title: Dominion of Newfoundland

text: Given Newfoundland's strategic location in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Allies (especially the United States of America) built many military bases there. Large numbers of unskilled men gained the first paycheques they had seen in years by working on construction and in dockside crews. National income doubled as an economic boom took place in the Avalon Peninsula and to a lesser degree in Gander, Botwood, and Stephenville. The United States became the main supplier, and American money and influence diffused rapidly from the military, naval, and air bases. Prosperity returned to the fishing industry by 1943. Government revenues, aided by inflation and new income, quadrupled, even though Newfoundland had tax rates much lower than those in Canada, Britain, or the United States. To the astonishment of all, Newfoundland started financing loans to London. Wartime prosperity ended the long depression and reopened the question of political status.


title: Dominion of Newfoundland

text: The American Bases Act became law in Newfoundland on 11 June 1941, with American personnel creating drastic social change on the island. This included significant intermarriage between Newfoundland women and American personnel.


title: Dominion of Newfoundland

text: In October of 1943, the weather station Kurt was erected in Newfoundland, marking Nazi Germany's only armed operation on land in North America.


title: Dominion of Newfoundland

text: A new political party formed in Newfoundland to support closer ties with the U.S., the Economic Union Party, which Karl McNeil Earle characterises as "a short-lived but lively movement for economic union with the United States". Advocates of union with Canada denounced the Economic Union Party as republican, disloyal and anti-British. No American initiative for union was ever created.


title: Dominion of Newfoundland

text: As soon as prosperity returned during the war, agitation began to end the commission. Newfoundland, with a population of 313,000 (plus 5,200 in Labrador), seemed too small to be independent. In 1945, London announced that a Newfoundland National Convention would be elected to advise on what constitutional choices should be voted on by referendum. Union with the United States was a possibility, but Britain rejected the option and offered instead two options: return to dominion status or continuation of the unpopular Commission. Canada cooperated with Britain to ensure that the option of closer ties with America was not on the referendum.


title: Dominion of Newfoundland

text: In 1946, an election took place to determine the membership of the Newfoundland National Convention, charged with deciding the future of Newfoundland. The Convention voted to hold a referendum to decide between continuing the Commission of Government or restoring responsible government. Joey Smallwood was a well-known radio personality, writer, organizer, and nationalist who had long criticized British rule. He became the leader of the confederates and moved for the inclusion of a third option – that of confederation with Canada. The Convention defeated his motion, but he did not give up, instead gathering more than 5,000 petition signatures within a fortnight, which he sent to London through the governor. Britain insisted that it would not give Newfoundland any further financial assistance, but added this third option of having Newfoundland join Canada to the ballot. After much debate, the first referendum took place on 3 June 1948, to decide between continuing with the Commission of Government, reverting to dominion status, or joining Canadian Confederation.


title: Dominion of Newfoundland

text: Three parties participated in the referendum campaign: Smallwood's Confederate Association campaigned for the confederation option while in the anti-confederation campaign Peter Cashin's Responsible Government League and Chesley Crosbie's Economic Union Party (both of which called for a vote for responsible government) took part. No party advocated petitioning Britain to continue the Commission of Government. Canada had issued an invitation to join it on generous financial terms. Smallwood was the leading proponent of confederation with Canada, insisting, "Today we are more disposed to feel that our very manhood, our very creation by God, entitles us to standards of life no lower than our brothers on the mainland." Due to persistence, he succeeded in having the Canada option on the referendum. His main opponents were Cashin and Crosbie. Cashin, a former finance minister, led the Responsible Government League, warning against cheap Canadian imports and the high Canadian income tax. Crosbie, a leader of the fishing industry, led the Party for Economic Union with the United States, seeking responsible government first, to be followed by closer ties with the United States, which could be a major source of capital.


title: Dominion of Newfoundland

text: The result proved inconclusive, with 44.5 percent supporting the restoration of dominion status, 41.1 percent for confederation with Canada, and 14.3 percent for continuing the Commission of Government. Due to no option getting at least 50 percent of the vote, a second referendum with the top two options from the first referendum was scheduled to be held on 22 July. The second referendum, on 22 July 1948, asked Newfoundlanders to choose between confederation and dominion status, and produced a vote of 52 to 48 percent for confederation. Newfoundland joined Canada in the final hours of 31 March 1949.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: Andrew Arthur Taylor (born 16 February 1961) is an English guitarist, best known as a former member of both Duran Duran and the Power Station. He has also recorded and performed as a solo artist, and served as a guitarist, songwriter and record producer for the likes of Robert Palmer, Rod Stewart, the Almighty, Thunder, Love and Money, Mark Shaw, Then Jerico, C. C. Catch, Paul Rodgers (with The Law), Belinda Carlisle, Gun and many more.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: Andrew Taylor was born in Tynemouth and raised in the town of Cullercoats, Northumberland in northeast England, and attended Marden High School. He began playing guitar at the age of eleven and was soon playing with local bands, even producing one at the age of 16. He received guitar tuition from Dave Black, a member of the short-lived, post-David Bowie version of Bowie's sometime backing band the Spiders from Mars. He dropped out of school early to tour England and Europe with several different bands, playing working men's clubs and air force bases. Then in April 1980, as Taylor puts it, "I made that fateful train journey down to Birmingham".


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: Duran Duran began their rise to fame at a Birmingham club named the "Rum Runner". The club was owned by their managers and mentors, brothers Paul and Michael Berrow. It was centred on the music and ostentatious fashion of the era, particularly house and disco music, which had fused with punk and electronic to create the sound and look adopted by various "New Romantic" acts of the time. The band was heavily influenced by the 12-inch cuts of the day. Taylor says... "Anybody who is familiar with early DD (Duran Duran) will be aware of the Night Versions concept… the underlying influence of the 12-inch mix – Edwards & Rodgers – Giorgio Moroder ... It was all part of the matrix – we tested our first hits on the dance floor before going anywhere near the radio – it was the way you defined your style and who you were, through the club you were associated with – where you hung-out ... I'm a rock fan, but the girls hung out at the disco – I recommend a large portion of both."


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: The band signed to EMI Records in December 1980, only seven months after completing their line-up. Their debut single "Planet Earth" was released shortly after that, with their self-titled debut album, "Duran Duran", released in June 1981. By 1983, the band was a global success story.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: While Duran Duran were on hiatus in 1985, Andy Taylor and bassist John Taylor joined renowned session drummer and former Chic member Tony Thompson and Robert Palmer to form the band Power Station. Their eponymous album, recorded mostly at the New York studio after which the band was named, reached the top 20 in the UK and the top 10 in the US, and spawned two hit singles with "Some Like It Hot" (UK number 14, US number 6) and a cover of the T. Rex song "Get It On (Bang a Gong)" (UK number 22, US number 9). Palmer performed live with the band only once that year, on "Saturday Night Live". The band toured, and even played Live Aid with singer Michael Des Barres after Palmer bowed out at the last moment to go back into the studio to further his newly revitalised solo career. Taylor also performed with Duran Duran at the Live Aid event.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: Palmer recorded the album "Riptide" in 1985, recruiting Thompson and Andy Taylor to play on some tracks and Power Station producer Bernard Edwards, who worked with Thompson in the group Chic, to helm the production. Robert recruited Wally Badarou, another Compass Point Star, who had laid synthesizer tracks on the Power Station album, plus his long-term drummer, Dony Wynn, for this production, as well.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: Taylor said: "I don't think any of us could have known at the time that this little venture would lead to the breakup of DD, but it did or at least it exposed the cracks in the pavement. I think we were all surprised at the amount of success the project achieved, particularly Robert, whose career was reignited in the USA. It was an extraordinary time, everything we were associated with just flew off the shelves. As well as being the opportunity to express a major musical statement, I guess it was also as much of a statement against the label demands."


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: After six years of being a member of Duran Duran, Taylor had realised both the band and he were in free fall. The other bandmembers and he rarely spoke to one another and the band were now living on three different continents. Taylor himself was now based in Los Angeles, where he met with ex-Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and they began collaborating for Taylor's forthcoming solo album.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: In the meantime, he recorded the hit single "Take It Easy" (US number24), which was recorded as the theme song to the movie "American Anthem". Ex-Missing Persons members Terry Bozzio and Patrick O'Hearn performed drums and bass, respectively, on the song and video. Two other songs by Taylor and Jones also appeared on the album: "Wings of Love" and the instrumental "Angel Eyes". Taylor also contributed to the "Miami Vice II" soundtrack with the song "When the Rain Comes Down" (US number 43), as well as making an appearance on said show with Power Station in 1985, season two, episode three titled "Whatever Works". This was followed by his first solo album, "Thunder" (1987). O'Hearn again played bass for him on the album and during the following tour. Also on the "Thunder" world tour were guitarist Paul Hanson (guitarist) and drummer John Valen. Hanson, Valen and O'Hearn also appeared with Taylor in the music video for the second single from the "Thunder" album, "Don't Let Me Die Young". Despite moderate success in the US, Taylor's solo material failed to catch on in his native UK.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: Throughout 1987 and 1988, Taylor co-wrote and co-produced Rod Stewart's multi-platinum album "Out of Order" along with Chic members Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson (the latter of whom had also performed with him in Power Station), spawning the "Billboard" hits, "Lost in You", "Forever Young" and "My Heart Can't Tell You No".


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: Taylor also contributed a cover of "Dead on the Money" to the "Tequila Sunrise" soundtrack in 1988 (Taylor's former band Duran Duran also allowed one of their own songs, "Do You Believe in Shame?", to be included on the album). A second solo album, consisting of entirely cover versions, entitled "Dangerous", was released in 1990.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: Taylor then moved on to producing full time, working with several successful UK bands throughout the 1990s. He produced the debut album "Back Street Symphony" by London rockers Thunder and their follow up "Laughing on Judgement Day". This was followed by the Almighty album "Soul Destruction", and then Mark Shaw's album "Almost". Taylor based himself in his now refurbished Trident Studios in London with then manager and partner Rob Hallett, until 1994, when he returned to Los Angeles to write and produce tracks for a second Power Station album and the 1995 Rod Stewart album "A Spanner in the Works".


