rocket baby! And if it goes down, at least I'm going down with my crew. At least if that happens the memes will be so hilarious I'll forget to cry.
Wow.. I can't believe it... we might actually pull this off. Laugh at us now, "pros"!
We're in The Market now, and Market rules tell us what is going to happen. We're getting all that hedge fund money Right? Right?
Maybe.
First, I say maybe because nothing is ever guaranteed until it clears. Secondly, because the rules of The Market are not as perfectly enforced as we would like to assume. We are also finding out they may not be perfectly fair. The Market most experts are willing to talk about is really more like the ideal The Market is supposed to be. This is the version of the market I make my trading decisions in. However, the Real Market gets strange and unpredictable at the edges, when things are taken to extremes, or rules are pushed beyond the breaking point, or some of the mechanics deep in the guts of the Real Market get stretched. GME ticks basically all of those boxes, which is why so many people are getting nervous (aside from the crazy money they might lose). It's also important to remember that the sheer amount of money flowing through the market has distorting power unto itself. Because it's money, and people really, really, really like their money--especially when they're used to having a lot of it, and rules involving that kind of money tend to look more... flexible, shall we say.
Ok, back to GME. If this situation with GME is allowed to play out to its conclusion in The Market, we'll see what happens. I think all the long-side people get the chance to be paid (what, I'm not sure--and remember, you have to actually sell your position at some point or it's all still just numbers on your screen), but no one knows for certain.
But this might legitimately get so big that it spills out of The Market and back into The Economy.
Geez, and here I thought the point of all of this was so that we all get to make so much money we wouldn't ever have to think and worry about that thing again.
Unfortunately, while he's kind of a buzzkill, Thomas Petterfy has a point. This could be a serious problem.
It might blow out The Market, which will definitely crap on The Economy, which as we all know from hard experience, will seriously crush Main Street.
If it's that big a deal, we may even need Washington to be involved. Once that happens, who knows what to expect.. this kind of scenario being possible is why I've been saying I have no idea how this ends, and no one else does either.
How did we end up in this ridiculous situation? From GAMESTOP?? And it's not Retail's fault the situation is what it is.. why is everyone telling US that we need to back down to save The Market?? What about the short-side hedge funds that slammed that risk into the system to begin with?? We're just playing by the rules of The Market!!
Well, here are my thoughts, opinions, and some even further speculation... This may be total fantasy land stuff here, but since I keep getting asked I'll share anyway. Just keep that disclaimer in mind.

A Study in Big Finance Power Moves: If you owe the bank $10,000, it's your problem...

What happens when you owe money you have no way to pay back? It's a scary question to have to face personally. Still, on balance and on average, if you're fortunate enough to have access to credit the borrowing is a risk that is worth taking (especially if you're reasonably careful). Lenders can take a risk loaning you money, you take a risk by borrowing in order to do something now that you would otherwise have had to wait a long time or maybe would never have realistically been able to do otherwise. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes it's due to reasons totally beyond your control. In any case, if you find yourself there you have no choice but to dust yourself off, pick yourself up as best as you can, and try to move on and rebuild. A lot of people had to learn that in 2008. Man that year really sucked.
Wall street learned their lessons too. Most learned what I think most of us would consider the right lessons--lessons about risk management, and the need to guard vigilantly against systemic risk, concentration of risk through excess concentration of leverage on common assets, etc. Many suspect that at least a few others may have learned an entirely different set of, shall we say, unhealthy lessons. Also, to try to be completely fair, maybe managing other peoples' money on 10x+ leverage comes with a kind of pressure that just clouds your judgement. I could actually, genuinely buy that. I know I make mistakes under pressure even when I'm trading risk capital I could totally lose with no real consequence. Whatever the motive, here's my read on what's happening:
First, remember that as much fun as WSB are making of the short-side hedge fund guys right now, those guys are smart. Scary smart. Keep that in mind.
Next, let's put ourselves in their shoes.
If you're a high-alpha hedge fund manager slinging trades on a $20bn 10x leveraged to 200bn portfolio, get caught in a bad situation, and are down mark-to-market several hundred million.. what do you do? Do you take your losses and try again next time? Hell no.
You're elite. You don't realize losses--you double down--you can still save this trade no sweat.
But what if that doesn't work out so well and you're in the hole >$2bn? Obvious double down. Need you ask? I'm net up on the rest of my positions (of course), and the momentum when this thing makes its mean reversion move will be so hot you can almost taste the alpha from here. Speaking of momentum, imagine the move if your friends on TV start hyping the story harder! Genius!
Ok, so that still didn't work... this is now a frigging 7 sigma departure from your modeled risk, and you're now locked into a situation that is about as close to mathematically impossible to escape as you can get in the real world, and quickly converging on infinite downside. Holy crap. The fund might be liquidated by your prime broker by tomorrow morning--and man, even the broker is freaking out. F'in Elon Musk and his twitter! You're cancelling your advance booking on his rocket ship to Mars first thing tomorrow... Ok, focus--this might legit impact your total annual return. You need a plan, and you know the smartest people on the planet, right? The masters of the universe! Awesome--they've even seen this kind of thing before and still have the playbook!! Of course! It's obvious now--you borrow a few more billion and double down again first thing in the morning. So simple. Sticky note that Mars trip cancellation so you don't forget.
Ok... so that didn't work? You even cashed in some pretty heavy chits too. Ah well, that was a long shot anyway. So where were you? Oh yeah.. if shenanigans don't work, skip to page 10...
...Which says, of course, to double down again. Anyone even keeping track anymore? Oh, S3 says it's $40bn and we're going parabolic? Man, that chart gives me goosebumps. All according to plan...
So what happens tomorrow? One possible outcome of PURE FANTASTIC SPECULATION...
End of the week--phew. Never though it'd come. Where are you at now?... Over $9000^\)!!! Wow. You did it boys, and as a bonus the memes will be so sweet.
^\)side note: add 8 zeros to the end...
Awesome--your problems have been solved. Because...

..

BOOM

Now it's EVERYONE's problem. Come at me, Chamath, THIS is REAL baller shit.
Now all you gotta do is make all the hysterical retirees watching their IRAs hanging in the balance blame those WSB kids. Hahaha. Boomers, amirite? hate when those kids step on their law--I mean IRAs. GG guys, keep you memes. THAT is how it's done.
Ok, but seriously, I hope that's not how it ends. I guess we just take it day by day at this point.
Apologies for the length. Good luck in the market!
Also, apologies in advance for formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors. I was typing this thing in between doing all kinds of other things for most of the day.
Edit getting a bunch of questions on if it's possible the hedge funds are finding ways to cover in spite of my assumptions. Of course. I'm a retail guy trying to read the charts and price action. I don't have any special tools like the pros may have.

Hitman 3 - Review Thread

Game Information

Game Title: Hitman 3
Platforms:

Nintendo Switch (Jan 20, 2021)
PlayStation 4 (Jan 20, 2021)
Xbox One (Jan 20, 2021)
Google Stadia (Jan 20, 2021)
PlayStation 5 (Jan 20, 2021)
Xbox Series X/S (Jan 20, 2021)

Trailers:

Publisher: IO Interactive
Review Aggregator:
OpenCritic - 87 average - 97% recommended - 63 reviews

Critic Reviews

33bits - Euyen Esquefa Pons - Spanish - 90 / 100

Hitman 3, more than a third installment of a video game sub-saga, is more like a third season of it. It is totally continuous and does not hide in this sense. It is true that it does not add anything substantial, but it is also true that the base it inherits is very, very good. And the new maps show the experience already acquired from the two previous games, offering us some of the best maps of the trilogy.

3DNews - Михаил Пономарев - Russian - 7 / 10

Despite the plot flaws and disappointing ending, Hitman 3 remains a fine assassin playground with a huge gameplay variety.

ACG - Jeremy Penter - Buy

While it has some inconsistencies, Hitman 3 delivers the best story the Hitman games have had, and a couple tremendous levels, as well as almost endless substantial replayability.

Ars Technica - Sam Machkovech - Unscored

A solid if unambitious expansion pack—and that should tell you whether to buy this one or catch up on Hitman 2 instead.

Atomix - Sebastian Quiroz - Spanish - 85 / 100

Hitman III is one of the first strong cards of the year. IO Interactive has given us an entertaining experience focused on experimentation and replayability that no fan of the stealth genre can miss.

Attack of the Fanboy - Diego Perez - 5 / 5 stars

Hitman 3 is the ultimate murder simulator. Now that the World of Assassination trilogy is finally complete, there's no excuse to not play Hitman. In order to truly appreciate the game's intricacies, you have to commit to replaying levels, attempting challenges, and testing out new strategies. However, if you put in the time, you'll be treated to one of the most engaging and rewarding stealth experiences in all of gaming.

COGconnected - Paul Sullivan - 92 / 100

The locations and level designs in Hitman 3 are among the best IO Interactive have built.

Checkpoint Gaming - Charlie Kelly - 9 / 10

Hitman 3 is a beautiful, wonderful and exceptionally well-made game that I’m so glad exists. IO Interactive have created something simply amazing that should be lauded for being right up there with the smartest design in the industry.

Critical Hit - Darryn Bonthuys - 8.5 / 10

Hitman 3 is full of surprises beneath its familiar systems. It manages to break out of its own sandbox without disrupting its formula too much, ending on a subtle note that brings the world of assassination saga to a satisfying end.

Cubed3 - Luke Hemming - 9 / 10

Hitman 3 succeeds in every respect by being a fantastic ending to analready great series. It's also a joy to see that IO Interactive ensured players would be able to slip right back into the shoes of a veteran killer,but didn'trest on their laurels by not offering anything new. Although the touches of permanent shortcuts and new gadgets may seem small, once implemented it's hard to imagine playing without them as they integrate seamlessly into mission stories. Add to that the same freedom to approach a hit that the series is famous for, as well as ensuring every playground looks absolutely stunning and its clear that even without good friends, Agent 47 really does find the perfect blend.

Cultured Vultures - Ashley Bates - 9 / 10

Hitman 3 takes everything good about the rebooted series and combines it with worthwhile features and levels that are more interactive than ever before to create one of the best stealth games of the last decade.

DASHGAMER.com - Dan Rizzo - 9 / 10

Hitman 3 is unequivocally IO’s magnum opus; a tour de force within the overall longstanding Hitman franchise, and its essential pick within the trilogy. [...] leads the charge in 2021 for compelling action-adventure.

Destructoid - Chris Carter - 9 / 10

Coupled with extra gadgets (some of which can be imported - though not as swimmingly on PC), Hitman 3 is really fun to dive back into; or introduce someone to for that matter, just to see what they come up with. It's the little things that add up and really make Hitman 3 special.

