title: Barrett's esophagus

text: Both macroscopic (from endoscopy) and microscopic positive findings are required to make a diagnosis. Barrett's esophagus is marked by the presence of columnar epithelia in the lower esophagus, replacing the normal squamous cell epithelium—an example of metaplasia. The secretory columnar epithelium may be more able to withstand the erosive action of the gastric secretions; however, this metaplasia confers an increased risk of adenocarcinoma.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: Screening endoscopy is recommended among males over the age of 60 who have reflux symptoms that are of long duration and not controllable with treatment. Among those not expected to live more than five years screening is not recommended.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: The Seattle protocol is used commonly in endoscopy to obtain endoscopic biopsies for screening, taken every 1 to 2 cm from the gastroesophageal junction.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: Since the COVID-19 pandemic In Scotland, the local NHS started using a swallowable sponge (Cytosponge) in hospitals to collect cell samples for diagnosis. Preliminary studies have shown this diagnostic test to be a useful tool for screening people with heartburn symptoms and improved diagnosis.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: The presence of goblet cells, called intestinal metaplasia, is necessary to make a diagnosis of Barrett's esophagus. This frequently occurs in the presence of other metaplastic columnar cells, but only the presence of goblet cells is diagnostic. The metaplasia is grossly visible through a gastroscope, but biopsy specimens must be examined under a microscope to determine whether cells are gastric or colonic in nature. Colonic metaplasia is usually identified by finding goblet cells in the epithelium and is necessary for the true diagnosis.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: Many histologic mimics of Barrett's esophagus are known (i.e. goblet cells occurring in the transitional epithelium of normal esophageal submucosal gland ducts, "pseudogoblet cells" in which abundant foveolar [gastric] type mucin simulates the acid mucin true goblet cells). Assessment of relationship to submucosal glands and transitional-type epithelium with examination of multiple levels through the tissue may allow the pathologist to reliably distinguish between goblet cells of submucosal gland ducts and true Barrett's esophagus (specialized columnar metaplasia). The histochemical stain Alcian blue pH 2.5 is also frequently used to distinguish true intestinal-type mucins from their histologic mimics. Recently, immunohistochemical analysis with antibodies to CDX-2 (specific for mid and hindgut intestinal derivation) has also been used to identify true intestinal-type metaplastic cells. The protein AGR2 is elevated in Barrett's esophagus and can be used as a biomarker for distinguishing Barrett epithelium from normal esophageal epithelium.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: The presence of intestinal metaplasia in Barrett's esophagus represents a marker for the progression of metaplasia towards dysplasia and eventually adenocarcinoma. This factor combined with two different immunohistochemical expression of p53, Her2 and p16 leads to two different genetic pathways that likely progress to dysplasia in Barrett's esophagus. Also intestinal metaplastic cells can be positive for CK 7+/CK20-.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: After the initial diagnosis of Barrett's esophagus is rendered, affected persons undergo annual surveillance to detect changes that indicate higher risk to progression to cancer: development of epithelial dysplasia (or "intraepithelial neoplasia").


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: Among all metaplastic lesions, around 8% were associated with dysplasia. particularly a recent study demonstrated that dysplastic lesions were located mainly in the posterior wall of the esophagus.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: Considerable variability is seen in assessment for dysplasia among pathologists. Recently, gastroenterology and GI pathology societies have recommended that any diagnosis of high-grade dysplasia in Barrett be confirmed by at least two fellowship-trained GI pathologists prior to definitive treatment for patients. For more accuracy and reproducibility, it is also recommended to follow international classification systems, such as the "Vienna classification" of gastrointestinal epithelial neoplasia (2000).


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: Many people with Barrett's esophagus do not have dysplasia. Medical societies recommend that if a patient has Barrett's esophagus, and if the past two endoscopy and biopsy examinations have confirmed the absence of dysplasia, then the patient should not have another endoscopy within three years.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: Endoscopic surveillance of people with Barrett's esophagus is often recommended, although little direct evidence supports this practice. Treatment options for high-grade dysplasia include surgical removal of the esophagus (esophagectomy) or endoscopic treatments such as endoscopic mucosal resection or ablation (destruction).


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: The risk of malignancy is highest in the United States in Caucasian men over fifty years of age with more than five years of symptoms. Current recommendations include routine endoscopy and biopsy (looking for dysplastic changes). Although in the past physicians have taken a watchful waiting approach, newly published research supports consideration of intervention for Barrett's esophagus. Balloon-based radiofrequency ablation, invented by Ganz, Stern, and Zelickson in 1999, is a new treatment modality for the treatment of Barrett's esophagus and dysplasia and has been the subject of numerous published clinical trials. The findings demonstrate radiofrequency ablation is at least 90% effective to completely clear Barrett's esophagus and dysplasia, with durability of up to five years and a favorable safety profile.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: Anti-reflux surgery has not been proven to prevent esophageal cancer. However, the indication is that proton pump inhibitors are effective in limiting the progression of esophageal cancer. Laser treatment is used in severe dysplasia, while overt malignancy may require surgery, radiation therapy, or systemic chemotherapy. A recent five-year random-controlled trial has shown that photodynamic therapy using photofrin is statistically more effective in eliminating dysplastic growth areas than sole use of a proton pump inhibitor.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: There is presently no reliable way to determine which patients with Barrett's esophagus will go on to develop esophageal cancer, although a recent study found the detection of three different genetic abnormalities was associated with as much as a 79% chance of developing cancer in six years.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: Endoscopic mucosal resection has also been evaluated as a management technique. Additionally an operation known as a Nissen fundoplication can reduce the reflux of acid from the stomach into the esophagus.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: In a variety of studies, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) such as low-dose aspirin (75–300 mg/day) have shown evidence of preventing esophageal cancer in people with Barrett's esophagus.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: Barrett's esophagus is a "pre"malignant condition, not a malignant one. Its malignant sequela, esophagogastric junctional adenocarcinoma, has a mortality rate of over 85%. The risk of developing esophageal adenocarcinoma in people who have Barrett's esophagus has been estimated to be 6–7 per 1000 person-years, but a cohort study of 11,028 patients from Denmark published in 2011 showed an incidence of only 1.2 per 1000 person-years (5.1 per 1000 person-years in patients with dysplasia, 1.0 per 1000 person-years in patients without dysplasia).