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: Taylor participated in the 1994 reunion of Power Station. They recorded a second album "Living in Fear" for EMI. During the course of this album, Bernard Edwards died in his hotel room after a Chic gig in Tokyo. The band were shellshocked at his sudden death, but vowed to continue as a trio and complete the project. They subsequently finished the album with Canadian engineer/producer Mike Fraser, with a Japanese and US tours to follow to promote the record.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: In 2000, Taylor reunited with the other original members of Duran Duran to record their first new music together since 1985. The band secured a new recording contract with Sony Records. Their ensuing album, 2004 "Astronaut", featured a blend of Taylor's heavy guitar with the synth hooks of the classic Duran Duran sound. The first single, "(Reach Up for The) Sunrise", reached number five in the UK, and the album reached number three (number 17 in the US).


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: Months prior to the album's release, the band played their largest-ever UK tour in the spring of 2004, which was followed by a world tour in 2005, including Asia, Europe, South America and North America. The band also performed at Live 8.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: In 2006, whilst recording a new Duran Duran album, Taylor once again parted ways with the band. The subsequent album, titled "Reportage", was scrapped by the band after his departure. More recently, Taylor strongly hinted in his blogs that Duran Duran's management company were partly responsible for his departure. This was confirmed when "The Sunday Times" (UK) printed a retraction on 4 May 2008.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: A short controversy followed as Taylor wrote in his 2008 autobiography that there was no "blunt message" and that in addition to the problems of writing and recording "Reportage", old conflicts between other bandmembers and himself had resurfaced. The other band members have maintained their version, in which Andy Taylor's chronic unexplainable absences are pointed out. The band issued a statement in the wake of his departure, stating they "will be continuing as Duran Duran without Andy, as we have reached a point in our relationship with him where there is an unworkable gulf between us and we can no longer effectively function together".


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: After touring with British rock band Reef in 2020, Taylor went on to produce their new album "Shoot Me Your Ace", due to be released in April 2022.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: In November 2007, Taylor co-founded RockAffairs.com alongside Sarah Eaglesfield, the former Flightside vocalist and webmistress at duranduran.com. RockAffairs was developed to allow unsigned artists to sell MP3s and merchandise, promote their band, and keep 100% of the profit. It also pioneered a maverick profit share scheme where 100% of income from listener signups was distributed amongst bands who sign up for the scheme.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: In June 2008, Taylor handed control of the website over to Eaglesfield. As of 2017, Taylor remains the owner of RockAffairs Ltd in the UK. Rockaffairs has announced it will be returning for one week of special 10th-anniversary broadcasts during summer 2018.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: In 2008, Taylor published an autobiography, "Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran", in which he tells his life's story from youth in an extended family to his life with wife Tracey. The book aims to give a backstage look on Duran Duran's rise and a survey of the band's career album by album, as well as of Taylor's solo works and collaborations. It also deals with the iconic status of Duran Duran in the time of early MTV and the band's issues with drugs and alcohol.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: In 2022, Taylor stated that he has been married to his wife Tracey for 40 years. They have four children. The couple currently reside in Ibiza, Spain.


title: Andy Taylor (guitarist)

text: When Duran Duran were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, Taylor was unable to attend the ceremony. During the event, Simon Le Bon read part of a letter that Taylor had written revealing he had been diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer four years prior, and a recent setback kept him from attending. The letter was posted to the band's website later, in which Taylor said his condition is incurable, but not immediately life threatening.


title: King (company)

text: King.com Limited, trading as King and also known as King Digital Entertainment, is a video game developer and publisher based in St. Julian's, Malta that specialises in social games. King gained fame after releasing the cross-platform title "Candy Crush Saga" in 2012, considered one of the most financially successful games utilising the freemium model. King was acquired by Activision Blizzard in February 2016 for , and operates as its own entity within that company. King is led by Riccardo Zacconi, who has served in the role of chief executive officer since co-founding the company in 2003. Gerhard Florin took over Melvyn Morris's role as chairman in November 2014. As of 2017, King employs 2,000 people.


title: King (company)

text: Prior to founding King, Riccardo Zacconi and Toby Rowland, the latter of whom is the only son of British businessman Tiny Rowland, had worked together on uDate.com, a dating website created by Melvyn Morris which, by 2003, was the second-largest such site in the world. Morris opted to sell the site to the leading dating website Match.com (a subsidiary of IAC) for $150 million in 2003. Zacconi and Rowland joined with Thomas Hartwig, Sebastian Knutsson, Lars Markgren and Patrik Stymne, all of whom had worked previously with Zacconi at the failed dot-com web portal Spray, to create a new company with angel investment provided by Morris, who became the company's chairman. The company was initially based out of Stockholm, Sweden, and started with the development of browser-based video games. The site, Midasplayer.com, was then launched in August of that year.


title: King (company)

text: Initially, Midasplayer.com was not profitable, and nearly went bankrupt until a cash infusion from Morris on Christmas Eve of 2003 helped to finance the company. By 2005, the company had been able to turn a profit. During this year, the company raised $43 million by selling a large stake to Apax Partners and Index Ventures. This investment was the last one that the company received before its initial public offering in 2014. Midasplayer.com was rebranded King.com in November 2005. King.com continued to develop games for its web portal, which it would also share to other web portals like Yahoo! Overall, King had developed about 200 games for their portal. By 2009, the company was making about $60 million annually. Rowland departed the company in 2008 to found Mangahigh, a web portal aimed for educational math games, and sold his stake back to the company for $3 million in 2011. Angel investor and former board member Klaus Hommels sold his similar stake at the same time.


title: King (company)

text: Around 2009, social network games on Facebook began to gain popularity, led primarily through games developed by Zynga. King.com saw a significant drop in players on their portal games as a result, and started to develop their own Facebook-based games using the games already developed on the King.com portal, with their first such game released in 2010. King.com used their web portal as a testing grounds for new game ideas and determine which ones to bring to Facebook, as well as determining how to implement various microtransactions for tournament-style play into the Facebook games. Their first cross-platform web portal/Facebook game, "Miner Speed", which allowed sharing of player information between platforms, was released in 2011, and was a simple match-3 tile game inspired by "Bejeweled".


title: King (company)

text: Following this model, in October 2011, the company released "Bubble Witch Saga" to both platforms. "Bubble Witch Saga" introduced the nature of a "saga" game, that instead of playing the same gameboard for as long as the player could continue to match matches, that instead the game offered individual levels that would challenge the player to complete certain goals in a limited number of turns. These saga elements allowed for the basics of social gameplay, but did not require the time investment that then-popular titles like Zynga's "Farmville" required; players could play just for a few minutes each day through the saga model. The formula proved extremely successful, and January 2012, "Bubble Witch Saga" had over 10 million players and was one of the most-played Facebook games. By April 2012, King.com had the second largest player count, around 30 million unique users, second only to Zynga on the Facebook platform. Facebook's director of games partnerships Sean Ryan described King.com's growth on the platform as "They were not a flash in the pan – they've been around seven years. But they came out of no where in an area that was unexpected." King.com next released "Candy Crush Saga" in April 2012, based on the popularity of its "Candy Crush" web-portal game and following the saga model from "Bubble Witch Saga". The game attracted more than 4 million players within a few weeks.


title: King (company)

text: The popularity of "Bubble Witch Saga" and "Candy Crush Saga" led King.com to start a new strategy into developing for the growing mobile game market, in a manner that would allow players to synchronise with the Facebook platform. Zacconi said that "As consumers and the industry focus more on games for mobile devices, launching a truly cross-platform Facebook game has been a top priority for King.com." A mobile version for iOS device of "Bubble Witch Saga" was released in July 2012, while the iOS mobile version of "Candy Crush Saga" was released in October 2012. Both games saw boosts in the number of unique players with the mobile introduction; King.com saw that previously-declining player counts for "Bubble Witch Saga" become steady with the mobile version's release, while "Candy Crush Saga" saw more than 5.2 million unique players on Facebook in November 2012 and which were continuing to climb. Additionally, in-game advertising, which factored into about 15% of King.com's revenues, had increased ten-fold from 2011 into 2012. Users jumped to 408 million by the end of 2013. Revenues for King.com increased from a little over $62 million in 2011 to $1.88 billion in 2013.


title: King (company)

text: In March 2013, on the ten-year anniversary of its founding, the company announced it was dropping the ".com" part of its branding and would continue on as just "King".


title: King (company)

text: In mid-2013, King.com had considered filing an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States. Zacconi had said that "The IPO is an option...We are building the company and part of that is investigating options." The company applied for IPO in September 2013. Its filing was made using allowances in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act to keep details of the IPO secret until it was to be offered. The IPO was backed by Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse Group AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. The IPO gained great interest, as it followed Zynga's $1 billion IPO in 2011 and Twitter's IPO earlier in the month.


title: King (company)

text: King completed its IPO on 26 March 2014. Priced at $22.50 a share, the middle of its projected price range, the IPO valued the company at US$7.08 billion. About $500 million was raised through the sale of 22.2 million shares. Of that, 15.3 million shares came from the company and the rest from Apax and other stakeholders. It was the largest ever IPO for a mobile/social gaming company in the US, eclipsing Zynga's 2011 offering. To celebrate the debut, "Candy Crush" mascots took to the New York Stock Exchange. Morris was the company's largest shareholder with approximately 35.6 million shares valued at $821 million. The company began trading under the "KING" symbol on the New York Stock Exchange.


