• May 2009 Top 5 Traders

  Rank	Name	% Change
  1	murphjp	+55.46%
  2	KoalaKenny	+33.73%
  3	gossomer	+31.77%
  4	Darklance	+26.96%
  5	sn00py	+24.61%

Check out the complete May 2009 rankings.

• May 2009 Community Rankings

  Rank	Community Name	% Change
  1	NeoGAF	+0.48%
  2	Evil Avatar	+0.41%
  3	Cheap Ass Gamer	+0.37%

July Monthly Sales Futures for software are making their debut tomorrow. Remember, there are new rules regarding Monthly Software Futures. If a game does not finish in NPD Group's Top 10, the game will cash out at the sales of the #10 title.

You will be able to buy or short sell the Futures and GLS stock at a fixed price for 48 hours. This allows all players equal access to the future's IPO regardless of the time they log on. After 48 hours, the futures will trade as normal. All players, regardless of Basic or Advanced trading mode, will be able to participate in the IPO. All players are limited to 250,000 DKP positions in the IPO phase.

NCAA Football 10 will have Xbox 360 and PS3 GLS stocks IPOing on June 11 and 12. Fight Night Round 4 (Xbox 360) GLS stock was suggested by sagexsdx and will debut on June 13.

Certain games receiving Monthly Sales Futures were suggested by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR). The games selected should have a 95% chance of making the Top 10 each month.

• July Monthly Sales Futures

  IPO Date	Title	Platform	Company	IPO Price
  6/11	NCAA Football 10	Xbox 360	Electronic Arts	42 DKP
  6/12	NCAA Football 10	PS3	Electronic Arts	27 DKP
  6/13	Fight Night: Round 4	Xbox 360	Electronic Arts	20 DKP
  6/14	Wii Sports Resort	Wii	Nintendo	200 DKP
  6/15	Wii Play	Wii	Nintendo	25 DKP
  6/16	Wii Fit	Wii	Nintendo	40 DKP

When you are playing in a live poker game, you can’t really whip out a poker calculator and that is too bad, because no matter where you are in your poker career, a poker odds calculator can really help you improve your results. Fortunately, if you are playing online, using a poker odds calculator is not only permissible and legal, it’s easy and fun. There are advanced calculator such as Texas Calculatem and simpler ones like the Texas Holdem odds calculator at Learn-Texas-Holdem.com

What Can You Learn From a Poker Odds Calculator?

The LTH.com odds calculator will not necessarily teach you anything specifically, but it can provide instant statistics that can be extremely useful in your online poker games. You might be able to calculate your odds of hitting that gutshot plus overcard and how it matches up with the pot odds, but why waste valuable time when a poker odds calculator can do it for you? All you have to do is take a glance at the heads up display overlaying your online poker table and you’ll know everything you need to know to make the best decisions you can make.

Who Is Using a Poker Odds Calculator?

Who uses poker odds calculators? Anyone who wants to gain an edge in their online poker games, which should be everyone. With the current economy and restrictions on United States players, online poker is getting tougher and tougher. There are more good players and fewer fish. To stay ahead of the curve, you need to accumulate every little edge you can. A poker odds calculator, by making sure you don’t make erroneous calculations and providing information instantly so you can focus on making good decisions, gives you some of that edge you need.

The following stocks are candidates for delisting. These stocks were chosen for delisting due to inactivity in the stock and/or lack of discussion for an extended period of time. Delisting stocks is necessary to unlock DKP for trading and concentrate DKP in the stocks people are trading.

All shares will cash out at the last traded price. This price is determined as the fair value as the market has not viewed the price as undervalued or overvalued for some time. These stocks will no longer appear when browsing the genres and platforms pages. You will still be able to view the stocks' pages by searching for the games.

If you feel any of the following should not be delisted due to an upcoming event (such as the game has not yet been released in all regions), please make a case and post in this forum by 11AM on Wednesday, May 20. A stock price that you are not happy with is not grounds for continued listing.

GLS Stocks pending delisting:
Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility (Wii)
Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution (PS3)
Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution (Xbox 360)
SOCOM: Confrontation (PS3)
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360)
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS3)
Tom Clancy's EndWar (Xbox 360)
Tom Clancy's EndWar (PS3)
Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe (Xbox 360)
Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe (PS3)

We apologize for the delay in reporting April 2009 Rankings. The rankings for the month were:

• April 2009 Top 5 Traders

  Rank	Name	% Change
  1	oznerol	+40.82%
  2	yeohweihang	+29.74%
  3	iamnerp	+27.92%
  4	PhilHarrision	+26.96%
  5	hedoe	+26.39%

Check out the complete April 2009 rankings.