Digital Trends - Tom Caswell - 4 / 5 stars

A satisfying conclusion to the trilogy with the best locations in the series

DualShockers - Kris Cornelisse - 8 / 10

New levels, new targets, new graphical improvements, same Hitman taste. Hitman 3 won't be everyone's cup of tea, but the niche should be extremely satisfied.

EGM - Michael Goroff - 10 / 10

Hitman 3 is a fantastic capstone to a standout series. Yes, a lot of what you experience will seem familiar if you've played the last two games, but IO Interactive continues to take interesting risks that largely play off while still perfecting the elements that make Hitman so special. The best compliment I can pay Hitman 3 is that I want to finish writing this review so I can go back to playing it.

Eurogamer - Edwin Evans-Thirlwell - Recommended

IO's final World of Assassination game is closer to a seasonal content update than a sequel, but it's a thrilling endeavour all the same.

Everyeye.it - Giuseppe Arace - Italian - 8 / 10

Killer who kills you don't change. IO Interactive does not revolutionize its playful formula, widely gnawed in the excellent Hitman 2, and proposes it again with slight but pleasant additions also in the third and (perhaps) last chapter of the World of Assassination saga. Agent 47 returns more shrewd and lethal than ever before, within an experience that knows how to enhance the murderous instincts of gamers. All this takes the form of a stealth adventure full of possibilities, a sandbox full of ideas and alternative solutions that stimulate the variety of approaches and benefit from a level design sometimes in a state of grace. A few falls in style in the last stage, a story only of contour and a general lack of courage in a fixting some stumbles of the past episodes, such as a not-so-exciting IA and very coarse shooter phases, however, prevent Hitman 3 from taking a big step forward compared to the second act. The work therefore moves in perfect continuity with what is...

Game Informer - Jeff Cork - 9 / 10

Agent 47's journey ends on a high note, at least as far as players are concerned. New levels are memorable and cater to the freedom fans have come to expect

Game Rant - Cameron Corliss - 4.5 / 5 stars

All told, though, Hitman 3 is one of the best stealth games ever made.

Game Revolution - Michael Leri - 8.5 / 10

The bald, barcoded assassin has had many hits in his 21-year career, but even though it might be his last for quite some time, Hitman 3 is one of 47’s best executions yet.

GameByte - Sara Heritage - 9 / 10 stars

Hitman 3 feels like a love letter to the ‘World of Assassination’ and I can’t think of a better way to conclude the series. With its delightfully witty dialogue and the fact that all existing Hitman content (as long as you’ve bought Hitman and Hitman 2) has progression carry over into Hitman 3, this game is a joy to play and the best Hitman has ever been. It takes all the best parts of the series we’ve come to love and leaves us with a bittersweet, Agent 47-sized gap in our hearts.

GameMAG - Russian - 9 / 10

There's simply not a lot of stealth-action games that can hold a candle to Hitman III, with its hours upon hours of engaging gameplay and high replayability. The sheer variety of different locations and missions, and also the inclusion of all the legacy content, turns this title into something you don't want to miss at the start of 2021.

GamePro - Dennis Michel - German - 82 / 100

Hitman 3 is exactly what fans of the IO Interactive games expect: an open sandbox dream in which thousands of paths lead to Rome or rather to Berlin, Dubai, China, England, Argentina and Romania. On this point, there is simply no second genre representative who leaves so much room for our creativity. The six locations are wonderfully varied and great, but I never got rid of the feeling of playing a story DLC here. After a good five to six hours, that's it.

GameSkinny - Mark Delaney - 9 / 10 stars

Hitman 3 brings to a close one of gaming's great trilogies with one last display of immaculate level design and intoxicating mood from IO Interactive.

GameSpew - Richard Seagrave - 9 / 10

Chances are we aren’t going to be placed in control of Agent 47 again; at least for a fair while, anyway. But with Hitman 3, IO Interactive has at least made sure he’s had a worthy send-off.

GameSpot - Phil Hornshaw - 9 / 10

What's good about Hitman--its level design and the creativity, experimentation, and exploration that affords--is great in Hitman 3. It closes out the trilogy by brilliantly playing off everything that came before it

GameWatcher - Marcello Perricone - 9 / 10

Hitman III is a fascinating finale to the franchise that shyly continues the series' tradition to iterate and improve on each entry.

GameZone - Cade Onder - 8.5 / 10

While Hitman 3 is the end of this trilogy, it's clear IO will be coming back to 47 after they play around in the 007 sandbox for a while. This isn't so much the end of Hitman as it is this iteration of 47 and I will be eagerly awaiting his return.

Gameblog - Gianni Molinaro - French - 9 / 10

Could IO Interactive have ended the World of Assassination Trilogy better ? Probably not. Even if Hitman 3 sticks to previous episodes formula and plays it safe, keeping its usual flaws, it offers gorgeous and incredibly well-convceived destinations that will indeed please fans. There are so many good trails to follow, so many possibilities that you'll sure end up with the urge to try everything in order to go for the perfect kill. If you own Hitman 1 and Hitman 2, there is some serious amount of challenges waiting. A PlayStation VR ? Prepare for a game-changing experience.

GamesBeat - Jeff Grubb - 5 / 5 stars

Hitman is a world made up entirely of Chekhov’s guns, and it’s a blast finding out how to get Agent 47 into position to pull the trigger.

GamesRadar+ - Leon Hurley - 4.5 / 5 stars

A slick and entertaining conclusion to the trilogy.

GamingBolt - Shubhankar Parijat - 9 / 10

Hitman 3 represents the peak of the series, of IO Interactive, and of the social stealth genre.

God is a Geek - Chris White - 8.5 / 10

Hitman 3 is a satisfying farewell to Agent 47, with stunning locations, and endless opportunities to take out your targets.

Hardcore Gamer - Adam Beck - 3.5 / 5

In the current trilogy, Hitman 3 would be considered the weaker of the three.

Hobby Consolas - David Martinez - Spanish - 80 / 100

Hitman 3 is a good entry in the series. It deliver beautiful levels, such as Dartmoor or Chonqing, new assassination tools and it allows players to import maps from the previous games (with improved graphics), buy still, it´s mechanics and some AI elements feel outdated.

IGN - Luke Reilly - 9 / 10

Rich, rewarding, and highly replayable, Hitman 3 is one of the barcoded butcher's best appearances.

IGN Italy - Andrea Giongiani - Italian - 8 / 10

A nice conclusion to the World of Assassination trilogy. Hitman III is "just" more of the same, but that's not a problem when the original material is that good.

Kotaku - Riley MacLeod - Unscored

Narratively and structurally, Hitman 3 strips its own make believe away, leaving the series’ core darkness on display.

Metro GameCentral - Patrick Dane - 8 / 10

A great finale to the World of Assassination trilogy and the perfect time to end the reboot era, as the once revolutionary formula begins to show its age.

MonsterVine - Diego Escala - 5 / 5

Hitman 3 is a phenomenal closer to what has been an excellent trilogy in a series I hold dear.

Noisy Pixel - Azario Lopez - 9 / 10

Hitman 3 builds on the structure of its predecessors but doesn't recycle old mechanics. Its creative sandbox systems encourage multiple playthroughs with possible outcomes only limited by your imagination. Returning fans will get the most of this narrative as it ties up a few loose ends but doesn't totally stick the landing. It's absolutely brilliant in execution, though, as you replay missions for different results providing the most robust experience to those who spend the most time playing.

PC Gamer - Andy Kelly - 90 / 100

A beautiful, deep, and endlessly replayable murder sandbox, featuring some of the best levels in the series.

PCGamesN - Jordan Forward - 8 / 10

Another fine outing for Agent 47, and a fitting, hopefully brief, farewell to one of the best stealth series of the last decade.

PlayStation Universe - Neil Bolt - 9 / 10

Hitman 3 closes out the World of Assassination Trilogy with developer IO Interactive in confident mood. Lessons learned from the past five or six years have worked their way into this splendid epitaph for a series that looked dead and buried more than once along the way. As with its predecessor's, there are some lows to go with the highs, but those highs? They are truly something special and make the future of IO Interactive an exciting prospect.

Player2.net.au - Matt Hewson - A or higher

A franchise like no other comes to an epic and satisfying conclusion. Hitman III is the culmination of both story and development skill that will leave fans everywhere smiling with joy.

Polygon - Samit Sarkar - Unscored

IO Interactive delivers a terrific, thrilling finale for its trilogy

PowerUp! - Leo Stevenson - 9 / 10

It's enormously addictive and is endlessly replayable. For one of the first major releases in 2021, Hitman is an absolute home run

Press Start - James Mitchell - 8.5 / 10

HITMAN III is a decidedly epic conclusion to the events established in the first two games. It offers fantastic, well-realised locales with objectives that are unconventional, at least by HITMAN standards, to come out feeling fresh. Though in pursuit of this, it has lost a bit of the breadth we've come to expect from the series. Ultimately, it delivers what it promised to - a strong conclusion to the trilogy.

Push Square - Sammy Barker - 9 / 10

On its own, Hitman 3 is a moody conclusion to a generation-defining trilogy, but when taken as a complete compilation, it's the ultimate stealth sandbox. IO Interactive has honed its gameplay formula to perfection, and it's on top form here

Rectify Gaming - Dave Rodriguez - 9.6 / 10

After two decades of pasta cans, silver ballers, suitcase snipers and more, Hitman 3 delivers the perfect hit.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Brendan Caldwell - Unscored

As a final act, Hitman 3 is as capable and pleasing as its trilogy-siblings. As a trilogy, it is one of the most fun-loving games of the previous decade.

Screen Rant - Christopher Teuton - 4.5 / 5 stars

Hitman 3 is the best of the newer Hitman games and quite possibly the best Hitman game in the franchise.

Shacknews - Bill Lavoy - 9 / 10

It’s great on its own, but combined with Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2 it helps make up the masterpiece which is the World of Assassination trilogy.

Spaziogames - Italian - 8.8 / 10

Hitman 3 is an amazingly crafted epilogue for the World of Assassination trilogy and the best modern Hitman yet.

The Games Machine - Daniele Dolce - Italian - 9 / 10

Hitman 3 dances asymptotically with the concept of perfection, often approaching it without ever really grasping its essence. Nevertheless, IO Interactive manages to improve and refine a well-established formula, while offering a a truly satisfying conclusion to 47's struggle against Providence. Although there are some flaws, they're almost entirely eclipsed by the incredible quality of everything else.

TheSixthAxis - Jim Hargreaves - 8 / 10

Charting the series' progress since that 2016 Paris debut has been a fascinating journey. IO have learned a lot over the past five years and that really shows in Hitman 3. It's a flashier, more fluid evolution of IO's original template - a rewarding conclusion to one of the most unique video game franchises around, and one we'll continue playing for many weeks and months to come.

TrueAchievements - Sean Carey - 4.5 / 5 stars

All in all, IO Interactive has stuck with what it knows best with Hitman 3: gorgeously crafted open playgrounds for the player to wreak slick and murderous havoc in.