title: King (company)

text: Shares of King fell 15.6% on the first day of trading, closing at $19. By June, the company's valuation had dropped by $2 billion, though otherwise was still profitable. Zacconi noted that their strategy from this point was not to find another "mega-hit" like "Candy Crush Saga", but to "build a portfolio of games", carrying King's game design approach to other genres. Revenue following the IPO were over $2.6 billion in 2014, with "Candy Crush Saga" generating nearly half of that amount.


title: King (company)

text: In November 2015, Activision Blizzard announced its plans to acquire King for $5.9 billion. Upon announcement of the news, "USA Today" reported that the deal "gives Activision immediate access to the growing mobile gaming audience, the fastest-rising sector in video games". On 23 February 2016, Activision Blizzard closed its acquisition of King for a deal of $5.9 billion. Activision Blizzard as a result operates the world's largest game network, reaching around 500 million users in 196 countries. About the King acquisition, the CEO of Activision Blizzard explained that "we see great opportunities to create new ways for audiences to experience their favorite franchises, from "Candy Crush" to "World of Warcraft" to "Call of Duty" and more, across mobile devices, consoles and personal computers."


title: King (company)

text: In January 2019, Humam Sakhnini was installed as president of King, reporting directly to Zacconi. As part of a large workforce reduction announced in February 2019 across the whole of Activision Blizzard, King's Z2Live studio in Seattle was shuttered. Zacconi stepped down as CEO on 1 July 2019, remaining as chairman until August 2020, when he left the company entirely. Tjodolf Sommestad, the former chief development officer, replaced Sakhnini in February 2022.


title: King (company)

text: King's games portal site King.com had been rebranded to Royalgames.com, through which they offered paid-entry tournaments for a chance at cash prizes up until 2019, after which this feature was disabled for new accounts. During the first half of 2021, King had been forced to hold back on payout withdrawals by users over an investigation launched by PayPal over these withdrawals, eventually unfreezing accounts by June 2021 once the investigation was complete. King announced in October 2021 that the portal would be shuttered in December 2021 in a phased removal of the available games. Players that still had funds available on the site would be able to continue to withdraw these funds for some indefinite time after games from the site had been removed.


title: King (company)

text: King's games, prior to June 2013, made revenue for the company through a combination of in-game advertising and microtransactions. These microtransactions allow for players to use funds to purchase in-game booster items that could be used to help clear certain levels, additional lives, and immediate access to new levels instead of having to wait for a few days.


title: King (company)

text: In June 2013, the company opted to remove all in-game advertising from their games, relying solely on microtransactions. The company stated that due to their "focus around delivering an uninterrupted entertainment experience for our network of loyal players across web, tablet and mobile has unfortunately led to the difficult decision of removing advertising as a core element of King's overall strategy". Advertising revenue had only made up 10% of the company's earnings in 2012, and only 1% within 2013; the company in its IPO files stated they do not anticipate any further earnings from advertising revenue. While King relies heavily on in-game purchases, it is estimated that only single-digit percentages of all players of their games have spent money on their titles. In Q4 2014, King had 356 million monthly unique users, with 8.3 million of them spending money. The 2.3% that pay spent an average of $23.42 a month within the games. King stated that their model is aimed to continue to draw existing and new players to all of their games: "If the cost to acquire players is greater than the revenue we generate over time from those players and if we cannot successfully migrate our current players to new games and new platforms as we have historically done so, our business and operating results will be harmed".


title: King (company)

text: King games offer asynchronous play, enabling users to connect to their Facebook account whilst playing on their smartphone or tablet device. This means that the user's progress is updated across all platforms, allowing the player to switch from smartphone, to tablet, to Facebook without losing their progress in the game.


title: King (company)

text: "Bubble Witch Saga" was King's first mobile game, released in July 2012 after its launch on Facebook in September 2011. "Papa Pear Saga" was released in March 2013 on Facebook, it is a "Peggle" variation.


title: King (company)

text: Around 2012, "Pyramid Solitaire Saga" was soft launched on Facebook. It was released on mobile in May 2014. In late 2012 "Pet Rescue Saga" was launched on Facebook, then on iOS and Android In June 2013, "Candy Crush Soda Saga" was soft launched on Facebook and mobile and "Bubble Witch 2 Saga" was widely released for Android and iOS devices. In November 2014, "Candy Crush Soda Saga" was widely released on Android and iOS. "Alpha Betty Saga" launched on Facebook in April 2015. This game is a variation of "Bookworm".


title: King (company)

text: In 2013, King acquired the Defold game engine, developed by Ragnar Svensson and Christian Murray in 2007 as a lightweight 2D game engine. The two had offered the engine to King as well as their services as contractors to support it, and later bought the engine, using it first for the game "Blossom Blast Saga". In March 2016, King released the Defold engine as a free development tool for any user, and by May 2020, it ceded control of the engine to the Defold Foundation, which made the engine open source with plans to continue to support it with additional investment from King.


title: King (company)

text: King announced in April 2017 that they will be developing a mobile "Call of Duty" game, a property owned by Activision; the game would be one of the first ones outside of the casual mobile space for the company.


title: King (company)

text: King's most popular game is "Candy Crush Saga", which was launched on King's website in March 2011, which is a tile-matching game. It launched on Facebook in April 2012 and quickly gained popularity. Following its success on Facebook, King launched "Candy Crush Saga" on mobile (iOS and Android) in November 2012. The game was downloaded over 10 million times in its first month. In January 2013, it became the number one most played game on Facebook. It had over 45 million monthly users in March 2013. By January 2014, it had over 150 million monthly users.


title: King (company)

text: While King continues to release other titles, the company's principle focus as of November 2017 are on its four most popular series: "Candy Crush Saga", "Bubble Witch Saga", "Pet Rescue Saga", and "Farm Heroes Saga".


title: King (company)

text: In January 2014, King attracted controversy after attempting to trademark the words "Candy" and "Saga" in game titles. This directly impacted Stoic's trademark request for "The Banner Saga", to which King filed an opposition, calling the name "deceptively similar" to King games. Stoic said that the dispute hindered work on a planned sequel to their game. On 17 April 2014, it was reported that King has settled its disputes with Stoic Studio and Runsome Apps.


title: King (company)

text: Also in January 2014, game developer Matthew Cox accused King of ripping off his game "Scamperghost", saying King's "Pac-Avoid" was a clone of it. According to Cox, he was in talks with King about licensing "Scamperghost", but when the deal fell through the company released the game "Pac-Avoid". Cox said Epicshadows, the developer of "Pac-Avoid", told him that King had approached them to "clone the game very quickly". King removed the game from its website, but denied the cloning allegation, stating that they were removing the game "for the avoidance of doubt".


title: Sterling Sharpe

text: Sterling Sharpe (born April 6, 1965) is a former American football wide receiver and analyst for the NFL Network. He attended the University of South Carolina, and played from 1988 to 1994 with the Green Bay Packers in a career shortened by a neck injury. He is the older brother of Pro Football Hall of Fame tight end Shannon Sharpe.


title: Sterling Sharpe

text: Sharpe was born in Chicago, USA, to Pete Sharpe and Mary Alice Dixon. Growing up, Sharpe lived in Glennville, Georgia, with his grandparents and siblings, including his younger brother, Hall of Fame tight end Shannon Sharpe. He graduated Glennville High School, playing running back, quarterback and linebacker and was a member of the basketball and track teams. As a wide receiver at the University of South Carolina, Sharpe set school records with 169 career receptions and 2,497 receiving yards and a since-broken record of 17 career touchdowns. He also set the school record for single-season receiving touchdowns with 11, which was broken in 2005 by Sidney Rice. Sharpe's No. 2 jersey was retired by South Carolina at the end of the 1987 regular season, making him the second Gamecock to be granted this honor while still playing. His college coach and mentor, William "Tank" Black, left the Gamecocks to become a player-manager and represented Sharpe throughout his professional career. Sharpe was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2014.


title: Sterling Sharpe

text: Sharpe was the first round, seventh overall, draft pick by the Packers in 1988 and had an immediate impact on the team. In his rookie season, he started all sixteen games and caught 55 passes. His sophomore season he led the league with 90 receptions, the first Packer to do so since Don Hutson in 1945, and broke Hutson's records for receptions and receiving yards in a season. Sharpe was known as a tough receiver with strong hands, who was willing to go over the middle to make difficult catches in traffic.


title: Sterling Sharpe

text: A few years later, in 1992, Sharpe and the new quarterback, Brett Favre, teamed up to become one of the top passing tandems in the league. In the final game of that season, Sterling and Favre hooked up for Sharpe's 107th reception of the season which broke the NFL's single-season receptions record, set by Art Monk in 1984. That season, he became one of only seven players in NFL history to win the outright "Triple Crown" at the receiver position: leading the league in receiving yards, receiving touchdowns, and receptions. Ray Flaherty (1932), Don Hutson (1936, 1941–44), Elroy Hirsch (1951), and Raymond Berry (1959) achieved this in the years before the Super Bowl era. The only other players to accomplish this feat are Jerry Rice (1990), Steve Smith Sr. (2005) and Cooper Kupp (2021).


title: Sterling Sharpe

text: In the 1993 season he broke his own record, with 112 receptions, which also made him the first player to have consecutive seasons catching more than 100 passes. In 1994, his 18 touchdown receptions were the second-most in league history at the time, behind Jerry Rice's 22 in 1987. On October 24, 1993, he became the second Packer in team history to catch four touchdown passes in one game since Don Hutson in 1945.