• April 2009 Community Rankings

  Rank	Community Name	% Change
  1	Cheap Ass Gamer	+1.14%
  2	Evil Avatar	+0.63%
  3	NeoGAF	+0.17%

July & August Console Futures will be IPOing this week.

You will be able to buy or short sell the Futures at a fixed price for 48 hours. This allows all players equal access to the future's IPO regardless of the time they log on. After 48 hours, the futures will trade as normal. All players, regardless of Basic or Advanced trading mode, will be able to participate in the IPO. All players are limited to 250,000 DKP positions in the IPO phase.

• July Console Futures

  IPO Date	Title	Company	IPO Price
  5/18	Xbox 360	Microsoft	28 DKP
  5/18	PLAYSTATION 3	Sony	16 DKP
  5/18	Wii	Nintendo	48 DKP
  5/19	Nintendo DS	Nintendo	62 DKP
  5/19	PlayStation Portable	Sony	18 DKP
  5/19	Total Software Sales	ALL	78 DKP

• August Console Futures

  IPO Date	Title	Company	IPO Price
  5/20	Xbox 360	Microsoft	30 DKP
  5/20	PLAYSTATION 3	Sony	18 DKP
  5/20	Wii	Nintendo	48 DKP
  5/21	Nintendo DS	Nintendo	62 DKP
  5/21	PlayStation Portable	Sony	18 DKP
  5/21	Total Software Sales	ALL	78 DKP

Video game hardware sales in April 2009 significantly underperformed market expectations again. Total hardware units (excluding PS2) sold were 1.8 million, 8.12% worse than the market's expectation for 1.96 million units sold. Every console except the Nintendo DS underperformed their respective expected sales. The Nintendo DS was an outlier due to the release of the new DSi model.

Anita Frazier of NPD Group commented, "the NDS platform accounted for 31 percent of total industry unit sales this month across all categories. Also notable is the performance of the PS2 which is now at the budget-friendly price point of $99.  Compared to March 2009, the PS2 sales rate almost doubled when comparing the two months on a same-week basis.  This is a testament to the impact a price reduction can have on hardware acquisition, with price being only second to compelling new content as a catalyst for hardware sales."

Growth in video game sales was once again negative year-over-year. Total video game software sales contracted a massive 23% from $660.1 million in April 2008 to $510.74 million. Traders on the simExchange prediction market expected $611.6 million in sales.

"While April sales might appear soft on the surface, it's important to remember that April is being compared against a month (April 2008) that realized nearly 50 percent growth over April 2007.  This year's performance still represents the second-best performance for the industry in the month of April, besting April 2007, which is the previous second-place holder, by 26 percent," says Frazier.

She continues: "Despite being compared against last year, when several big title releases drove both software sales and hardware acquisition, April 2009 was down only 5 percent on a unit sales basis, with the remainder of dollar sales decline coming from reduced average selling prices.  Easter fell in April this year which undoubtedly helped cushion the decline."

The market also tracked the sales of Halo Wars (Xbox 360), which did not make the top 10. The Monthly Sales Future will cash out at 9.10 DKP.

The following tables compare market expectations on the simExchange and actual results as reported by the NPD Group.

• US Hardware in April 2009

  Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  Nintendo DS	1,040,000	845,100	+23.06%
  Nintendo Wii	340,000	484,000	-29.75%
  Xbox 360	175,000	283,400	-38.25%
  PLAYSTATION 3	127,000	185,200	-31.43%
  PlayStation Portable	116,000	159,300	-27.18%
  PlayStation 2	172,000	--	--
  Total Hardware Units	1,798,000	1,957,000	-8.12%

• US Software in April 2009

  Rank	Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  1	Wii Fit (Wii)	471,000	528,600	-10.90%
  2	Pokemon Platinum (DS)	433,000	--	--
  3	Mario Kart (Wii)	210,000	--	--
  4	Wii Play (Wii)	170,000	282,900	-39.91%
  5	The Godfather II (Xbox 360)	155,000	188,600	-17.82%
  6	Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360)	122,000	172,800	-29.40%
  7	New Super Mario Bros (DS)	119,000	--	--
  8	Mario Kart DS (DS)	112,000	--	--
  9	Guitar Hero Aerosmith	110,000	--	--
  10	The Godfather II (PS3)	91,000	--	--
  	Total Software Sales	$510.74M	$611.60M	-16.49%

Where do the expected sales numbers come from?