TrueGaming - نواف النغموش - Arabic - 9 / 10

Hitman 3 is the quintessential stealth game.

Twinfinite - Tom Hopkins - 4 / 5

Without straying far from the successful sandbox formula, it’s an excellent final part of IO’s trilogy. While the increased freedom and level variety won’t be for everyone, Hitman 3 boasts some of the best locations and stories the series has ever seen, and there’s so much to uncover in each and every one of them.

VG247 - Alex Donaldson - 5 / 5 stars

Taken individually, Hitman 3 feels like great value, with plenty of variety and lots to do. When taken as a whole, the World of Assassination trilogy is hands-down one of the best and most complete-feeling trilogies in video game history.

WellPlayed - Dylan Blereau - 8.5 / 10

Hitman 3 does an excellent job of wrapping up the World of Assassination Trilogy, pairing the predictable yet enjoyable narrative with the refined and forever reliable Hitman gameplay

Windows Central - Zackery Cuevas - 4 / 5 stars

Hitman 3 features some of the most complex and most creative levels in the series history while polishing the gameplay to perfection. Unfortunately, it's held back by some hefty paywalls, uneven mission pacing, and some occasional clunky AI.

Worth Playing - Andreas Salmen - 8.6 / 10

The third Hitman game delivers a satisfying and worthwhile ending to the series and some fun and varied stages, all while adding a bunch of minor adjustments and content that fans will enjoy for hours. If you're a fan of the series, Hitman 3 is a very competent end to the trilogy that provides a massive and deep Hitman experience that is easy to recommend.

Slay the Spire and its "family"

https://steam.cryotank.net/wp-content/gallery/slaythespire/Slay-the-Spire-01-HD.png
Slay the Spire (StS) has finally arrived to Android! For two years many of us dreamed for this legendary game to be accessible on their mobile devices, and finally the day has come. No need to talk about how awesome this game is, how it basically started a new genre of card-based dungeon crawlers (UPD: or roguelike deck-builders, if you prefer the term), and even about how well or poor it works on Android hardware in its current state (there will be lots of these posts during the days to come). What I wanted to talk about is the impact this game had on (specifically) mobile industry and how other developers were able to utilize this innovative formula in their own products.
Personally, I am somewhat glad that StS release was delayed that much. This allowed a lot of "clones" to be spawned, many of which I enjoyed playing. Some of them appear to be straight rip-offs, but others introduced many fresh ideas of their own, some even surpassing the predecessor's greatness. What the heck am I talking about and how is this even possible will be revealed to you, should you decide to stay on a bit and read through the article below.

General info

First and foremost, let's clarify the important thing: card based dungeon crawlers are not Collectible Card Games (CCGs). Even though they share the same ideas, and some of them (StS included) even have a feature to permanently improve starting cards, or a mode to play with pre-constructed decks, this is not the case for the genre in general. There is no place for multiplayer and PvP battles here: a turn-down for the most, but an undeniable advantage for the rest - only though-out puzzle-like single-player experience which we can pause at any moment and continue when the time is appropriate. Thus, there will never be troubles with downtime, matchmaking, ratings, overpowered builds and other PvP stuff, as there will never be a satisfaction of crushing your opponents with the power of your mighty intellect... The fun of discovering interesting synergies between various card combinations is still present, though.
With this being said, let's quickly look through the core features of the genre, which will be relevant for almost every game we review below: - we must explore a dungeon, which (usually, but not necessarily) consists of three floors with increasing difficulty; - we have limited control over the order in which to face the challenges; - there is a powerful boss in the end of each floor; - we battle using deck of cards, usually drawing new cards from deck to hand each turn; - there is a limitation on how many cards we can play during our turn; - we start with a weak basic deck, but get new cards as rewards for fighting enemies; - there is a possibility to permanently remove (weak) cards from the deck; - successful gameplay strategies revolve around utilizing the synergies between different cards; - there are several character classes, each with their own cards and tactics; - there are often additional items to acquire in the dungeon, providing bonuses and emphasizing specific types of play;
Before Slay the Spire (StS) came out, there was another card-based dungeon crawler called Dream Quest (DQ), which considered by many to be the first game of the genre (at least the first one to make a significant impact). Not sure if the former drew inspiration from the latter, but certain parallels can easily be drawn: in fact, all of the features mentioned in the list above are valid for DQ the same way as it is for StS. The rich plethora of card based dungeon crawlers (both PC/Console and mobile) originated from some combination of the two.
StS, however, can not be considered a clone of DQ, as it introduced a lot of original ideas and spawned its own line of descendants. It is always interesting to analyze each new title to see which of two games was the biggest inspiration, and to group them accordingly. For me the main criteria lies in the core difference in battle system: - in StS, enemies (usually multiple) show their intentions at the beginning of each turn, so we know what to expect and what to play against; - in DQ, the enemy (usually single) draws and plays cards the same way as we do, often using the same abilities and synergies we ourselves can use.
Introductions aside, let's finally get to the interesting part - the games! (Note: Games are listed in alphabetical order to not give any privileges to one over another. For my personal preferences see the comment section).

Dream Quest clones

Call of Lophis takes us on a grim journey through infested lands full of deadly monsters, dangerous traps, and one of the most ridiculous card art I have ever seen. It's surprising to see how dark fantasy elements combine with the humor and gags this game presents. From the gameplay point of view, there is enough card variety and interesting synergies, but it will take a long time to reach the interesting parts. Really: this game just does not know when to end, forcing new and new dungeon locations onto us with basically the same monsters and same approaches to dealing with them over and over. Its the boss battles which crank the difficulty up to over 9000, and if we don't have the right deck by the time we reach them, there is nothing we can do to pull it off. Plus there is some shady business going on with monetization schemes, where even paid version of the game makes us spend money to unlock additional classes and grind a lot to buy permanent improvements. Only truly dedicated players will be interested in dealing with all this nonsense. [...] UPD: Haven't checked on it for a long time - maybe the situation improved somehow.
Crimson Deep is still in early alpha and was not updated for a long time. But the development hasn't stopped, and there is a new major release approaching in the nearest future. It makes no sense to talk about the game till then: the version in the store is too raw to provide any significant gameplay experience, but it would be interesting to see where it goes in the end.
Dimension of Dream is probably the only game that has the same grid-based dungeon layout as DQ itself. This time with full 3D and a possibility to fight only limited set of enemies before facing the final boss (which allows to moderate difficulty as we go, either defeating tougher enemies with better rewards, or to save HP and fight only the easy ones). This game has one of the most interesting battle systems and 6 truly unique classes with deep complex strategies unlike anything we have ever seen (not only the cards themselves, but the order in which we play them greatly affects the outcome). Unfortunately, the English version was pulled from Google Play, leaving only Chinese version for Asian people to enjoy. UPD: Apparently, the game was re-released under different publisher with the title Dreaming Dimension, so there you have it. [...]
Meteorfall: Journeys offers the streamlined approach to dungeon crawling, where all our decisions boil down to Reigns-like "swipe left / swipe right" operation: picking the path, encounter resolutions, and even battles are simplified to utilize this binary choice mechanic. But don't worry: these specifics do not affect the gameplay, still providing enough strategic depth to appeal even to hardcore players. Add here a neat visual style, lots of character classes and their variations, cool card combos, and you get a true masterpiece, which is Meteorfall. [...]
Night of the Full Moon offers a fresh take on a fairy tale of Red Riding Hood, but adding darker elements to it (including werewolves, zombies, mad scientists and cursed cultists). It demonstrates an amazing production quality with top-tier art, beautiful audio support, and intriguing storytelling. Gameplay wise, we have the closest thing to DQ, safe for the grid-based dungeon maps, which were changed to just picking the encounter out of available three. Some people may argue that the game does not offer enough strategic variety, only suggesting a single best build for each class, but you will still get different runs due to the randomness of card and power-up drops. Another argument of it being too easy is completely nullified on higher difficulty levels. Wish the story would develop in a different direction, though. [...]
Spellsword Cards: Origins provides the gameplay similar to the Night of the Full moon, but focuses more on role-playing character development part. Aside from choosing a class, we also get to pick race with unique traits, and a school of magic, greatly affecting which cards will be available to us during the run. The problem here, though, is that monster encounters do not demonstrate a lot of variety, forcing us to fight the same enemies over and over, and the difficulty is rather high, with starting cards doing almost nothing and enemies quickly run out of hand with their devastating attacks, whereas good cards are hard to come by, and even then you will still be devastated on later stages. [...] UPD: Or maybe I am just bad at this game (welcome to comment section for valid strategy suggestions).