title: Sterling Sharpe

text: Sharpe's tenure at wide receiver was cut short by a neck injury, ending a career in which he was invited to the Pro Bowl five times (1989, 1990, 1992, 1993, and 1994). Since he was unable to continue playing and was not on the Packers team that won the Super Bowl in 1996, his younger brother Shannon gave him the first of the three Super Bowl rings he won, citing him as a major influence in his life by saying: After his retirement from the NFL, Sharpe became an analyst for the NFL Network.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: Edgar Ætheling or Edgar II (c. 1052 – 1125 or after) was the last male member of the royal house of Cerdic of Wessex. He was elected King of England by the Witenagemot in 1066, but never crowned.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: Edgar was born in the Kingdom of Hungary, where his father Edward the Exile, son of Edmund Ironside, had spent most of his life, having been sent into exile after Edmund's death and the conquest of England by the Danish king Cnut the Great in 1016. His grandfather Edmund, great-grandfather Æthelred the Unready, and great-great-grandfather Edgar the Peaceful were all kings of England before Cnut the Great took the crown. Edgar's mother was Agatha, who was described as a relative of the Holy Roman Emperor or a descendant of Saint Stephen of Hungary, but whose exact identity is unknown. He was his parents' only son but had two sisters, Margaret and Cristina.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: In 1057, Edward the Exile arrived in England with his family, but died almost immediately. Edgar, a child, was left as the only surviving male member of the royal dynasty apart from the king. However, the latter made no recorded effort to entrench his great-nephew's position as heir to a throne that was being eyed by a range of powerful potential contenders, including England's leading aristocrat Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, and the foreign rulers William II of Normandy, Sweyn II of Denmark and Harald III of Norway.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: When King Edward the Confessor died in January 1066, Edgar was still in his early teens, considered too young to be an effective military leader. This had not been an insurmountable obstacle in the succession of previous kings. However, the avaricious ambitions that had been aroused across north-western Europe by the Confessor's lack of an heir prior to 1057, and by the king's failure thereafter to prepare the way for Edgar to succeed him, removed any prospect of a peaceful hereditary succession. War was clearly inevitable and Edgar was in no position to fight it, while he was without powerful adult relatives to champion his cause. Accordingly, the Witenagemot elected Harold Godwinson, the man best placed to defend the country against the competing foreign claimants, to succeed Edward.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: Following Harold's death at the Battle of Hastings against the invading Normans in October, some of the Anglo-Saxon leaders considered electing Edgar king. The new regime thus established was dominated by the most powerful surviving members of the English ruling class: Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, Ealdred, Archbishop of York, and the brothers Edwin, Earl of Mercia and Morcar, Earl of Northumbria. The commitment of these men to Edgar's cause, men who had so recently passed over his claim to the throne without apparent demur, must have been doubtful from the start. The strength of their resolve to continue the struggle against William of Normandy was questionable, and the military response they organised to the continuing Norman advance was ineffectual. When William crossed the Thames at Wallingford, he was met by Stigand, who now abandoned Edgar and submitted to the invader. As the Normans closed in on London, Edgar's key supporters in the city began negotiating with William. In early December, the remaining members of the Witan in London met and resolved to take the young uncrowned king out to meet William to submit to him at Berkhamsted, quietly setting aside Edgar's election. Edgar, alongside other lords, did homage to King William at his coronation in December.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: William kept Edgar in his custody and took him, along with other English leaders, to his court in Normandy in 1067, before returning with them to England. Edgar may have been involved in the abortive rebellion of the Earls Edwin and Morcar in 1068, or he may have been attempting to return to Hungary with his family and been blown off course; in any case, in that year he arrived with his mother and sisters at the court of King Malcolm III of Scotland. Malcolm married Edgar's sister Margaret, and agreed to support Edgar in his attempt to reclaim the English throne. When the rebellion that resulted in the Harrying of the North broke out in Northumbria at the beginning of 1069, Edgar returned to England with other rebels who had fled to Scotland, to become the leader, or at least the figurehead, of the revolt. However, after early successes the rebels were defeated by William at York and Edgar again sought refuge with Malcolm. In late summer that year, the arrival of a fleet sent by King Sweyn of Denmark triggered a fresh wave of English uprisings in various parts of the country. Edgar and the other exiles sailed to the Humber, where they linked up with Northumbrian rebels and the Danes. Their combined forces overwhelmed the Normans at York and took control of Northumbria, but a small seaborne raid which Edgar led into the Kingdom of Lindsey ended in disaster, and he escaped with only a handful of followers to rejoin the main army. Late in the year, William fought his way into Northumbria and occupied York, buying off the Danes and devastating the surrounding country. Early in 1070, he moved against Edgar and other English leaders who had taken refuge with their remaining followers in a marshy region, perhaps Holderness or the Isle of Ely, and put them to flight. Edgar returned to Scotland.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: He remained there until 1072, when William invaded Scotland and forced King Malcolm to submit to his overlordship. The terms of the agreement between them included the expulsion of Edgar. He therefore took up residence in Flanders, whose count, Robert the Frisian, was hostile to the Normans. However, he was able to return to Scotland in 1074. Shortly after his arrival there, he received an offer from Philip I, King of France, who was also at odds with William, of a castle and lands near the borders of Normandy from where he would be able to raid his enemies' homeland. He embarked with his followers for France, but a storm wrecked their ships on the English coast. Many of Edgar's men were hunted down by the Normans, but he managed to escape with the remainder to Scotland by land. Following this disaster, he was persuaded by Malcolm to make peace with William and return to England as his subject, abandoning any ambition of regaining his ancestral throne.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: Disappointed at the level of recompense and respect he received from William, in 1086 Edgar renounced his allegiance to the Conqueror and moved with a retinue of men to Norman Apulia. The Domesday Book, compiled that year, records Edgar's ownership of only two small estates (Barkway and Hermead) in Hertfordshire. This is probably because Edgar had given up his English properties when he left for Italy, not intending to return. In that case the recording of the Hertfordshire estates under his name is likely to be an anomaly, reflecting a situation which had recently ceased to apply. The venture in the Mediterranean was evidently not a success; within a few years Edgar returned to England.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: After King William's death in 1087, Edgar supported William's eldest son Robert Curthose, who succeeded him as Duke of Normandy, against his second son, William Rufus, who received the throne of England as William II. Edgar was one of Robert's three principal advisors at this time. The war waged by Robert and his allies to overthrow William ended in defeat in 1091. As part of the resulting settlement between the brothers, Edgar was deprived of lands which he had been granted by Robert. These were presumably former possessions of William and his supporters in Normandy, confiscated by Robert and distributed to his own followers, including Edgar, but restored to their previous owners by the terms of the peace agreement. The disgruntled Edgar travelled once again to Scotland, where Malcolm was preparing for war with William. When William marched north and the two armies confronted one another, the kings opted to talk rather than fight. The negotiations were conducted by Edgar on behalf of Malcolm, and the newly reconciled Robert Curthose on behalf of William. The resulting agreement included a reconciliation between William and Edgar. However, within months Robert left England, unhappy with William's failure to fulfil the pact between them, and Edgar went with him to Normandy.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: Having returned to England, Edgar went to Scotland again in 1093, on a diplomatic mission for William to negotiate with Malcolm, who was dissatisfied with the Norman failure to implement in full the terms of the 1091 treaty. This dispute led to war, and within the year Malcolm had invaded England and had been killed along with his designated heir Edward, eldest of his sons by Margaret, in the Battle of Alnwick. Malcolm's successor, his brother Donald Bán, drove out the English and French retainers who had risen high in Malcolm's service and had thus aroused the jealousy of the existing Scottish aristocracy. This purge brought him into conflict with the Anglo-Norman monarchy, whose influence in Scotland had diminished. William helped Malcolm's eldest son Duncan, who had spent many years as a hostage at William I's court and remained there when set at liberty by William II, to overthrow his uncle, but Donald soon regained the throne and Duncan was killed. Another effort to restore the Anglo-Norman interest through sponsorship of Malcolm's sons was launched in 1097, and Edgar made yet another journey to Scotland, this time in command of an invading army. Donald was ousted, and Edgar installed his nephew and namesake, Malcolm and Margaret's son Edgar, on the Scottish throne.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: According to Orderic, Edgar was the commander of an English fleet which operated off the coast of the region of Syria in support of the First Crusade, whose crews eventually burned their dilapidated ships and joined the advance by land to Jerusalem. This is doubtful, for this fleet is known to have arrived off the Syrian coast by March 1098; since Edgar invaded Scotland late in 1097, he could not have made the voyage in the time available. It may be though that he travelled overland to the Mediterranean and joined the fleet en route; this is the view taken by Runciman. William of Malmesbury recorded that Edgar made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1102, and it may be that Orderic's report is the product of confusion, conflating the expedition of the English fleet with Edgar's later journey. Some modern historians have suggested that at some point during these years Edgar served in the Varangian Guard of the Byzantine Empire, a unit which was at that time composed primarily of English emigrants, but this is unsupported by evidence. William of Malmesbury stated that on his way back from Jerusalem Edgar was given rich gifts by both the Byzantine and the German emperors, each of whom offered him an honoured place at court, but that he insisted on returning home instead.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: Back in Europe, Edgar again took the side of Robert Curthose in the internal struggles of the Norman dynasty, this time against Robert's youngest brother, who was now Henry I, King of England. He was taken prisoner in the final defeat at the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106, which resulted in Robert being imprisoned for the rest of his life. Edgar was more fortunate: having been taken back to England, he was pardoned and released by King Henry. His niece Edith (renamed Matilda), daughter of Malcolm III and Margaret, had married Henry in 1100. Edgar is believed to have travelled to Scotland once more late in life, perhaps around the year 1120. He lived to see the death at sea in November 1120 of William Adeling, the son of his niece Edith and heir to Henry I. Edgar was still alive in 1125, according to William of Malmesbury, who wrote at the time that Edgar "now grows old in the country in privacy and quiet". Edgar died some time after this contemporary reference, but the exact date and the location of his grave are not known.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: According to a 1291 Huntingdon Priory Chronicle, Edgar had one child, Margaret Lovel, who was the wife of firstly Ralph Lovel II, of Castle Cary and secondly of Robert de Londres, both of whom had estates in southern Scotland.


