The Blues Brothers are an American blues and soul revivalist band founded in 1978 by comedians Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as part of a musical sketch on Saturday Night Live. Belushi and Aykroyd, respectively in character as lead vocalist "Joliet" Jake Blues and harpist/vocalist Elwood Blues, fronted the band, which was composed of well-known and respected musicians. The band made its debut as the musical guest on the April 22, 1978, episode of Saturday Night Live. The band then began to take on a life beyond the confines of the television screen, releasing an album, Briefcase Full of Blues, in 1978, and then having a Hollywood film, The Blues Brothers, created around its characters in 1980. After the death of Belushi in 1982, the Blues Brothers have continued to perform with a rotation of guest singers and other band members. The original band reformed in 1988 for a world tour and again in 1998 for a sequel to the film, Blues Brothers 2000. They make regular appearances at musical festivals worldwide.

Poker Seven Card Stud Hi Low

Seven Card Stud Hi Low

Seven Card Stud Hi-Low (8 or Better)

Seven Card Stud Poker Hi-Low Split (8 or Better) is played with a standard 52-card deck, but can also be played with a joker. Standard poker rankings apply. When playing with a joker, the joker can be used as an ace, or to complete a straight, flush, or straight flush. Players must qualify for low by making a five-card hand 8 high or lower. Five aces is the highest ranking poker hand. The lowest qualifying five-card poker hand is Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Each player is dealt two cards face down (hole cards) and one card face up. There is a round of betting (check, bet, call, raise, or fold). Each remaining player is dealt one card face up. There is a second round of betting. Each remaining player is dealt a second card face up. There is a third round of betting. Each remaining player is dealt a third card face up. There is a fourth round of betting. Each remaining player is dealt a final card face down (hole card). There is a fifth (final) round of betting. Players can make a high or low hand, or both, using the same five cards. The player with the highest ranking five-card poker hand, and the lowest qualifying (8 or better) five-card poker hand split the pot. If no player can produce a qualifying low hand, the player with the highest ranking five-card poker hand wins the entire pot. In the event of a tie, the pot, or portion of the pot, if the tie is for high or low hand only, is split equally.

Duplicate Poker

Duplicate poker is a variant of the popular card game poker. Duplicate poker is based on the principles of Duplicate Bridge but also involves some of the rules used for playing pot limit and no limit Texas hold'em.

Duplicate poker is a skill-based game in which there are two or more tables consisting of the same number of players. Each table is dealt with an identically shuffled deck of cards. Every player holds the same hand as the person seated in identical seats at other tables.

All players begin each hand with the ability to bet the same number of playing chips, regardless of prior performance in the previous rounds.

The object of Duplicate poker is to win more chips than your opponents sitting in corresponding seats at other tables. Ultimately, the winner is decided based on the total number of chips accumulated up until the end of the game, as compared with those held by all players in the same seats at the other tables. Conceivably, even a player who loses chips overall can win at the game if that player loses fewer chips than his opponents.

Duplicatepoker.com, the first poker room to use the format, closed down on October 5th 2008, citing the global financial crisis as the reason for the removal of services. It had previously been popular due to the fact that as a skill-based game it was legal in the U.S. While the game is more conducive to an automated online format because of pre-set decks and the need to record accurate scoring, Duplicate poker has also been played in a live format. The first-ever Duplicate poker tournament was held in April 2007 at the Cherokee Casino in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In organized sports, point shaving is a type of match fixing where the perpetrators try to prevent a team from covering a published point spread. Unlike other forms of match fixing, sports betting invariably motivates point shaving. A point shaving scheme generally involves a sports gambler and one or more players of the sports team favored to win the game. In exchange for a bribe, the player or players agree to ensure that their team will not cover the point spread. The gambler then wagers against that team.

Basketball

Basketball is a particularly easy medium for shaving points because of the scoring tempo of the game and the ease by which one player can influence key events. By deliberately missing shots or committing well-timed turnovers or fouls, a corrupt player can covertly ensure that his team fails to cover the point spread, without causing them to lose the game or to lose so badly that suspicions are aroused. Although the NCAA has adopted a zero tolerance policy with respect to gambling activity by its players, some critics believe it unwittingly encourages point shaving due to its strict rules regarding amateurism, combined with the large amount of money wagered on its games. The NCAA has produced posters warning of this, the most notable being an athlete sitting alone on a bench with his face buried in his hands although this may also look like the athlete suffered a tremendous defeat with the caption DO NOT BET ON IT with warnings as to what could happen if they are involved in such a plan as well as an athlete being caught gambling himself .

Famous examples of this are the CCNY Point Shaving Scandal of the 1950-51 and the Boston College basketball point shaving scandal of 1978-79, which was perpetrated by gangsters Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke.

Sports Point Shaving

The technique has been used by both amateur and professional athletes in many other sports. The intention is to manipulate scoring so that the final score results in a predetermined outcome. A typical sports game should always tend to behave in a nondeterministic manner. In other words, the exact final score of a game exists in a set, which can contain more than a thousand possible combinations. Furthermore, nondeterminism suggests that the final score of a sports game is practically unpredictable.

Many variables can influence the outcome. Such variables include weather, fatigue, and human error. However, amateur and professional athletes who are very skilled in the technique of point shaving can consistently create unlikely outcomes in bad weather and other challenging conditions. These unlikely outcomes tend to create huge financial gains/losses in prediction markets.

The deviation from the mean, otherwise known as the expected value, is what makes these outcomes so unlikely. In most sports, the expected value is a mathematical prediction that can be expressed as a scoring differential. This scoring differential is also calculated by casinos; and, gamblers generally refer to it as a point spread. In many cases of point shaving, the final outcome deviates substantially from the expected value, or the point spread. Additionally, the deviation from the expected value can be quite large. Many times, the deviation is so large that athletes on opposing teams must cooperate in order to achieve the desired result. In this particular case, the final outcome is commonly referred to as a thrown game.