Slay the Spire clones

Blood Card offers a unique possibility to construct the dungeon ourselves, providing a pool of encounters of different types: regular monsters, elite monsters, events and shops. We pick a desired encounter from the pool, deal with it and then move on to the next one. Another interesting feature is that our health is defined by the number of cards in draw pile, which limits our tactical possibilities, but is compensated by the fact that we get multiple copies of cards as rewards for fighting enemies. There are a lot of interesting mechanics related to moving cards between various piles, as well as other neat features (like: the Death inevitably arrives in three turns and starts whacking everyone on the field with increasing persistence), but I'll leave them for you to discover on your own.
Card Crusade seemed like a cool idea of mixing classic "roguelike" dungeon crawling with its "deck-based" counterpart, where we explore the dungeon the same way as we do it in Hack, Angband, Pixel Dungeon and other similar games, but use cards to fight actual enemies. In reality though, this implementation just adds a useless abstraction, as the adventuring does not provide any tactical benefits and is only there to inter-connect battle sequences (heck, even breaking pots and chests does not give us any coin, of which developers themselves warn us at the very beginning!). The cards are not very interesting, with next to none cool synergies, and new classes (which should be unlocked by performing specific actions on previous runs) do not provide any major difference. [...]
Card Quest takes us on an epic journey through fantasy lands, where we will perform great deeds as one of the classic RPG hero classes (fighter, wizard, rogue, ranger), each with their own equipment and fighting disciplines. The interesting part is that the cards we use during runs are defined by said equipment, and if we find some new pieces during our adventure, we get to keep them for further runs. Also worth noting that defense cards are played not during our turn, but during enemy turn, which requires us to plan ahead a bit. This being said, the game is extremely hard - it will take a lot of unsuccessful tries to finally reach the end. But the variety of dungeons and possible builds will keep us occupied for long.
Dungeon Tales for a long time was the closest, yet simplified copy of StS mechanics (up to similar cards and gaming strategies), but without certain elaborate features, like upgrading cards or using potions. The basics are left intact though: we still build our deck along the way and face the powerful boss in the end. There are only two characters available yet, but each has a couple of viable builds, so it can keep us invested for quite some time. [...]
Endless Abyss is a close StS clone with very similar character classes (only two so far) and a lot of cards with exactly the same effects. Graphically the game looks very good, but angry monetization, lots of grinding, and forced ads make it almost impossible to fully enjoy. [...]
Heroes of Abyss is a predecessor to Endless Abyss with basically the same core gameplay, but very simplified dungeon crawling part. There is no floor map with choosing our path, nor there are elaborate adventure events: just a series of battles with the boss in the end. The spoils we get after each battle go into improving our starting deck and unlocking new difficulty modes with higher rewards. What makes the game unusual, is that we chose the preferred build right from the beginning with appropriate set of starting cards, without the need to rely on the randomness of card drops. It may be interesting to unlock and compare all the 6 available builds, but once the task is done, there is almost no reason to play the game further.
Heroes Journey provides a different setting for a change: this time we will play as space explorers, who crash landed on an alien planet. Thus, instead of familiar swords and bows, we will be wielding blasters and energy shields: the rest remains the same, up to the majority of cards straight up copied from StS. Unfortunately, this innovative idea was completely ruined by repetitive grinding and angry monetization, forcing player to make dozens of identical runs with the same small card pool, until something adequate is unlocked. Oh, and the game is long abandoned by the developers.
Pirates Outlaws is an amazing rework of original StS ideas in a pirate setting with some changes to gameplay mechanics, such as introducing persistent charges needed to play certain cards, and different buff/debuff statuses that replace each other. There are also some questionable features, such as ship stamina that deteriorates over the course of the journey and leads to game over if not repaired in time, or a quest system, where quests can not be completed in parallel, but instead picking the new quest resets your progress in the current one. Some may also argue that new classes take long to grind for, or expensive to pay for, but with permanent booster pack this should not be a problem. Anyway, the game is highly recommended for any StS fan. [...]
Rogue Adventure offers a twist to usual mechanic: our hand is limited by 4 cards, but each time we use one of them, a new card is immediately drawn to its place, thus we never run out of cards to play. Non-starting cards are common for all classes, but are grouped by type (or race), giving huge synergies depending on how many similar cards we have. Aside from this, the game offers diverse gameplay by providing a lot of different classes, each with its own unique strategies and dynamics, and some interesting items to work around. The developers constantly provide updates with bug fixes and new content, but be warned that new mechanics may break what you are already accustomed for.
Royal Booty Quest started as a straight rip-off from StS with the same classes and abilities, and even cards having the same names. And absolutely atrocious pixelated visuals, which were not possible to look at without eyes bleeding out. Over time, though, it developed its own unique mechanics and interesting card combinations, but the art style did not get any better. However, if this is not a problem, the game is enjoyable to an extent, but since it was not updated for a long time, I doubt it will keeps anyone's interest for long. [...]
Tavern Rumble adds an unusual strategic element - a 3x3 grid, on each units and enemies are placed. The core gameplay remains the same (we still see what opponents are planning to do each turn and adjust our own strategy accordingly), but the addition of the grid introduces another tactical layer: not only we should maximize the damage output, but also plan the layout for our troops to provide the effective delivery of said output, while at the same time establish enough defense to minimize the damage to ourselves. There are a lot of cards and classes to play around, different play modes and a lot of features that are still being constantly added to the game. Some may argue about simplistic pixel graphics or long repetitive grinding, but it is easy to unlock everything within reasonable amount of time, even without paying. [...]

Other Games

Of course, my criteria does not work 100% of the time, as some games are way too different from anything else to confidently enroll them into one of the categories. They either demonstrate traits of both, or implement entirely unique mechanics of their own (which I like the most), while still maintaining the basic dungeon crawling ideas (so a lot of the games you might think of will not end up in the list). What I have in mind is the following:
Dungeon Reels removes the cards from card-based dungeon crawler - why bother, right? Instead, it provides some kind of a slot machine, where each turn three rows spin independently to pick available actions based on what slots we have in our reel. Winning battles awards us with new, better slots to add, each with their own specifics and synergies. Enemies also randomize their moves with slots of their own, but the most satisfying mechanic is the possibility to spin a jackpot with three identical slots for some powerful effect. It is interesting to see this concept developed further, but the game has not been updated for a long time.
Iris and the Giant takes us on journey through imaginary world, inspired by Ancient Greek mythology. Each battle takes place on a grid, where various enemies advance in huge numbers. We play a card from our hand, usually dealing damage to nearest enemy, and then everyone who is still standing and can reach us deals damage in return. There are cards that target multiple enemies at once, as well as ways to play more than one card during our turn, so most of the time we will be deciding which card to play at which moment. The deck has limited size, and if it becomes empty we lose, so new cards should be constantly acquired. There are a lot of interesting mechanics to discover, but the game is very hard and luck based, requiring a lot of trial-and-error to finally reach the end. [...]
Phantom Rose Scarlet has the same basic core, but with completely innovative battle system, not seen in any other game. On each turn there are four positions for cards to be played in strict order, where two of them are randomly filled with opponent's cards, and the remaining two are left for us to fill. Instead of drawing the hand, we have our entire deck available right away, but playing cards puts them on a cooldown, which does not reset between battles, so we constantly face the strategic choice of playing our best cards right away or keep them for later. The game is in active development, providing new mechanics and further developing the story, which is quite captivating here. [...]
Void Tyrant is a bit of a stretch, but still a "card based dungeon crawler", in which we basically play BlackJack against our enemies by dealing card with numbers from 1 to 6 one-by-one from our deck until we stand or bust. Whoever has the highest value wins and deals damage to the loser. There are various supporting cards on top of this mechanic, allowing us to either jinx the outcome in our favor, or to perform various other metagame manipulations. The only downside of the game is the lack of content, as it quickly runs out of interesting things, and since it was not updated for a long time, it is unlikely that anything new will be added in the future. [...]

Conclusion

As you see, there is a lot to play besides StS, so even if you are not hyped by its long-awaited Android release, but appreciate a good intellectual dungeon crawler, you will find something to suit your needs. I hope, even with StS release, new games of the genre will continue appearing on mobile phones, and I will gladly review them and add to the list. If you know any hidden gems (or even trash) that was not highlighted in this article, please share the names and/or links in the comments. I am also open to any discussions on the topic, as I am obviously able to talk a lot about my favorite genre.
Good luck to everyone in all your endeavors.
P.S. I am well aware of games like Dungeon Cards, Card Adventure, Dungeon Faster, Meteorfall: Krumitz Tale, Card Thief, Maze Machina, Cube Card, Card Hog, Fisherman, Relics of the Fallen and other "grid-based puzzles", but do not consider them to be a part of the "family".

`Pulseaudio -k`, or a pro audio user's perspective on Linux's sound stack

A bit about me.

I\'m a professional Physicist, Composer, Musician and I code in some off time. You have probably not used my programs, but it is nonetheless possible, maybe you do some Bayesian inference, or like to do some org-ing in emacs. I\'ve done my share of audio mixing on Windows, I\'ve written a bunch of Midi stuff in Cakewalk Pro Audio (yeah, that relic), and I currently own a Macbook Pro that I do some serious heavy lifting in. I don\'t just write music, though I happen to like tinkering with sound in wave editors, and I often create mods for \'90s shooters.
I also happen to be running Arch Linux since forever, but 2011 is the earliest date since when I ran it on bare metal on any of the machines that I own. I\'ve since branched out to Gentoo, and recently NixOS, because reproducible builds make your developer life a lot easier. I\'ve ran Arch for a very long time, it would have been five consecutive years, were it not for hardware failure. In other words, I know what I\'m doing, and I can follow a man page.

Life before pulseaudio

I don\'t hate it out of thin air. I was running Ubuntu before Arch and I remember the days before pulseaudio was a thing. I didn\'t hate it because change=bad, I\'ve grown to hate over the span of several sleepless nights, trying to figure out if the sound artifacts that I can hear are due to hardware problems or another in a series of bugs.
Things used to be simple: you had to do most things manually, no hotplugging, no autodetect and sadly, no way of adjusting program volume levels individually. ALSA isn\'t perfect, but it\'s workable if you know your way around alsamixer. Certainly, setting up a DAW (digital audio workstation) is a bit more of an adventure than one might expect it to be on Windows or Mac OS X.
You see, on Windows, in the olden days, there used to be this thing called a VST, that could come with an effect like reverb, or it could come with a full instrument like surge. It\'s mostly plug and play, however, in some particular instances, there are mild issues, that can be resolved with ccleaner plus some reinstalling. Mac OS X, is notoriously good in this regard. Not only do things arrange themselves neatly, they rarely if ever misbehave. Logic Pro is a DAW that almost never malfunctions by itself, and there\'s not a single piece of manual intervention between downloading a plugin, and listening to it in action.
On linux, you need to have Jack set up properly. It used to be easy: Jack sits on top of Alsa, and lets you do things like route different Jack Outputs to different inputs, including the midi tracks in say Ardour, to say the VST instrument. Not easy, but doable. You can actually just autostart Jack at login, and be fine. Then pulseaudio came along, and... things broke. It\'s fine, it\'s new, it\'s got shiny new ideas and a talented young developer behind it. It\'ll be alright two years down the line.
Almost ten years after, and things are not fine. Not in the slightest.

Pulseaudio at its best.

I mean no disrespect to Lennart Poettering. I really don\'t. It\'s not that he has bad ideas (they\'re not bad), or that two out of three of his major projects are so bad, that not having this software is a selling point. The trouble is that under pressure from Red Hat, and Arch, and other cool new shiny distros, pulseaudio was adopted by default. Gnome cut out the option of running on pure alsa, because of course it did. Some major applications outright require the presence of pulseaudio, namely Steam, making the proposition of not running this Alpha quality, Early-access CoreAudio asset flip of an abomination a bit difficult to swallow for most users. However, much of the problems with pulseaudio ten years ago are still there, so I can equally well describe the situation back then as now.
First let\'s start with the bugs. Pulse is a meme at this point. The biggest indicator of the abject failure of pulseaudio is the fact that if a typical user has no sound, they never think \"maybe it\'s JACK\", or even \"Maybe it\'s ALSA\". This mission-critical-middleware of a system, is responsible for the vast majority of incompatibilities, and headaches around sound.
You can\'t reliably make pulseaudio work with JACK. This is a deal breaker for me, because I need to use VSTis for my projects. I have tried Ubuntu Studio, Arch and it\'s pro-audio oriented spin-off. None of them work out of the box, and the only semi-workable solution is to run pulseaudio -k before starting JACK. The best solutions to the incompatibility is to get rid of pulse. Things like pulseeffects work... sometimes... and not that well.
But those problems can be fixed. You can theoretically assign a team of good programmers to fix the mess that currently is pulseaudio, and maybe fix some of the recurring issues. The architecture of how it works, however, cannot. How many command-line tools does pulseaudio come with. What is the syntax of pamixer, vs pactl, vs pacmd. Why couldn\'t those utilities be merged? Minimalism? Independence? OK. Fine. Why do we have sources and sinks? Why do I never get shown a decent name like onboard audio, vs Family 17h HD AUDIO CONTROLLER. I\'m a tech savvy person, and even I have doubts that this is the right audio output. But then you only identify it with that name in some obscure cases, every real application requires you to remember the number of the card. I have one onboard audio controller, and one inside my video-card that I never use. Guess which number is the one that is active? 1? 0? 4! I guess the internal enumeration makes sense, but you might have as well used a UUID hash, because a human would never have guessed that without looking it up.
Why do we make it so obtuse? Why do we have to assume that the end user is looking at the source code of pulseaudio and already figured out, that the sink is a recording device and a source is a playback device. Why add terminology that makes no sense. Moreover, the only thing that the bloatware of pulseaudio could have done, is at least fix the audible pop when volume is adjusted. OSS, had this feature twenty years ago!
There is still hope. Pipewire is a bit of a necessity in the post X11 world. It handles many of the tasks that are impossible otherwise, and handles them well. While I had very moderate success in replacing the aforementioned pulseaudio and JACK. I have yet to attempt any serious work on the new stack, and I expect things to not be as simple as they used to be, but I\'m hopeful. I do, however worry, that pipewire shall inherit all of the shortcomings of pulseaudio. It very likely shall fall victim to the same hubris of \"It\'s already adopted on every Linux machine, why should I fix the glaring issues and omissions?\"
However, I have a list of small things that as a pro audio user I would like to change.