title: Edgar Ætheling

text: There are two references to an "Edgar Adeling" found in the "Magnus Rotulus Pipae Northumberland" (Pipe rolls) for the years 1158 and 1167. Historian Edward Freeman, writing in "The History of the Norman Conquest of England", says that this was the same Edgar (aged over 100), a son of his, or some other person known by the title "Ætheling".


title: Tin Star (TV series)

text: Tin Star (2017-2020) is a British television crime drama created by Rowan Joffé. The series focuses on Jim Worth, a former London Metropolitan Police Service detective who becomes chief of police of a Canadian town in the Rocky Mountains. It stars Tim Roth, Genevieve O'Reilly, Abigail Lawrie, Oliver Coopersmith and Christina Hendricks.


title: Tin Star (TV series)

text: The series premiered on Sky Atlantic on 7 September 2017, and became available on Amazon Video internationally on 29 September. Series 2 premiered 24 January 2019. The third and final series takes place in Liverpool, England. Production for the series commenced in 2019, with all episodes airing in December 2020.


title: Tin Star (TV series)

text: Former London undercover police detective Jim Worth is the seemingly gentle police chief of Little Big Bear, a small town at the edge of the Canadian Rockies, where his family of four has moved to escape his violent past. But, thanks to a chief of security for North Stream Oil, the oil company that dominates the town, Worth's past catches up with him and he and his wife Angela call into service Jim's violent, alcoholic alter-ego, Jack Devlin, to fight anyone they suspect of hurting their family. The local head of public relations for North Stream, Elizabeth Bradshaw, wavers between ethics and criminality against a backdrop of rough oil workers and bikers.


title: Tin Star (TV series)

text: Filming took place in Alberta from June to December 2016, with scenes mainly shot in the town of High River, Alberta, located just south of Calgary.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: Double-entry bookkeeping, also known as double-entry accounting, is a method of bookkeeping that relies on a two-sided accounting entry to maintain financial information. Every entry to an account requires a corresponding and opposite entry to a different account. The double-entry system has two equal and corresponding sides known as debit and credit. A transaction in double-entry bookkeeping always affects at least two accounts, always includes at least one debit and one credit, and always has total debits and total credits that are equal. The purpose of double-entry bookkeeping is to allow the detection of financial errors and fraud.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: For example, if a business takes out a bank loan for $10,000, recording the transaction would require a debit of $10,000 to an asset account called "Cash", as well as a credit of $10,000 to a liability account called "Notes Payable".


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: Double-entry bookkeeping is based on balancing the accounting equation. The accounting equation serves as an error detection tool; if at any point the sum of debits for all accounts does not equal the corresponding sum of credits for all accounts, an error has occurred. However, satisfying the equation does not guarantee a lack of errors; the ledger may still "balance" even if the wrong ledger accounts have been debited or credited.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: The earliest extant accounting records that follow the modern double-entry system in Europe come from Amatino Manucci, a Florentine merchant at the end of the 13th century. Manucci was employed by the Farolfi firm and the firm's ledger of 1299–1300 evidences full double-entry bookkeeping. Giovannino Farolfi & Company, a firm of Florentine merchants headquartered in Nîmes, acted as moneylenders to the Archbishop of Arles, their most important customer. Some sources suggest that Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici introduced this method for the Medici bank in the 14th century, though evidence for this is lacking.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: The double-entry system began to propagate for practice in Italian merchant cities during the 14th century. Before this there may have been systems of accounting records on multiple books which, however, do not yet have the formal and methodical rigor necessary to control the business economy. In the course of the 16th century, Venice produced the theoretical accounting science by the writings of Luca Pacioli, Domenico Manzoni, Bartolomeo Fontana, the accountant Alvise Casanova and the erudite Giovanni Antonio Tagliente.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: Ragusan precursor Benedetto Cotrugli's 1458 treatise "Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto" contained the earliest known description of a double-entry system, published in print in Venice in 1573. Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar and collaborator of Leonardo da Vinci, first codified the system in his mathematics textbook "Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità" published in Venice in 1494. Pacioli is often called the "father of accounting" because he was the first to publish a detailed description of the double-entry system, thus enabling others to study and use it.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: In pre-modern Europe, double-entry bookkeeping had theological and cosmological connotations, recalling "both the scales of justice and the symmetry of God's world".


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: Per some sources, double-entry bookkeeping was first pioneered by the Romans and in the Jewish community of the early-medieval Middle East. In AD 70 Pliny the Elder described the structure of the "Tabulae Rationum" as "On one page all the disbursements are entered, on the other page all the receipts; both pages constitute a whole for each operation


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: 11th century Jewish bankers in Cairo used an intermediary form of credit-debit accounts in some of their documentation. The Italian system has similarities with the older Indian "Jama–Nama" system which had debits and credits in a reverse order. It is B. M. Lall Nigam's opinion that the Italian merchants likely learned the method from their interaction with ancient Indian merchants during the Greek and Roman sea trade relations, though he is unable to substantiate this with evidence. The oldest European record of a complete double-entry system is the "Messari" (Italian: Treasurer's) accounts of the Republic of Genoa in 1340. The "Messari" accounts contain debits and credits journalised in a bilateral form, and include balances carried forward from the preceding year, and therefore enjoy general recognition as a double-entry system. By the end of the 15th century, the bankers and merchants of Florence, Genoa, Venice and Lübeck used this system widely.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: The double-entry accounting method was said to be developed independently earlier in Korea during the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) when Kaesong was a center of trade and industry. The "Four-element bookkeeping system" was said to originate in the 11th or 12th century.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: In the double-entry accounting system, at least two accounting entries are required to record each financial transaction. These entries may occur in asset, liability, equity, expense, or revenue accounts. Recording of a debit amount to one or more accounts and an equal credit amount to one or more accounts results in total debits being equal to total credits when considering all accounts in the general ledger. If the accounting entries are recorded without error, the aggregate balance of all accounts having "Debit" balances will be equal to the aggregate balance of all accounts having "Credit" balances. Accounting entries that debit and credit related accounts typically include the same date and identifying code in both accounts, so that in case of error, each debit and credit can be traced back to a journal and transaction source document, thus preserving an audit trail. The accounting entries are recorded in the "Books of Accounts". Regardless of which accounts and how many are involved by a given transaction, the fundamental accounting equation of "assets equal liabilities plus equity" will hold.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: There are two different ways to record the effects of debits and credits on accounts in the double-entry system of bookkeeping. They are the Traditional Approach and the Accounting Equation Approach. Irrespective of the approach used, the effect on the books of accounts remains the same, with two aspects (debit and credit) in each of the transactions.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: Following the Traditional Approach (also called the British Approach) accounts are classified as real, personal, and nominal accounts. Real accounts are accounts relating to assets both tangible and intangible in nature. Personal accounts are accounts relating to persons or organisations with whom the business has transactions and will mainly consist of accounts of debtors and creditors. Nominal accounts are accounts relating to revenue, expenses, gains, and losses. Transactions are entered in the books of accounts by applying the following golden rules of accounting:


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: This approach is also called the American approach. Under this approach transactions are recorded based on the accounting equation, i.e., Assets = Liabilities + Capital. The accounting equation is a statement of equality between the debits and the credits. The rules of debit and credit depend on the nature of an account. For the purpose of the accounting equation approach, all the accounts are classified into the following five types: assets, capital, liabilities, revenues/incomes, or expenses/losses.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: If there is an increase or decrease in a set of accounts, there will be equal decrease or increase in another set of accounts. Accordingly, the following rules of debit and credit hold for the various categories of accounts:


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: These five rules help learning about accounting entries and also are comparable with traditional (British) accounting rules.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: Each financial transaction is recorded in at least two different nominal ledger accounts within the financial accounting system, so that the total debits equals the total credits in the general ledger, i.e. the accounts balance. This is a partial check that each and every transaction has been correctly recorded. The transaction is recorded as a "debit entry" (Dr) in one account, and a "credit entry" (Cr) in a second account. The debit entry will be recorded on the debit side (left-hand side) of a general ledger account, and the credit entry will be recorded on the credit side (right-hand side) of a general ledger account. If the total of the entries on the debit side of one account is greater than the total on the credit side of the same nominal account, that account is said to have a debit balance.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: Double entry is used only in nominal ledgers. It is not used in daybooks (journals), which normally do not form part of the nominal ledger system. The information from the daybooks will be used in the nominal ledger and it is the nominal ledgers that will ensure the integrity of the resulting financial information created from the daybooks (provided that the information recorded in the daybooks is correct).