The simExchange is the video game stock market. Gamers and developers sign up on the simExchange for a free trading account. Using fantasy money, players buy virtual stocks in video games they believe are under-predicting sales and short sell stocks they believe are over-predicting sales. This concept is widely known as "the Wisdom of the Crowd" and this system is known as a "prediction market." Sign up and play today.

About the predictions

Predictions on the simExchange should become more accurate over time as (1) the diversity of the pool of traders increases and as (2) more accurate players are rewarded with more virtual currency for their accuracy (thereby enabling them to form more predictions) and less accurate players lose virtual currency (thereby discounting their ability to form more predictions).

June Monthly Sales Futures for software are making their debut tomorrow. Remember, there are new rules regarding Monthly Software Futures. If a game does not finish in NPD Group's Top 10, the game will cash out at the sales of the #10 title. Games receiving Monthly Sales Futures are suggested by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR). The games selected should have a 95% chance of making the Top 10 each month.

You will be able to buy or short sell the Futures and GLS stock at a fixed price for 48 hours. This allows all players equal access to the future's IPO regardless of the time they log on. After 48 hours, the futures will trade as normal. All players, regardless of Basic or Advanced trading mode, will be able to participate in the IPO. All players are limited to 250,000 DKP positions in the IPO phase.

Games receiving Monthly Sales Futures are suggested by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR). The games selected should have a 95% chance of making the Top 10 each month.

• June Monthly Sales Futures

  IPO Date	Title	Platform	Company	IPO Price
  5/11	Guitar Hero Smash Hits	Wii	ATVI	50 DKP
  5/12	Prototype	Xbox 360	THQ	15 DKP
  5/13	Infamous	PS3	Activision	20 DKP
  5/14	Wii Play	Wii	Nintendo	35 DKP
  5/15	Wii Fit	Wii	Nintendo	45 DKP

May Monthly Sales Futures for software are making their debut tomorrow. Remember, there are new rules regarding Monthly Software Futures. If a game does not finish in NPD Group's Top 10, the game will cash out at the sales of the #10 title. Games receiving Monthly Sales Futures are suggested by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR). The games selected should have a 95% chance of making the Top 10 each month.

You will be able to buy or short sell the Futures and GLS stock at a fixed price for 48 hours. This allows all players equal access to the future's IPO regardless of the time they log on. After 48 hours, the futures will trade as normal. All players, regardless of Basic or Advanced trading mode, will be able to participate in the IPO. All players are limited to 250,000 DKP positions in the IPO phase.

Games receiving Monthly Sales Futures are suggested by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR). The games selected should have a 95% chance of making the Top 10 each month.

GLS stocks for X-Men Origins: Wolverine and UFC 2009: Undisputed (Xbox 360) will also IPO. The latter was submitted by Necron101 while the former submitted by X-Men Origins: Wolverine was submitted by KultofCows.

• May Monthly Sales Futures

  IPO Date	Title	Platform	Company	IPO Price
  5/4	X-Men Origins: Wolverine	Xbox 360	Activision	20 DKP
  5/5	UFC 2009: Undisputed	Xbox 360	THQ	15 DKP
  5/6	Punch Out	Wii	Nintendo	20 DKP
  5/7	Wii Play	Wii	Nintendo	35 DKP
  5/8	Wii Fit	Wii	Nintendo	45 DKP

You will be able to buy or short sell Global Lifetime Sales (GLS) Stocks and Metacritic Futures at a fixed price for 48 hours. This allows all players equal access to the stock's IPO regardless of the time they log on. After 48 hours, the futures will trade as normal. All players, regardless of Basic or Advanced trading mode, will be able to participate in the IPO. All players are limited to 250,000 DKP positions in the IPO phase.

If you want a game listed for trading, be sure to bid for it in the Unlisted Games section.

• GLS Stock & Metacritic Futures IPOs

  IPO Day	Title	Platform	Company	Submitter
  4/27	Star Wars: The Old Republic	PC	LucasArts	Apujanata & Zukaus
  4/28	Red Dead Redemption	Xbox 360	Take Two	deftangel
  4/28	Red Dead Redemption	PS3	Take Two	deftangel
  4/29	Batman: Arkham Asylum	PS3	Eidos	kspraydad
  4/29	Batman: Arkham Asylum	Xbox 360	Eidos	necron101
  4/30	Mario & Luigi 3	DS	Nintendo	Reeve_Kasahara
  5/1	Red Steel 2	Wii	Ubisoft	Laoldar