VSTs should support pipewire directly. If you can drop-in-replace JACK, then you can use pw, as a substitute.
Pipewire should probably have a more sane model of the audio hardware. I understand that it inherits most of that from ALSA, which is itself an overengineered mess of spaghetti protocols, but still, a bit more simplicity for the end user, means fewer bug reports.
There should be a single set of command-line tools, that come with pipewire. I shouldn\'t have to search the repos for the package that contains the tools I need to debug a problem.
On that note, latency is a big problem with pulseaudio. I don\'t care if it\'s bloated, but I do care if I hit a Midi key and get the sound noticeably later. This makes improvisation impossible.
Popping and cracking. There\'s something called envelopes. There\'s something called smooth transitions. These can make it so you don\'t have to use a sound effect to mask the audible pop in every GUI audio mixer.
GUIs for adjusting common settings would also be nice. kmix has a bare bones system that barely does what it\'s supposed to. pavucontrol is much better in this regard, but still too bare-bones. I want something where I can tweak the sample rate, and set the avoid-resampling parameter. Most of the people who do Pro Audio aren\'t me, and won\'t even dare touch /etc/pulse/default.pa.
Less attitude would be welcome. I guess, I\'m one of the many \"a**holes\" on the internet, that like to target Lennart Poettering. This sort of hostile attitude makes submitting actual bug reports very, very, very tense. And Pulse would be in a very different position, had most of the architectural blunders been addressed in earnest, and fixed.
Overall, I hope that you will find this rant of a post, as a bit of a... Ok. This is mostly me venting, but I tried to keep things objective and relevant.

Lockdown 3.0 Things to do, plus help and support.

Disclaimer I want to thank everyone for the gilds, replies and suggestions. I just do not have time to reply to everyone, but I am reading everything. I am not sure how much bigger the thread can be, I already typed this but it vanished so I think I'm at the limit. I will try to keep updating, but I don't expect the thread to be up top for much longer and will likely vanish soon, so if you need anything save it.
Yes, it's hard, it sucks, it's depressing. It is something we all have to do if you want to see this virus go. Everyone knows the deal, too many think they're the exception but no one is. However, staying home is hard so maybe I can help at least one or two people with some incentives. I'll try to give links to some things that can help cure the boredom, and some support if you need it.
Most of this might be obvious to some, some might not even have internet and of course, money is a big issue, so I'll try to give some suggestions:
For streaming and on demand things such as Netflix et al, don't forget you can subscribe for free for your first month. This goes for most things in the list. If you are worried about putting in your payment details and forgetting to cancel a month later, don't worry! You can sign up and immediately cancel and you still get your free month!
For people who don't have a smart TV, you can buy a cheap Amazon Fire TV stick or a Roku box. The Fire stick can go as low as £20 often for 1080p. It will drop to £30 for 4k.
I picked up a 4k Roku device for £18 on Amazon once. It's fast and snappy. currently it's going for £33 for the 4k version. Having both, there is little difference between the devices. NowTV also do their own roku powered device.
Subscription based streaming sites that all offer 2-4 weeks free for first timers

Netflix *According to comments the second month is free.
Amazon Prime You can either get Amazon video on its own, or take prime with other benefits. I strongly urge those who use Amazon for buying off their store front to use [https://smile.amazon.co.uk/] as there is literally no difference except everything you buy amazon donates to a charity of your choice.
Now TV (I believe it's 7 days)
Disney+
Britbox
Amazon channels. I believe you can get all these individually but Amazon offers them as channels bound to your prime account, and they are again either free for a couple weeks (again, take them, cancel instantly) or very cheap. I recently subscribed to Starzplay for £1 for 3 months. It has some good shows on it like Fringe, doom patrol. It also has channels like Curiosity stream and shudder

If you have not subscribed to the any of the above, you can get a few months of free TV by signing up and cancelling instantly. I suggest waiting at least 5 minutes just to let it go through the system.
Some tips for Now TV. IF you already have a subscription, I've noticed you can get it cheaper by cancelling. When you cancel they will beg you to stay. Select "I can not afford it this month" and they should beg again, telling you what shows they have. If you say you still want to cancel, they'll beg one last time and offer you the subscription for cheaper. This won't work every month, but I've noticed they'll always offer it the first time, then again after a couple months. If you're subscribed to both films and entertainment do the most expensive one as it may not work both times (but it might!). You can also pick up passes from storefronts a lot cheaper sometimes, before I could pick one up on Amazon for £3 but, they seem to have cracked down on it. If you shop around (or if anyone knows of a legitimate store please let me know) you might be able to pick it up cheaper. Lastly, check their website and under your account they should have an "offers for you" section.
Completely free TV

If you do have a smart TV and/or device, there are some good free streaming apps. One I really love is called PlutoTV. I know this is on both Roku and the fire stick, as well as Ps4/Ps5 and xbox.
Pluto offers a bunch of live channels and now an on demand section, all for free. It has adverts but they are actually short (shorter than regular TV and fewer of them). Some of the channels are just streaming certain shows like Mythbusters 24/7 or Dog the bounty hunter, but it has a lot of old movie channels as well as 24/7 kickboxing and MMA. It also has a 24/7 poker channel I quite like.
Another one I like is Rakuten Viki however, I haven't watched it for a while as my fire stick is only 1080p and I have too many other devices attached. I believe it is on Roku but you have to jump through some hoops and have an account. The last I checked on the fire stick you did not. Viki offers a metric ton of Asian shows, mainly from Japan and South Korea but it does have chinese, Malaysian etc. It has subtitles. Some Japanese shows are hysterical, albeit weird.
Roku also do their own channels with free shows if you own a device.
For those who don't have a smart TV or a Streaming device, you can set up your own computer as a dedicated streaming device with Plex. It's been a while since I used it but I believe it now also offers free movies and TV.
Anime
If you are into Anime there is

The first 2 are free to watch, or offer premium without ads which you can have a trial with. Crunchyroll is the better of the two with more original choice for Japanese voice and subs, while Funimation has more Dubs. I don't believe HiDive is free to watch but you do get a 2 week trial. These are more exclusives than the previous two.
PC Centric software
If you are a gamer or like Audiobooks or anything that uses computers for things like music making, programming or graphic design

Humble Bundle offers, as per the name, bundles. A long running site that got bought out by IGN. It offers both single items and bundles you can buy individually/as a pack while also offering a separate monthly subscription for around £8-9. The subscription gives you 12 games on average per month. That's the simplest explanation but it changes somewhat as sometimes you get to pick 10 out of 14 games, or get all 12.
Humble bundle offers more than just games though. Every Tuesday they bring a new bundle of games, while Thursday (I "think) a new bundle of books. They very often have books from the Black Library giving you a ton of Warhammer books. Sometimes it's standard E-books, other times it's audiobooks. A few times a year they do bundles for graphic design, a typical bundle would include programs like Paintshop Pro Corel Painter etc, They usually go for £0.76 for tier 1 up to around £18 for tier 3, which would include 4-6 full titles with 10+ addons. They also often have Music making bundles or video editing software as well as Programming or video game development.
The bundles change often, they usually have around 11 bundles at a time that last for 20 days. Sometimes it's trash but they do often have some very good deals.
Fanatical offers the same as humble bundle except usually not as high quality, but sometimes they do have some incredible deals, and they are very very cheap.
Both humble and fanatical are safe, trusted and been around a long time, and they are NOT grey market key sites. They work with the publishers and developers. You can buy games both old and new for a lot cheaper than you would most other places. Unless it states otherwise, keys are usually for steam.
**BOTH HB and Fanatical (HB much more common) offer free games fairly often. The catch is linking your steam account to them (at least HB). It is safe however.
IndieGala is another site like above. Except, these are much much lower quality. However, they offer a metric ton of free games. Quality is low but it is legitimate, and a lot of free stuff.
Game Store Fronts

Steam This one is so obvious I didn't add it, but apparently many want me to. It is the best out there, and you can find almost everything, with fantastic deals.
Greenmangaming offers games cheaply. Again, not a grey market site (which are legal but unethical) and they sometimes do bundles.
GoG (Good old games) is a DRM free site run by CDPR, the makers of the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. They offer you games quite cheap and not needing DRM (such as Steam, Uplay etc which is less invasive versions of dodgy DRM from the olden days).
Epic Games Despite the controversy whether you care about their rivalry with valve, they offer free games ever week. Without ever having bought anything I have gained over 170 games. literally. Good games for the most part. They often give you £10 coupons as well.
Twitch Everyone knows twitch, but if you don't, it's a streaming service for watching gamers and girls with low cut tops accidentally bending over in front of the game. However, if you're signed up to prime, you get free games each month (and randomly between the set bunch).
Playstation Store Currently has January sales. Currently the free games for PS+ are for PS4: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Greedfall. For the Ps5 it is Maneater
Games with Gold Bleed 2 and the King of Fighters XIII is available until Janurary 15th whilst little Nightmares is available until January 31st.