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: The reason for this is to limit the number of entries in the nominal ledger: entries in the daybooks can be totalled before they are entered in the nominal ledger. If there are only a relatively small number of transactions it may be simpler instead to treat the daybooks as an integral part of the nominal ledger and thus of the double-entry system.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: However, as can be seen from the examples of daybooks shown below, it is still necessary to check, within each daybook, that the postings from the daybook balance.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: The double entry system uses nominal ledger accounts. From these nominal ledger accounts, a trial balance can be created. The trial balance lists all the nominal ledger account balances. The list is split into two columns, with debit balances placed in the left hand column and credit balances placed in the right hand column. Another column will contain the name of the nominal ledger account describing what each value is for. The total of the debit column must equal the total of the credit column.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: Double-entry bookkeeping is governed by the accounting equation. If revenue equals expenses, the following (basic) equation must be true:


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: For the accounts to remain in balance, a change in one account must be matched with a change in another account. These changes are made by debits and credits to the accounts. Note that the usage of these terms in accounting is not identical to their everyday usage. Whether one uses a debit or credit to increase or decrease an account depends on the normal balance of the account. Assets, Expenses, and Drawings accounts (on the left side of the equation) have a normal balance of "debit". Liability, Revenue, and Capital accounts (on the right side of the equation) have a normal balance of "credit". On a general ledger, debits are recorded on the left side and credits on the right side for each account. Since the accounts must always balance, for each transaction there will be a debit made to one or several accounts and a credit made to one or several accounts. The sum of all debits made in each day's transactions must equal the sum of all credits in those transactions. After a series of transactions, therefore, the sum of all the accounts with a debit balance will equal the sum of all the accounts with a credit balance.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: The mnemonic DEADCLIC is used to help remember the effect of debit or credit transactions on the relevant accounts. DEAD: Debit to increase Expense, Asset and Drawing accounts and CLIC: Credit to increase Liability, Income and Capital accounts.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: A second popular mnemonic is DEA-LER, where DEA represents Dividend, Expenses, Assets for Debit increases, and Liabilities, Equity, Revenue for Credit increases.


title: Double-entry bookkeeping

text: current equity = sum of equity changes across time (increases on the left side are debits, and increases on the right side are credits, and vice versa for decreases)


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: Once Were Warriors is a 1994 New Zealand drama film based on New Zealand author Alan Duff's bestselling 1990 first novel. The film tells the story of the Heke family, an urban Māori family, and their problems with poverty, alcoholism, and domestic violence, mostly brought on by the patriarch, Jake. The film was directed by Lee Tamahori, written by Riwia Brown, and stars Rena Owen, Temuera Morrison and Cliff Curtis. It became the highest-grossing film of all-time in New Zealand, and has won numerous awards.


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: Beth leaves her small Māori village and, much to her parents' chagrin, marries Jake "The Muss" Heke. After eighteen years, they live in an unkempt state house in South Auckland and have five children. Their interpretations of life and being Māori are tested.


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: Jake is fired from his job, but remains satisfied with receiving unemployment benefit and spending most days getting drunk at a nearby pub with his friends. He shows his violent streak by savagely beating a muscular patron who dares disrupt a female singer's (Mere Boynton) performance. He often invites crowds of friends from the bar to his home for drunken parties. When his wife "gets lippy", he brutally beats her in front of the group, who are too intimidated to interfere. Beth turns to booze when things go wrong, and exhibits angry outbursts and occasional violence of her own on a smaller scale. Her children fend for themselves, resignedly cleaning the blood-streaked house after their father beats their mother.


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: Nig, the eldest son of the Heke family, moves out to join a gang whose rituals include getting facial tattoos. He undergoes an initiation beating, passes and is then embraced as a new brother. Nig cares about his siblings but despises his father; he is angered when his mother is beaten but does not intervene. Nig's younger brother Mark, aka "Boogie", is placed in a foster home as a ward of the state due to his parents' home life. Jake is unconcerned and hopes the experience will toughen him up. Despite his initial anger, Boogie finds a new niche for himself after the foster home's manager, Mr. Bennett, helps him embrace his Māori heritage.


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: Grace, Jake and Beth's 13-year-old daughter, keeps a journal in which she chronicles events, as well as stories she tells her younger siblings. Her best friend is a homeless boy named Toot, who lives in a wrecked car. She dreads a future she believes is inevitable and is constantly reminded of getting married and playing the role of a wife, which she believes comprises catering to a husband's demands and enduring beatings. She dreams of living an independent and single life.


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: Grace is raped by Uncle Bully, a friend of her father. She falls into a deep depression and seeks support from Toot, with whom she smokes marijuana for the first time. Toot kisses her but she reacts violently and storms out, believing he is "just like the rest of them". Confused, Grace eventually goes home to an angry Jake with his friends. Bully asks for a goodnight kiss to test his power over her. She refuses and Jake sees it as a sign of disrespect; he rips her journal in two and nearly beats her. Beth returns home from searching for Grace, and then screams hysterically after finding her daughter has hanged herself from a tree branch in the backyard.


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: Jake selfishly deals with the tragedy by going to the pub while the rest of his family takes Grace's body to a tangihanga. Beth stands up to him for the first time when he refuses to let her be taken to the marae. The film cross-cuts between the mourning, Jake's drinking and the family on the marae. Boogie impresses Beth with his Māori singing at the funeral, and Toot says his goodbyes, telling Grace the gentle kiss he gave her the last time he saw her was a gesture meant only to confirm their mantra 'best friends for life'. Boogie reassures Toot that Grace loved him, and Beth invites him to live with them.


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: Reading Grace's diary later that day, Beth finds out about the rape and confronts Bully at the pub. Jake initially threatens Beth for accusing his friend, but Nig steps between them, protecting his mother. After glancing at the diary himself, Jake explodes in a rage and beats Bully nearly to death, castrating him with a broken bottle. Beth, blaming Jake just as much as Bully because of his violent lifestyle, decides to take their children back to her Māori village and traditions, defiantly telling him that her heritage gives her the strength to resist his control over her. Jake shouts at her on a kerb outside the pub as the family leaves, with police sirens wailing in the background.


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: "Once Were Warriors" is the first feature film produced by Communicado Productions. The production won Best Film at the Durban International Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival, New Zealand Film & Television Awards, and Rotterdam Film Festival. It also became at the time the highest-grossing film in New Zealand, surpassing "The Piano" (1993). "Once Were Warriors" was nominated for the Grand Prix of the Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics.


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: The film was shot at a local state house, located at 33 O'Connor Street, Otara, in the Auckland metropolitan area. The neighbours of the house used for filming complained on numerous occasions due to the film's late night party scenes.


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: "Once Were Warriors" was critically lauded on release. On Metacritic the film has a score of 77% based on reviews from 20 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four and observed: ""Once Were Warriors" has been praised as an attack on domestic violence and abuse. So it is. But I am not sure anyone needs to see this film to discover that such brutality is bad. We know that. I value it for two other reasons: its perception in showing the way alcohol triggers sudden personality shifts, and its power in presenting two great performances by Morrison and Owen. You don't often see acting like this in the movies. They bring the Academy Awards into perspective."


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: In The Movie Show review of 1994, Margaret Pomeranz called "Once Were Warriors" "a very impressive big screen debut from director Lee Tamahori," while also praising the cinematography of Stuart Dryburgh and the performances of the films leads, Morrison and Owen. Co-host David Stratton described the film as "astonishing," "absolutely devastating," and "a really, really, really good film." Stratton also compared "Once Were Warriors" favourably with New Zealand's "Heavenly Creatures" of the same year. Pomeranz gave "Once Were Warriors" four stars out of five while Stratton gave it four point five.


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: The film grossed $114,000 in its opening from 4 New Zealand cinemas, breaking records. It became the highest-grossing film ever released in New Zealand with a gross of NZ$6.7 million, surpassing "Jurassic Park".


title: Once Were Warriors (film)

text: "Once Were the Cast of Warriors" (2014) is a documentary film made for the 20th anniversary of the original release of "Once Were Warriors".


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: "Luigi's Mansion" received a positive critical reception overall, with reviewers praising Martinet’s voice acting as Luigi, the atmosphere, soundtrack and gameplay, but criticizing its short length. The game has sold over 3.3 million copies, and is the fifth best selling GameCube game of all time. It was one of the first games to be re-released as a Player's Choice title on the system. The game was followed by two sequels – "", released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013, and "Luigi's Mansion 3", which was released for the Nintendo Switch in 2019. A remaster of "Luigi's Mansion" for the 3DS, co-developed by Nintendo and Grezzo, was released in 2018.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: "Luigi's Mansion"'s story takes place over four "areas", or sets of explorable rooms between boss fights. Players may also access a training room and a gallery at Professor E. Gadd's laboratory between areas or upon starting the game. In each area, players control Luigi to explore the mansion's rooms and hunt down the ghosts within them, acquiring keys to get through locked doors and eventually fighting a boss ghost at the end of the area. To assist him in his task, Luigi uses a flashlight and two inventions supplied by E. Gadd – the Poltergust 3000, a specially modified, high-powered vacuum cleaner; and the Game Boy Horror, a play on Nintendo's Game Boy Color.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: To capture ghosts, Luigi must first stun a ghost with his flashlight, revealing its heart. He then must use the Poltergust 3000 to suck them up, steadily reducing the ghost's hit points to zero, at which point they are captured. The more hit points, the more time it takes for a ghost to be captured, giving them a chance to break free while leaving Luigi more exposed to harm. If Luigi's HP is reduced to zero from being hurt by the ghosts or other accidents, the game is over. Along his journey, Luigi locates three elemental medals, each granting the Poltergust with the ability to summon and vacuum ghosts from fire, water, and ice sources and expel their respective elements to capture specific ghosts or solve puzzles. In addition to capturing the regular ghosts in the mansion, Luigi must catch "portrait ghosts" from some rooms, each requiring a condition be met to make them available for capture. Rooms are usually dark upon initial access, and Luigi hums nervously to the music, but once all the ghosts are captured, it brightens up, and Luigi pleasantly whistles the melody.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: Using the Game Boy Horror, players can access a map of the mansion, seeing which rooms they have visited, what doors are open, and which remain locked. When Luigi finds a key during his explorations, the Game Boy Horror automatically indicates which door it unlocks. In addition to a map function, the device keeps track of any treasure that Luigi has found. Rooms will usually have treasure hidden within, which can be either coins, bills, gold bars, or gems, hidden within objects and even in chests that appear when rooms are cleared. Luigi can gather these treasures by walking into them or vacuuming them; if a ghost harms Luigi, he will drop a few coins that he will need to recover before they disappear. After Luigi encounters a group of Boos hiding in the mansion, the GB Horror can be used to find each one hiding in a room through a beeper sound and a flashing yellow light on the device, which turns red when Luigi is close to one. Boos can only be located in cleared rooms. Boos are trickier to catch, as they can plant decoys and traps within objects they can hide in that can fool the GB Horror and will escape into other rooms if they can.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: Once an area is completed, all portrait ghosts are restored to their paintings by E. Gadd, which the player can view in his laboratory's gallery, at which point a result screen reveals the portrait ghosts Luigi has managed to capture, along with the total amount of treasure he recovered for that stage. Once the final boss of "Luigi's Mansion" is defeated, the player is given a rating (A to H) during the end credits based on the amount of treasure Luigi has found. Completing the game once unlocks a second mode called the "Hidden Mansion", which features a stronger Poltergust and stronger ghosts. In the European version of this mode, the mansion appears as a mirrored reflection of the previous version, bosses are more difficult, ghosts and Portrait Ghosts are trickier to capture, and more ghosts appear in some of the rooms.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: Luigi has been notified about winning a mansion in a contest he did not enter. He informs Mario and they agree to meet up outside the mansion that evening. Luigi follows a map to the mansion, which is located in a dark forest, and finds it more sinister looking than the supplied photo. With Mario nowhere to be found, Luigi enters the mansion alone. He encounters a ghost, which attacks him, but is unexpectedly saved by a scientist who unsuccessfully tries to suck up the ghost with a vacuum cleaner. They escape as more ghosts appear, and the scientist introduces himself as Professor Elvin Gadd, or E. Gadd for short. He explains the mansion is supernatural in origin and only appeared a few days prior. E. Gadd tells Luigi that he saw Mario heading towards the mansion, but has not seen him since. Upon learning that Mario is Luigi's brother, E. Gadd entrusts Luigi with his ghost-hunting equipment, including the Poltergust 3000 vacuum cleaner and Game Boy Horror communication device, and Luigi re-enters the mansion to look for Mario.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: As Luigi explores the mansion, he discovers that it is an illusion built by King Boo to shelter the now-freed special ghosts that E. Gadd had previously captured and turned into paintings with a large machine dubbed the "Ghost Potrificationizer"; King Boo subsequently created the false contest to lure the Mario Bros. into a trap in retaliation for the boos they defeated in the past. After recapturing many ghosts and working his way through the mansion, Luigi confronts King Boo, who has turned Mario into a painting. King Boo pulls Luigi into the painting for their final battle, using a suit-like replica of Bowser to combat him in an arena resembling the mansion's roof. Finding a way to blast the suit's head off, Luigi catches King Boo and escapes the painting. E. Gadd turns King Boo into a painting along with the recaptured ghosts, while Luigi uses the Ghost Portrificationizer's reverse function to free Mario. After the mansion disappears, E. Gadd uses the treasure Luigi collected on his adventure to build him a new non-haunted house in its place. Its size depends on how much treasure the player gathered during the game.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: The game was revealed at Nintendo Space World 2000 as a technological demo designed to show off the graphical capabilities of the GameCube. The full motion video footage had scenes seen in later trailers and commercials for the game, but were not used in the final release. This footage includes Luigi screaming in horror at the camera, running from an unknown ghost in the Foyer, ghosts playing cards in the Parlor, ghosts circling around Luigi, and a gloomy-looking Luigi standing outside the mansion with lighting flashing. These were animated at three graphic houses to pay homage to the GameCube. Soon after its creation, Nintendo decided to transform the demo into a full-fledged video game. A year later, "Luigi's Mansion" was shown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo alongside the GameCube console. Development was led by Hideki Konno, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Takashi Tezuka. A newer version of the game, more closely related to the final version, was revealed at Nintendo Space World 2001.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: The original plan for "Luigi's Mansion" involved a game where the levels revolved around a large mansion or complex. Tests were later done with "Mario" characters in dollhouses and such. Once it was transitioned into a GameCube project, Luigi was selected as the main character in order to keep the game original and new. The other gameplay ideas, such as ghosts and the ghost-sucking vacuum cleaner, were added later. Older concepts, such as a role-playing game-like system which made real-time changes to rooms, as well as a cave area located under the mansion, were scrapped due to the inclusion of the new ideas.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: "Luigi's Mansion"s music was composed by Shinobu Tanaka and Kazumi Totaka, and as such contains "Totaka's Song", a song featured in almost every game that Totaka has composed. It is found by waiting on the controller configuration screen at the Training Room for about three and a half minutes. The main theme of "Luigi's Mansion" was orchestrated and arranged by Shogo Sakai for "Super Smash Bros. Brawl". The game featured voice actors Charles Martinet as the voice of Mario and Luigi, and Jen Taylor as the voice of Toad. "Luigi's Mansion" received an award for its audio by BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards in 2002.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: All GameCube systems support the display of stereoscopic 3D, and "Luigi's Mansion" was planned to utilize this feature; however, 3D televisions were not widespread at the time, and it was deemed that compatible displays would be too cost-prohibitive for the consumer. As a result, the feature was not enabled outside of development.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: Commercially, "Luigi's Mansion" is the most successful GameCube launch title and the best-selling game of November 2001. It sold 257,000 units during its first week on sale in the United States. According to Nintendo, the game was a large driving force behind the GameCube's launch sales and sold more copies in its opening week than "Super Mario 64" had managed to sell. Despite meager sales in Japan at around 348,000 units in total, it became the fifth best-selling GameCube game in the United States, with sales of roughly 2.19 million units. In total it sold 3.33 million copies worldwide by 2020. It was also one of the first Player's Choice titles on the console, along with "Super Smash Bros. Melee" and "Pikmin".


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: Critically, "Luigi's Mansion" was positively received, with reviewers praising the game's graphics, design, and gameplay. GameSpot stated that "Luigi's Mansion" "features some refreshing ideas" and "flashes of brilliance." The gaming magazine "Nintendo Power" praised the game for being "very enjoyable while it lasts, with its clever puzzles and innovative game play." GameSpy said that the game features "great visuals, imaginative game design and some classic Nintendo magic." The game was referred to as "a masterful example of game design" by "GamePro". Game Revolution stated that "the graphics are quite beautiful and the interesting game mechanics are enjoyable." The American-based publication "Game Informer" praised the gameplay, and referred to it as "brilliant and up to par with Miyamoto's best." The audio was praised by IGN, who considered Luigi's voice acting as "cute, humorous and satisfying", and GameSpy, who declared that the soundtrack remains "subtle, amusing and totally suitable throughout the game". The Japanese video game publication "Famitsu" awarded the game with a gold rating, and noted that the control system, while tricky at first, works well.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: The game has also received criticism, mainly because of its length. GameSpot said that "Luigi's Mansion" "fails to match the classic status of Mario's adventures" and that the "short amount of time it takes to complete it makes it a hard recommendation." The review, however, also considered that the short length prevents the gameplay and audio from getting tiresome. GameSpot later named "Luigi's Mansion" the most disappointing game of 2001. GameSpy also criticized the game's length, saying that it could be beaten in about six hours. Allgame declared that "Luigi's Mansion" "ultimately fails to deliver a cohesive gameplay experience over the long-term." Fran Mirabella III of IGN felt that the game was sub-par, due to its "predictable, formulaic gameplay." G4's TV show "X-Play" criticized "Luigi's Mansion" in their special on "Mario" games and media, calling the game a letdown for players waiting for the first "Mario" game on the GameCube. "Luigi's Mansion" was awarded the 2002 BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award for audio. The game placed 99th in Official Nintendo Magazine's 100 greatest Nintendo games of all time.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: "Luigi's Mansion" introduces two characters, Professor Elvin Gadd, or E. Gadd for short, and King Boo. E. Gadd has reappeared in other Mario games, such as "Mario Party 6" and "". E. Gadd is referenced in "Super Mario Sunshine" as the creator of Mario's F.L.U.D.D. device and Bowser Jr.'s paintbrush. He also appears as a playable character skin in "Super Mario Maker". King Boo has also reappeared in other games, either as a boss (including "Super Mario 64 DS" and "Super Princess Peach") or a playable character (including "" and "Mario Super Sluggers").


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: The mansion in the game has reappeared in other "Mario" games, usually acting as Luigi's home stage. It appeared in "", "Mario Kart DS", "Mario Kart 7", "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe", "Mario Power Tennis", "Mario Super Sluggers", "Mario Hoops 3-on-3", "Mario Sports Mix", "Super Smash Bros. Brawl", "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U" and "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate". The Wii U launch title "Nintendo Land" features "Luigi's Ghost Mansion", a multiplayer minigame based on "Luigi's Mansion". In this minigame, four players controlling Miis dressed up as Mario, Luigi, Wario and Waluigi have to drain the energy of a ghost, while the GamePad player, controlling the ghost, must make all the other players faint before time runs out.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: A direct sequel for the Nintendo 3DS, "", was released in March 2013, almost twelve years after the release of "Luigi's Mansion", to celebrate the Year of Luigi. In 2015, Nintendo released "Luigi's Mansion Arcade", an arcade game based on "" developed by Capcom and published by Sega. The game uses the same plot as "Dark Moon", but goes for a first-person, on-rails gameplay style, and utilizes a special vacuum-based controller. The game is mostly found in Japanese arcades, although some cabinets have been localized and released at select Dave and Buster's locations in the United States. A third installment, titled "Luigi's Mansion 3", was released for the Nintendo Switch on October 31, 2019.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: A remake of "Luigi's Mansion" for the Nintendo 3DS, co-developed by Nintendo and Grezzo, was announced on March 8, 2018, and released on October 12, 2018.