Gaming Subscriptions
Like the TV versions, you can sign up to these for a free trial (or very cheap). If you do sign up to only one at a time, it should keep you busy for a few months

Xbox Game Pass You can do this on both/either an Xbox or PC. If you sign up to the regular one, you can get a month (maybe three!) for £1. After you have done that, you can sign up to the premium version for 3 months at £1 a month. Most people know game pass, but you can download a large selection of games for free. The premium version gives you games with gold, allowing you to keep the games forever (but can only play with a subscription)
Ubisoft+ I'm not 100% sure if you get a trial or not. This allows a large collection of Ubisoft titles to play for £12.99 a month. Quite expensive but good if you like Ubisoft titles I guess.
EA Play EA's version. Goes by a ton of names I think, EA Access, EA Play, Origin Access etc etc. There's a couple of versions of this, and it is across all platforms (PS4/5, Xbox, PC) but not sure about the switch. I "think" the premium allows you to play on all platforms, while the cheaper one on a single platform, but I may be mistaken.
PS Now a once terrible service that is now actually very good. Allows you to download some Ps4 games to your PS4/5 and lets you stream a massive amount of Ps2/3/4 to your PC or playstation.

There's more like nvidia's service but you need the Shield device which is quite expensive. I'll leave it at that.
Audiobooks & Ebooks

Audible Not sure what the current deal is but if you are a prime member you can sign up for a trial and get a free Audiobook each month for 3 months. Some warhammer books are 48 hours long, 3 of those gives you a good 100+ hours of listening!
Comixology Another Amazon company, but lets you download some free comics I believe.
Marvel Unlimited No experience with this. ItFuckingWont wanted me to add it. A subscription service for Marvel.

Education

Sign Language BSL here No experience myself, suggested by n21brown and asked for a few times. Didn't know SL was so popular! Listed as "Pay what you can"
BBC's Bitesize here is apparently good for home learning. Again, no personal experience.

If you need some spare change
Okay, I don't generally bother with it, but maybe some of this could be useful to you. These are NOT a quick way to make a fortune. These are small things you can do over time for a bit of pocket change

If you have prime you can get a FREE FIVE POUND GIFT CARD by literally just streaming a song from Amazon music (which is included in prime) here is the details According to the comments it's only for select people, but it's worth trying If the link doesn't work for you just google "Amazon £5 coupon music"
Now, these sorts of sites have been around for years, I haven't used any other than talkInsights which I must have signed up to 10-15 years ago. Basically they send you surveys and you answer them. They are confidential and don't ask for personal details in the survey. You need 2000 points and you get £20. During the pandemic they've slowed down but I probably get around £40 a year. Not much I know, but it's an email followed by a quick survey ticking boxes. Depending on your answer sometimes you get screened out, I'm not telling you to lie but just be consistent with your answers and you should be able to work out how to not get screened. Some emails are only worth 20 points, others 200. It's slow to get to the 2000 but very quick to just answer a few questions.
Apparently beermoneyuk is a good sub to make some pocket change with.
There is also matched betting. I have never done this, I don't have the patience but from what I've read, it's legitimate, it works and you can make a fair amount of cash from it so long as you do it correctly, and there's a ton of guides. I mention this because people stuck at home could get into it and as long as you're careful (I.E not entering in the wrong numbers) it's risk free AND it pisses off the betting shops. It seems people in comments have had success with it. Disclaimer A couple have complained about gambling. This arguably is not gambling. If you are susceptible to addiction do not do it. However, it's argued that there is no fun or buzz in this, and it's a very tedious and time consuming thing. Others argue you can't make the same money anymore (People were making thousands, now only hundreds if that). It's risk free providing you know what you're doing, the risks are user error, such as entering the wrong numbers. Someone pointed out that due to the lockdown, bets could potentially be cancelled due to sport stopping. So use on a side of caution. We're (mainly) adults so I'll leave it up just because this doesn't have the excitement of regular gambling.
Microsoft Rewards This is an easy way to make pocket change doing very little. Most people have a MS account. The rewards program offers you numerous ways to grab points, by playing free to play games, answering small questions (you don't even need to answer most of the time, just open the link and shut it) and by using bing and searching on it. I've gotten 20k points JUST by answering questions over a couple months. There are many rewards but you can grab a £5 gift card for 6k for example, or a month of game pass (and AFAIK you can make points playing the games)
Google rewards Someone mentioned this in the comments. I have not used it, so can not give any input on it. Sounds similar to TalkInsights which I linked. Google states "Complete short surveys while standing in line, or waiting for a subway. Get rewarded with Google Play or PayPal credit for each one you complete. Topics include everything from opinion polls, to hotel reviews, to merchant satisfaction surveys. We’ll notify you when a survey is waiting."

That's it for now. I will try to update as I go along. A long post but I hope that it can help some of you with finding something good to do that's free, cheap or a bargain. I do suggest getting prime, especially since you get free music, free delivery, free TV and music and free video games each month. In fact, there's a ton of perks and I feel I've gotten way over the cost investment.
Hope it helps someone at least
PartTimeCrazy said if you bought an Apple product you get 3 free months of Apple Arcade and Apple TV free for a year
fakehunted is upset I didn't mention wanking. Tesco have 225 sheets of Tissue for £0.75!
tale_lost suggested Project Gutenberg for a collection of free E-Books
Learning Language
Unfortunately, I don't have time to check every link listed so I will link the comments:
Togtogtog Gives a lot of links for Spanish

Duolingo Numerous people have suggested this So I haven't used myself. Thanks to OhHiGCHQ StephanieMecredy & Allorie_95

Board & Tabletop games
Corporal_Anaesthetic has made a list of Board games
ilyemco suggested these
HEALTH
I'm not a doctor! But if you're a smoker, something I strongly suggest is to quit. I struggled for years but in the first lockdown I quit, technically. I haven't had a cigarette since, however, I do that silly thing millennials do. I vape, but, it made quitting extremely easy. I would not have been able to do it if it wasn't for 88Vape They sell extremely cheap liquids at £1 each. You can find these in B&M but you can pick up 25 for £20 or buy your own mix.
Vitamin D deficiency has been said to be a big problem for the virus. I'd suggest (again, not a doctor!) that you pick some up. Tesco do a 3 for 2 deal. So you can pick up 270 tablets for £7.
If you are vulnerable you MIGHT be able to phone tesco and get put on their delivery saver list (currently it's paused but phoning may help. At the very least they might give you a priority slot. I did this for my mum, we didn't shop at Tesco but I phoned for her, and they put her on with no hassle, so she can always get a delivery.
HELP & ADVICE
The lockdown Rules.
Reasons to leave home include:

Work or volunteering where it is "unreasonable" to work from home. This includes work in someone else's home, such as that carried out by social workers, nannies, cleaners and tradespeople
Education, training, childcare and medical appointments and emergencies
Exercise outdoors (limited to once a day). This includes meeting one other person from another household in an open public space to exercise
Shopping for essentials such as food and medicine
Communal religious worship
Meeting your support or childcare bubble. Children can also move between separated parents Activities related to moving house

I want to add, if you are in danger you are also allowed (and must!) to get away from the situation for some reason, BBC seems to have missed this very important thing (or I am blind)

To flee the threat of harm or violence.*
CoronaVirus Symptoms
CoronaVirus government site You can check your location and how many cases here.
Worldometers Shows cases around the world.
Interactive UK Map Another easy to read map with cases in counties and local area's.
World Health Organisation

Support

FOR THOSE SHIELDING YOU CAN CONTACT THE ROYAL VOLUNTARY SERVICE. These people helped my mother with picking up her medicine from the chemist. They were very helpful and went out their way to keep in touch and do it immediately. (It's the only experience I have with them though)
_riotingpacifist wanted these links added, but I simply just don't have the time to vet and check all the suggestions here, so I will link as is:

Update:
Digital Art
These are Free

Krita Arguably the best in my opinion. It has a load of options, brushes and a decent UI. It works fantastic with a tablet.
Gimp This is a decent program but last I used, the UI was a pain, and it isn't so user friendly while misses features, but it works, and it is possible to do some incredible creations on it.
Medibang Paint This is slightly geared towards Comics and Manga. I really enjoy using this with my drawing Tablet. As far as I know, it also for regular tablets for Android/Ipad and is free.

You can pick up a drawing tablet on Amazon quite cheap these days! Small ones that are just a black slate such as the wacom ones are good but takes some practice to get use to, but very worth it if you can't afford a dedicated drawing tablet with a screen.
Office suit software
A couple of free applications for word processing, spreadsheets etc.

LibreOffice This has most the average user would need to write their own books or to work from home. There's not a huge amount of difference between the two I'm linking (since I last used anyway) so it's more for preference.
Open Office You can pick this up here and again, like above it's just preference.

Music Making
I'm going to direct to matthewharris806 for some links as all the programs I've used like Reason are expensive, or cheaper stuff in bundles such as Magix software.
Games development
D_Dad_Default gives some links for that here

My Japanese Journey and How Making Fan Translations Has Been a Huge Boon in my Japanese Learning