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: Several years prior to the remake's official announcement as a commercial project, Shigeru Miyamoto designed a working prototype of the game running on a 3DS development kit to test the system's hardware and 3D functionality, which ultimately led to the development of "". The remake has amiibo functionality and supports gyroscopic controls, the Circle Pad Pro accessory, the C-Stick on New Nintendo 3DS models, and stereoscopic 3D. Four other new features were added as new content: local cooperative play in which a second player takes on the role of a doppelgänger named "Gooigi", a new control option that allows the use of the Strobulb flashlight from "Dark Moon", an achievement list, and a boss rush mode where up to two players can attempt to clear boss fights as fast as possible. All regional releases of the remake also incorporate elements from the PAL version's Hidden Mansion, increasing the difficulty of the second quest in the North American and Japanese versions. As of 2018, it has sold 90,410 copies in Japan, making it the third best-selling Nintendo 3DS release of 2018 behind "WarioWare Gold" and "Detective Pikachu".


title: Luigi's Mansion

text: Critical reception to the remake was generally positive; reviewers appreciated the effort put into the revamped visuals and many believe the core experience to largely hold up 17 years after the original release. Outlets also spoke positively about the implementation of stereoscopic 3D and the two screens as well as the new content such as the boss rush mode and the PAL Hidden Mansion.


title: Casino game

text: Games available in most casinos are commonly called casino games. In a casino game, the players gamble cash or casino chips on various possible random outcomes or combinations of outcomes. Casino games are also available in online casinos, where permitted by law. Casino games can also be played outside casino for entertainment purposes like in parties or in school competitions, some on machines that simulate gambling.


title: Casino game

text: There are three general categories of casino games: gaming machines, table games, and random number games. Gaming machines, such as slot machines and pachinko, are usually played by one player at a time and do not require the involvement of casino employees to play. Tables games, such as blackjack or craps, involve one or more players who are competing against the house (the casino itself) rather than each other. Table games are usually conducted by casino employees known as croupiers or dealers. Random number games are based upon the selection of random numbers, either from a computerized random number generator or from other gaming equipment. Random number games may be played at a table or through the purchase of paper tickets or cards, such as keno or bingo.


title: Casino game

text: Some casino games combine multiple of the above aspects; for example, roulette is a table game conducted by a dealer, which involves random numbers. Casinos may also offer other types of gaming, such as hosting poker games or tournaments, where players compete against each other.


title: Casino game

text: In the United States, 'table game' is the term used for games of chance such as blackjack, craps, roulette and baccarat that are played against the casino and operated by one or more live croupiers, as opposed to those played on a mechanical device like a slot machine or against other players instead of the casino, such as standard poker.


title: Casino game

text: Table games are popularly played in casinos and involve some form of legal gambling, but also are played privately by varying house rules. The term has significance in that some jurisdictions permit casinos to have only slots and no table games. In some states, this law has resulted in casinos employing electronic table games, such as roulette, blackjack, and craps.


title: Casino game

text: Casino games typically provide a predictable long-term advantage to the casino, or "house", while offering the players the possibility of a short-term gain that in some cases can be large. Some casino games have a skill element, where the players' decisions have an impact on the results. Players possessing sufficient skills to eliminate the inherent long-term disadvantage (the "house edge" or vigorish) in a casino game are referred to as advantage players.


title: Casino game

text: The players' disadvantage is a result of the casino not paying winning wagers according to the game's "true odds", which are the payouts that would be expected considering the odds of a wager either winning or losing. For example, if a game is played by wagering on the number that would result from the roll of one die, true odds would be 6 times the amount wagered since there is a 1 in 6 chance of any single number appearing, assuming that the player gets the original amount wagered back. However, the casino may only pay 4 times the amount wagered for a winning wager.


title: Casino game

text: The house edge or vigorish is defined as the casino profit expressed as the percentage of the player's original bet. (In games such as blackjack or Spanish 21, the final bet may be several times the original bet, if the player double and splits.)


title: Casino game

text: In American roulette, there are two "zeroes" (0, 00) and 36 non-zero numbers (18 red and 18 black). This leads to a higher house edge compared to European roulette. The chances of a player, who bets 1 unit on red, winning are 18/38 and his chances of losing 1 unit are 20/38. The player's expected value is EV = (18/38 × 1) + (20/38 × (−1)) = 18/38 − 20/38 = −2/38 = −5.26%. Therefore, the house edge is 5.26%. After 10 spins, betting 1 unit per spin, the average house profit will be 10 × 1 × 5.26% = 0.53 units. European roulette wheels have only one "zero" and therefore the house advantage (ignoring the en prison rule) is equal to 1/37 = 2.7%.


title: Casino game

text: The house edge of casino games varies greatly with the game, with some games having an edge as low as 0.3%. Keno can have house edges up to 25%, slot machines having up to 15%.


title: Casino game

text: The calculation of the roulette house edge is a trivial exercise; for other games, this is not usually the case. Combinatorial analysis and/or computer simulation is necessary to complete the task.


title: Casino game

text: In games that have a skill element, such as blackjack or Spanish 21, the house edge is defined as the house advantage from optimal play (without the use of advanced techniques such as card counting), on the first hand of the shoe (the container that holds the cards). The set of the optimal plays for all possible hands is known as "basic strategy" and is highly dependent on the specific rules and even the number of decks used.


title: Casino game

text: Traditionally, the majority of casinos have refused to reveal the house edge information for their slots games and due to the unknown number of symbols and weightings of the reels, in most cases, it is much more difficult to calculate the house edge than in other casino games. However, due to some online properties revealing this information and some independent research conducted by Michael Shackleford in the offline sector, this pattern is slowly changing.


title: Casino game

text: In games where players are not competing against the house, such as poker, the casino usually earns money via a commission, known as a "rake".


title: Casino game

text: The luck factor in a casino game is quantified using standard deviations (SD). The standard deviation of a simple game like roulette can be calculated using the binomial distribution. In the binomial distribution, SD = formula_1, where "n" = number of rounds played, "p" = probability of winning, and "q" = probability of losing. The binomial distribution assumes a result of 1 unit for a win, and 0 units for a loss, rather than −1 units for a loss, which doubles the range of possible outcomes. Furthermore, if we flat bet at 10 units per round instead of 1 unit, the range of possible outcomes increases 10 fold.


title: Casino game

text: For example, after 10 rounds at 1 unit per round, the standard deviation will be 2 × 1 × formula_3 = 3.16 units. After 10 rounds, the expected loss will be 10 × 1 × 5.26% = 0.53. As you can see, standard deviation is many times the magnitude of the expected loss.


title: Casino game

text: The standard deviation for pai gow poker is the lowest out of all common casino games. Many casino games, particularly slot machines, have extremely high standard deviations. The bigger size of the potential payouts, the more the standard deviation may increase.


title: Casino game

text: As the number of rounds increases, eventually, the expected loss will exceed the standard deviation, many times over. From the formula, we can see the standard deviation is proportional to the square root of the number of rounds played, while the expected loss is proportional to the number of rounds played. As the number of rounds increases, the expected loss increases at a much faster rate. This is why it is impossible for a gambler to win in the long term. It is the high ratio of short-term standard deviation to expected loss that fools gamblers into thinking that they can win.


title: Casino game

text: It is important for a casino to know both the house edge and variance for all of their games. The house edge tells them what kind of profit they will make as a percentage of turnover, and the variance tells them how much they need in the way of cash reserves. The mathematicians and computer programmers that do this kind of work are called gaming mathematicians and gaming analysts. Casinos do not have in-house expertise in this field, so outsource their requirements to experts in the gaming analysis field.


title: Battles of Saratoga

text: The Battles of Saratoga (September 19 and October 7, 1777) marked the climax of the Saratoga campaign, giving a decisive victory to the Americans over the British in the American Revolutionary War. British General John Burgoyne led an invasion army of 7,200–8,000 men southward from Canada in the Champlain Valley, hoping to meet a similar British force marching northward from New York City and another British force marching eastward from Lake Ontario; the goal was to take Albany, New York. The southern and western forces never arrived, and Burgoyne was surrounded by American forces in upstate New York short of his goal. He fought two battles which took place 18 days apart on the same ground south of Saratoga, New York. He gained a victory in the first battle despite being outnumbered, but lost the second battle after the Americans returned with an even larger force.


title: Battles of Saratoga

text: Burgoyne found himself trapped by much larger American forces with no relief, so he retreated to Saratoga (now Schuylerville) and surrendered his entire army there on October 17. His surrender, says historian Edmund Morgan, "was a great turning point of the war because it won for Americans the foreign assistance which was the last element needed for victory."


title: Battles of Saratoga

text: Burgoyne's strategy to divide New England from the southern colonies had started well but slowed due to logistical problems. He won a small tactical victory over General Horatio Gates and the Continental Army in the September 19 at the cost of significant casualties. His gains were erased when he again attacked the Americans in the October 7 and the Americans captured a portion of the British defenses. Burgoyne was therefore compelled to retreat, and his army was surrounded by the much larger American force at Saratoga, forcing him to surrender on October 17. News of Burgoyne's surrender was instrumental in formally bringing France into the war as an American ally, although it had previously given supplies, ammunition, and guns, notably the de Valliere cannon which played an important role in Saratoga.


title: Battles of Saratoga

text: The battle on September 19 began when Burgoyne moved some of his troops in an attempt to flank the entrenched American position on Bemis Heights. Benedict Arnold anticipated the maneuver and placed significant forces in his way. Burgoyne did gain control of Freeman's Farm, but it came at the cost of significant casualties. Skirmishing continued in the days following the battle, while Burgoyne waited in the hope that reinforcements would arrive from New York City. Patriot militia forces continued to arrive, meanwhile, swelling the size of the American army. Disputes within the American camp led Gates to strip Arnold of his command.