Hey, everyone! I'm a long time reader of this sub, and have been reading this sub almost from day 1 in my Japanese learning journey, back in January 2019. Just wanted to write a post talking about my learning experience so far as a sort of way of paying back to this community.
My decision to learn Japanese 2 years ago was inspired by a great number of things, such as recently becoming a fan of anime at the time, to seeing it as a fun challenge, to simply thinking it'd be cool to say I know Japanese. However, looking back on it now, arguably the biggest factor was that I saw a great number of areas where knowing Japanese could let me do cool things that I wouldn't be able to do if I didn't know Japanese.
Being a big fan of Nintendo and actively reading about and watching videos on all sorts of topics related to Nintendo and its games for basically my whole life, I quite frequently came across stuff that was in Japanese: unused beta content having Japanese filenames or untranslated text, a new glitch discovery made by a Japanese player, Japanese game magazine scans, etc. Sometimes this would be translated by the person compiling this information, often it was not. Additionally, learning about notable Nintendo games that were only ever released in Japan (and therefore can only be played in Japanese) caused me to learn about and become interested in playing many Japanese-only games. I also became really interested in the differences in games between their Japanese and English releases and wanted to be able to experience some of my favorite games in their original language.
Now, there are things other than just videogames that I'd like to do with my Japanese, but at the time and to this day it's still a big part of why I continue to learn Japanese and also a big part of what I actually do with the Japanese I have learned already.
So with this as my motivation, I jumped into learning. The beginning of my journey started like many others on this sub. First I learned the kana, then read around to find the "best" way to learn Japanese, checking out basically every beginner's textbook, and also many of the less traditional methods, such as AJATT, MIA (back when it existed), Cure Dolly's "Organic Japanese", etc. Eventually I decided to just focus on going through Japanese From Zero 1-4 (5 wasn't out at the time) and Kanji From Zero 1. I decided to focus just on understanding the grammar and building a large (mostly kana only) vocabulary, putting very little focus on kanji and output related activities.
It was only about 7 weeks into learning Japanese when I wanted to try putting my Japanese to use. I had decided that I was going to play through the Japanese version of Paper Mario: TTYD and try to learn everything in its text that I did not know. I figured that since the game has furigana for everything, that given enough patience with a dictionary I'd be able to just "figure it out". However, given I had only gone through about half of Japanese From Zero 1 at the time, suffice to say it was a complete disaster and I gave up very quickly and became very discouraged.
So after that, I gave up on the idea of playing games in Japanese and decided to go the more traditional route of using anime and other video content as immersion. While this isn't what I wanted, I did have a great time putting on some anime with either no subs or Japanese subs and just seeing how much I could understand. I was still very new to anime back then so I was able to imagine anime as being something that simply was impossible to experience in English, so I didn't worry about when I didn't understand something and allowed myself to be thrilled when I did understand something.
This went on for most of my first year of learning. Skip to November 2019, where I made the decision that significantly changed the course of my learning. I was now at a point where I was getting fairly comfortable with the most fundamental Japanese grammar, having completed Japanese from Zero 4, and had a decently large vocabulary built up (even if it was mostly kana only). I wanted to once again try to play a video game in Japanese. I had just recently bought a Nintendo Switch and decided that I was going to get the newly released Pokemon Shield and play through it all in Japanese. Not just that, but I wasn't going to use the kana only mode and dive head in to the full Japanese mode. This time, I thought, I wouldn't give up. Surely now I'd know enough that with enough persistence with a dictionary I could understand at least a significant portion of the game.
And boy did I try. I spent over 3 hours in the house the player starts in! I kept a laptop with me as I played and would painstakingly search for each kanji word using jisho. About two weeks and 24 hours of gameplay later, I was still only about where a player would normally be after about 50 minutes of playing. I had learned a lot, but I was still being completely bombarded with new words to look up, and with it tons and tons of kanji to painstakingly use jisho's radical searching system to find. It simply was untenable and I had to call it quits once again.
Something I had noticed in my experience playing Pokemon Shield, though, was that I actually did know a fairly large number of the words I was looking up (maybe about 40%). I just didn't recognize them when written with kanji. So with that knowledge, I decided I was going to focus on kanji, and spent the rest of the year going through a recognition RTK Anki deck (the 1000 card MIA one).
About a month later, it was close to the end of 2019 and I had gone through this recognition RTK deck. Feeling confident that at long last this would finally be the moment when I might be able to get through a game in Japanese, I decided to try out an obscure Lucky Star visual novel I had recently learned about. It had never been localized and was precisely the kind of game I had learned Japanese to be able to play (watching the Lucky Star dub in late 2018 is also what got me into anime and therefore was a factor in me learning Japanese in its own right). So I gave it a try and, if you can guess the pattern, I once again fell flat on my face.
While I could recognize a fairly large number of the kanji (maybe about 50%), that was it. I could only recognize the kanji themselves. I still couldn't recognize actual words for the most part. The game was voice acted so that helped somewhat, but my listening wasn't nearly good enough for this to be much help in preventing the long long trips to jisho for kanji look-ups. RTK and my experience looking up words for Pokemon Shield made the lookups a bit faster since I was comfortable with the radicals, but boy was it frustrating the amount of times I'd recognize a kanji but not know a single word that the kanji is actually used in so I could easily type it (probably my biggest criticism of any kanji learning method that doesn't involve learning words alongside kanji). In the end I had to call it quits once again, but I decided to play a couple more hours of the game where I just listened to the dialogue, read what I could, and ignored what I didn't understand unless I was really curious, much like how I approached watching anime or other Japanese language videos.
Though it may seem silly and obvious, it was at that moment that I realized there was no reason I couldn't play other Japanese games this way. So I went back to Pokemon Shield and eventually beat it, as well as started playing other games in Japanese with a similar attitude. All this regular exposure to Japanese text helped me get comfortable with kanji in a much more natural, immersion-based type manner, and eventually I was able to naturally recognize a decent number of the more common words in my kana-only vocabulary in their kanji form.
While this was a great development, my Japanese in early 2020 was actually largely stagnating. Those long sessions looking up words in jisho I had done a few months earlier had caused me to become completely burnt out on doing any deliberate Japanese study and I had deleted the entirety of my 4000+ anki card collection, consisting of all the vocab I had learned thus far, and stopped adding new cards. Now, I was still actively engaging with Japanese content, so you'd think I might be fine, but keep in mind I was taking a very passive approach when it came to engaging with Japanese I wasn't capable of instantly understanding. Additionally, while Japanese From Zero 1-4 gave me a good footing in the most fundamental Japanese grammar, there was still a ton of fairly common and essential grammar I didn't know yet. Grammar wise I was still somewhere between N5 and N4 level. This means there still was a ton of Japanese that would be virtually incomprehensible to me even with all the dictionary look ups.
And so for January through April of 2020 this continued, until I had reached a low point. I had started to question what the point was in me continuing to do these things in Japanese. What was the point in playing games in Japanese on my Switch when I can just change the language to English with no effort and go back to enjoying the game to the fullest? What was I getting out of playing it in Japanese? It's not like I understood very much of it that way, certainly not enough to really appreciate what made the Japanese language version unique. At this point, playing a game in Japanese was just an artificial hurdle I was putting in the way of enjoying the game, a hurdle I was largely just running through and making no attempt to jump over. On the anime side of things I was more optimistic since most of my anime watching experience was with no English subs already, but there was also that question in my mind too. Sure, I enjoy watching these shows like this, but would I enjoy it more if I turned the English subs on? What was the point in keeping the subs off?
Despite this, I knew I didn't want to just give up. But to get out of this rut, I needed something to aspire to, a real purpose for learning Japanese. I needed to return to my original vision of wanting to be able to do something that I simply COULD NOT do without using Japanese. Doing output related activities seemed like an obvious choice. I could use my Japanese to make new friends, and my university had a Japanese learners club I could join. My level of Japanese was definitely good enough to join a club like that. However, of course in April 2020, school was no longer in person and all club activities had been cancelled. So ultimately I didn't go down this route.
So what else could I do? One random day, I got a random idea that changed everything. What if I started making a fan-translation playthrough of that Lucky Star visual novel I had tried a few months ago? Might seem crazy given how it wiped the floor with me back then, but I can be a pretty stubborn guy. Additionally, I really did want to know what the game was about, and the chance for someone else to make a fan translation was basically nonexistent given how old and obscure it is. I also figured it'd give my Japanese learning a sense of purpose since I'd be using my Japanese to contribute to the Lucky Star and general anime community. Lastly, there was no harm in trying. If it absolutely sucked, then oh well, I could give up like I had so many times before. If it was at least comprehensible, there'll surely be some people who will at least appreciate the effort and might be able to enjoy my translation at least a little. And maybe my efforts could at least give the game some more attention and inspire a better translator to take up the project.
So off I went. I recorded the first 10 minutes of the game and started translating as best I could. As you could expect, it was brutal. There were so many words to look up and new grammar I had to go out and learn, but my previous experience prepared me for this. I was willing to spend the long hours painfully finding kanji in jisho and spend a long time contemplating what a character was really trying to say with each and every line. About 2 months later, it had just become June 2020, and I had finally finished it and was able to upload my first part on to my YouTube channel.
Admittedly, the translation I had produced was pretty rough, but I still think it's at least passably good. Certainly someone who doesn't know Japanese could watch it and at least feel like they were able to get the gist of what happened in the scene. At first, the video didn't really get any attention, but over the first few days I got a couple of comments expressing appreciation for my efforts.
Proud that I hadn't let myself give up, and happy to see at least some people were interested, I got to work on the next video, which I finished about two weeks later. That video was especially rough, as I had decided to translate the game's opening song, which I could only find a romaji transcription of at the time. Again, I feel what I made was passably good, but I could feel that my lack of deliberate study was really holding me back.
And so over my summer break in 2020, I did the following. I was going to post-pone working on the next translation video and instead go through Japanese From Zero 1-4 again, then do Japanese From Zero 5 and Kanji From Zero 1. This time though, I would make Anki cards for every word ever mentioned in the books AND in the corresponding JFZ videos and have those words be in full kanji. I would also watch a ton of supplementary grammar videos from channels like Japanese Ammo with Misa and also make full kanji anki cards for all the words mentioned in those videos. Doing this, I was able to convert all my previous kana-only vocab knowledge into proper full kanji vocab as well as learn tons of new words. Additionally, going through JFZ5 and the Japanese Ammo videos gave me pretty much all of the rest of the essential grammar I would need. Over that 2ish month period, I ended up creating 5000+ Anki cards, often averaging over 100 new cards a day (to be fair, many of them were words I knew in kana-only form, but the reviews were still brutal). Such an intense amount of study would've almost certainly caused me to burn out if I wasn't being motivated by a desire to make more translation videos, and for those translation videos to be of a higher quality.
By the end of August 2020, I had finally finished this task. I remember the night after I had finally completed JFZ5 I watched some random Touhou related Japanese YouTube video and found myself completely blown away by the fact that I was actually able to understand most of it. And what I didn't understand, it really truly did seem like it was just a matter of 1 or 2 word lookups in order to understand it (and in most cases, this turned out to be true).
Extremely motivated by this, I went back to work on my third translation video. Then my fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. I did have school, and even with all that studying I did over the summer it still took a lot of looking up and careful thought to translate, so it took me a few weeks to make each video, but I was really starting to become proud of what I was making. It was actually (at least in my opinion) going beyond barely passable to actually being pretty okay. I was able to start focusing on making the translation flow more naturally rather than being overtly cautious that I properly understood the Japanese and sticking with safer, stiff translations. I was also starting to get a more intuitive feel for the Japanese language as a whole: capable of guessing what unknown kanji compounds meant, learning new grammar from seeing it being used "in the wild" rather than needing a textbook to tell me, and being able to recognize colloquial and dialectic variations of things I already knew. Now, this intuition wasn't and likely still isn't perfect, causing me to undoubtedly make some translation errors, but I feel fairly confident they aren't fatal ones and eventually I'll be able to look back on my older videos and find the errors if there are any.
After posting the seventh video in early December 2020, I decided I wanted to go more public with the fact that I was doing this translation project. So I made a reddit account and posted a link to my latest video on the Lucky Star subreddit. At first it seemed like it was going to be ignored, but eventually I had people in the community reach out to me and from there I've gone on to be a decently established member of that community. That was an especially great feeling because it was then that I really knew for sure that I had finally done it. I really and truly was able to achieve something that otherwise would've never been possible without learning Japanese.
Skip to now with it being February 2020. I have passed the two year mark in my Japanese journey and now I'm a fan translator regularly putting out translation videos every week. It's been an amazing journey so far, one filled with tons of setbacks and trials, but a blast nonetheless, and definitely worth it. That Lucky Star visual novel I'm translating is absolutely massive, so I'll be doing that for the foreseeable future, but I'm looking forward to all the new things I can learn from it.
So yeah, that's my story for now. I guess if there's anything to learn from it, it's that if you really want to get better at your Japanese, don't be afraid to fail horribly, perhaps even many many times, because eventually you will overcome the things that give you trouble as long as you persist. Additionally, it's important to find some greater purpose and goal that you can aspire to. Something that'll make all the hard work worthwhile. And perhaps if you're at an intermediate level of Japanese or above, give fan translating a try! The community you end up helping will appreciate it immensely and I've found it to be an excellent way to learn.
I'll go back to being a lurker on this sub for now. Take care!

MATCH THREAD: Central Coast Mariners vs. Melbourne City

CENTRAL COAST 3-2 MELBOURNE CITY
Casella 42', Simon 58' pen, de Silva 80' // Luna 23', Maclaren 31'
uhhhh fuck it I don't see one around
LINEUPS
CCM In the yellow and navy corner
Birighitti; Nigro, Tongyik, Rowles, Clisby; Janota (Balard 54'), Casella, Stensness, de Silva (Jankovic 90+2'); Urenya (Kuol 54'), Simon
MELBOURNE CITY In the red and wh... black corner
Glover; Galloway (Atkinson 38'), Stokes, Good, Jamieson; Metcalfe, Berenguer (Mills 62'), Luna; Noone (Colakovski 82'), Maclaren, Tsubaki (Garuccio 82')
This is Matt Simon's 200th CCM league appearance. Take a moment to appreciate the Junkyard Dog.
Debutants: Mills, Jankovic
EVENTS
5' Clisby says fuck it and chips in a fair cross, it falls somewhat awkwardly for Urenya who shoots high.
10' I get back from throwing up lineups and see Luna fucking smash some cunt
11' Another cross from Clisby, but Jamieson nods it out for a corner. Two guys both go for the corner, for some reason, which comes to nothing in any case.
14' Simon plays de Silva a through-ball, overhitting it to Glover. One suspects if the order had been reversed, the Mariners would be in front.
17' With very little space, Simon feeds de Silva again who comes from nowhere to force Glover into a sharp, low save. Two guys stand over the corner again, which at least makes it to a yellow shirt this time. Still, is creating the uncertainty of in- vs. outswinging corner really worth it?
19' I've never actually done a match thread before, but can happily report I've found the most important button: disable inbox replies.
21' Bosnich spaces out and blanks a direct question from Peacock.
23' GOAL! CCM 0-1 MCY CCM have been dominant, so naturally City score first. But the defending slacks off at the wrong moment, Clisby the most at fault, Noone slides a low cross in and Luna stabs it home.
26' Maclaren falls over. Nobody calls for a penalty, but some fans boo anyway - though to be fair it probably would look like contact from the other end of the ground.
27' Tsubaki races past and then takes on, I presume, Nigro; I know in that position I get shouted at to jockey and never commit. Nigro commits, and Tsubaki feints past, free to float a harmless cross into Birighitti's arms.
30' A half-hour in and I'd say that while the Mariners were dominant before the goal, City have grown in confidence since and now look the better team, passing around confidently and with pace in the centre. And that's immediately vindicated because--
31' GOAL! CCM 0-2 MCY An awful turnover from Stensness is followed up by an awful missed tackle from Stensness. Berenguer's free to play in Maclaren, who nips in ahead of Birighitti, who pulverises him but is powerless to stop him scoring.
32' CCM aren't a million miles away from hitting right back, a deft cross from Clisby finding Casella but at an awkward height. He can't really head it and goes for the volley, and sends it into the sky.
34' Peacock reckons Maclaren's moving kind of gingerly and holding his ribs a lot, likely an aftermath of Birighitti's attempted homicide. No signs he's heading off, though. Anyway, here's another interminable cross from Clisby, though he's destroyed mildly by-- who the fuck is Kerrin Stokes
35' MCY CAUTION: Stokes
36' Clisby and de Silva's double act -- is actually genius! It should score! De Silva slides it to some guy who arrives late in the box and chips something beautiful into the heart of the box. Tongyik rises highest, the goal gapes, but he fires straight at Glover who's able to palm it away.
37' I think Glover's trying to grow facial hair
38' MCY SUBSTITUTION: Galloway off, Atkinson on Mild injury, it seems.
39' City looked better between the first and second goals but the Mariners have been in the ascendancy since the second. Lucas interrupts a free kick to show everyone his cool vanishing spray. Every set piece from the Mariners has two guys over it but it's almost always de Silva who ends up taking it - this one is overhit, though.
41' GOAL! CCM 1-2 MCY Matt Simon outfights two guys to win a header. De Silva? I think nips in past him to get the ball from there, plays provider for Simon, who has a decent chance ... but recognises the cutback presents an easy goal for Casella who can tap in to an empty net. Artistry and brute force.
42' Peacock is impressed by a child with a box of chocolates.
45' Matt Simon smashes in from nowhere to win the ball and then a sweeping ball plays in a colleague down the right. Without a shade of irony, there's a very strong case to make he's been the MOTM thus far. By contrast, Urenya doesn't seem to have done a lot, by my reckoning. Casella's hair is shit.
HALF-TIME Mariners have been the better team on the whole, but there's still plenty of work to do. As SerTahu's noted in the thread, though, any Mariners side in the past six years might have had the same bright start but would've melted after the second goal.
46' We're off again! Also, thank you for the Hug!
48' ... Apparently the Portuguese defender City signed would be here tonight, except he did his quarantine in Perth for some reason, and, well...
53' Stensness tries to redeem himself with a Hollywood pass to nobody in particular. He's not having the best of nights.
53' CCM CAUTION: Casella
54' CCM SUBSTITUTION: Urenya and Janota off, Kuol and Balard on
56' The complete death of the thread and OP reflects the ennui of the past ten minutes. The new blood comes on and at least there's a sequence of play chaotic enough Glover has to head it outside the box. Kuol's already made a more obvious impact in two minutes than Urenya did in 54.
57' Multiple times this game City players have lost 2v1 battles. That observation was meant to stand on its own, but--
57' CCM PENALTY! --a perfect long pass to Nigro (from Stensness?) and a long cross to Simon lead to him being bundled over in the box. Simon steps up himself...
58' GOAL! CCM 2-2 MCY And Simon buries it low into the left, sending Glover the wrong way and fairly flawless into the corner regardless.
60' RED CARD FOR KERRIN STOKES (MCY)! Fuck, Fox needs to give me another replay. But from memory Stokes and another City guy double-team Kuol, win the ball... then Stokes kind of just falls asleep, lets Kuol win the ball back and hauls him down. (Edit: Others in the thread implying this might actually be Atkinson's fault for dithering, with Stokes having to cover). Easy second yellow, and he's off.
61' Casella chases a lost cause and bounces off Atkinson - winds up getting CCM fans calling for VAR, but that's optimistic.
62' MCY SUBSTITTION: Berenguer off, Mills on
63' And that's an A-League debut for Alec Mills, wearing the saucily high number 43.
65' I would be very surprised if CCM didn't get their goal. They've been all over City since the double substitution. They don't look like the Mariners of the past six years... City do. Or, for that matter, like the Heart before that.
70' Kuol closing down a City defender with excellent, diligent pressing followed by a nice sliding challenge. Not to be outdone, Simon promptly tackles a guy himself.
71' Clever, slick one-touch passing makes it briefly look like City still have 11 men. Tsubaki again gets into a good position, but his delivery again leaves a little to be desired, and winds up being deflected off a defender into Birighitti's grasp. Nevertheless, it's City's best passage of the half.
73' If the result holds, CCM go top, but Brisbane would just need a point from two games in hand to go level. From memory, I predicted CCM 10th and Brisbane 12th. I also predicted West Ham to get relegated from the EPL.
75' Inch-perfect !!BIG SWITCH!! from Kye Rowles leads to Casella taking the ball on the right, a good cross to the far post. Maybe that scores if Simon's on the end of it. Sadly for the Mariners, it's de Silva.
76' CCM SUBSTITUTION: Casella out, Bouman in
77' Chaotic and difficult-to-describe goalmouth scramble. Tongyik appears to have taken a shot into his standing leg; Kuol inadvertently blocked a shot (that Glover might well have saved); Glover's very upset at the lino.
78' Disclaimer that it might not actually have been Stensness, but the position was right. If it as him, it's another very coltish passage of play just as I was prepared to say he was calming down, wayard positioning and a bad pass and slipping over. Meanwhile, Curtis Good is in discomfort, but as Peacock brings up, who the hell do they even bring on? Garuccio? (Update: yes)
79' One of the all-time godawful corners in A-League history from City. Good limped all the way to the box for that?
80' GOAL! CCM 3-2 MCY Oh, City are made to pay for that corner! Their defence has not set back up, de Silva pulverises Luna, plays a lovely, understated one-two with Kuol and then hammers it past Glover from outside the box! This is why Roma wanted him!
81' MCY SUBSTITUTIONS: Danzaki and Noone, Garuccio and Colakovski on
84' Post-substitutions - ~~sorry, I'm still trying to figure out who went off (not Good, apparently! so I suspect~~ yeah it was Noone) City look more energetic, but not more precise.
86' Cross leads to a bunch of headers, Mills actually takes a volley on the turn that's only narrowly wide, might even have taken a slight deflection but is given as a goalkick.
87' oh no ccm don't make me write out a triple sub fuuuck
88' Scruffy clearance from Mariners. City look worryingly confident and I really don't know where their missing man is meant to be. Birighitti falls gratefully on a high cross.
90' Deft ball through to Kuol, who channels 2015 Asian Cup Final Tomi Juric to keep ahold of it forever even as wave after wave of black/red shirts fling themselves at him. "HELP HIM" bellows Staj, to no avail. He loses it eventually. Still, excellent time-wasting at the very least, though he was definitely genuinely playing for the goal.
90+1 Hard challenge into Kuol - frustration boils over as Colakovski offers a hand down to him that nobody wants. A bit of shoving, a bit of machismo, Birighitti's in the middle of it somehow, an ocean of calm. Surely another minute added on for that. The Mariners have been preparing this substitution for five minutes.
90+2' CCM SUBSTITUTIONS: de Silva off, Jankovic on
90+3' de Silva is, as is only sensible, slow to come off. The crowd show their appreciation, he returns it. Simon's been quieter in the second half, not even getting involved in the fight, but de Silva's ramped it up - he's probably my MOTM as it stands.
90+4' A bit more scrapping over nothing. It all plays into the Mariners' hands. Kuol's optimistically lingering at the far post for the free kick but of course they go into the corners and try and kill the clo-- wait what? Belay that, uhhhh someone (Jankovic?) gets fed through and goes for it. Decent shot but misses. Quick restart from Glover...
FULL TIME It comes to nothing bar an abortive CCM counter. They've deserved the victory. City fans can be happy with the way they played after going down to 10, but it's still a disappointing performance on aggregate - that Portuguese defender can't come soon enough. The Mariners are unrecognisable to pre-Stajcic, de Silva might be coming good, and Kuol is blossoming into genuine quality.

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