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: The relative risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma is about ten times higher in those with Barrett's esophagus than the general population. Most patients with esophageal carcinoma survive less than one year.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: The incidence in the United States among Caucasian men is eight times the rate among Caucasian women and five times greater than African American men. Overall, the male to female ratio of Barrett's esophagus is 10:1. Several studies have estimated the prevalence of Barrett's esophagus in the general population to be 1.3% to 1.6% in two European populations (Italian and Swedish), and 3.6% in a Korean population.


title: Barrett's esophagus

text: The condition is named after Australian thoracic surgeon Norman Barrett (1903–1979), who in 1950 argued that "ulcers are found below the squamocolumnar junction ... represent gastric ulcers within 'a pouch of stomach ... drawn up by scar tissue into the mediastinum' ... representing an example of a 'congenital short esophagus. In contrast, Philip Rowland Allison and Alan Johnstone argued that the condition related to the "esophagus lined with gastric mucous membrane and not intra-thoracic stomach as Barrett mistakenly believed." Philip Allison, cardiothoracic surgeon and Chair of Surgery at the University of Oxford, suggested "calling the chronic peptic ulcer crater of the esophagus a 'Barrett's ulcer, but added this name did not imply agreement with "Barrett's description of an esophagus lined with gastric mucous membrane as stomach." Bani-Hani KE and Bani-Hani KR argue that the terminology and definition of Barrett's esophagus is surrounded by extraordinary confusion unlike most other medical conditions and that "[t]he use of the eponym 'Barrett's' to describe [the condition] is not justified from a historical point of view". Bani-Hani KE and Bani-Hani KR investigated the historical aspects of the condition and found they could establish "how little Norman Barrett had contributed to the core concept of this condition in comparison to the contributions of other investigators, particularly the contribution of Philip Allison".


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: Pitch Perfect 3 is a 2017 American musical comedy film directed by Trish Sie and written by Kay Cannon and Mike White. A sequel to "Pitch Perfect 2" (2015) and the third and final installment in the "Pitch Perfect" franchise, the film features Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Hailee Steinfeld, Brittany Snow, Anna Camp, Hana Mae Lee, Ester Dean, Chrissie Fit, Alexis Knapp, Kelly Jakle, Shelley Regner, John Michael Higgins, and Elizabeth Banks all reprising their roles from previous installments, and they are joined by John Lithgow, DJ Khaled, Ruby Rose, Matt Lanter, and Guy Burnet. The film follows the Bellas, now graduated from college, reuniting for one final performance together during an overseas USO tour.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: Principal photography on the film began in January 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia, and ended in April 2017. The film was released in the United States on December 22, 2017, received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $185 million worldwide against its $45 million budget. It became the second-highest grossing musical comedy film of all time, behind its predecessor.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: Two years after their final competition, the Bellas have graduated from Barden University, but they all hate their jobs. And to make matters worse, Beca and Jesse's relationship ended in between the second and third film, and Amy and Bumper's relationship didn't last too long either. Beca, Amy, Chloe, Aubrey, Lilly, Stacie, Cynthia Rose, Florencia, Jessica, and Ashley are thrilled when Emily, now a senior and leader of the current Barden Bellas, invites them to an event. Arriving at the reunion, they learn that Emily simply invited them to see the new Bellas, not sing. The Bellas later gather at a bar, disappointed, and express how much they miss each other. Aubrey convinces them to join a USO tour, hoping her father sees.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: Emily fills in for Stacie, who is eight months pregnant. The Bellas land at a base in Rota, Spain, greeted by liaisons soldiers Chicago and Zeke. They also meet the other three bands, including the mean-spirited female quartet Evermoist. The others use musical instruments, making the Bellas feel off. Chloe begins to fall for Chicago. Fat Amy learns that Fergus, her estranged father (also a ruthless international crime lord), has found her at their hotel. The Bellas are invited to a party at DJ Khaled's suite, while Amy is invited to a poker tournament. The tournament was a ruse by Fergus, who begs to be in Amy's life, which she agrees to after believing he has changed.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: Beca develops a friendship with DJ Khaled's music producer Theo, who is impressed when she easily produces a mix of her own singing on Khaled's editing equipment. Moments later, the party is thrown into chaos when Aubrey accidentally starts a fire. While the Bellas are wallowing in disgrace, Stacie calls with news that her daughter, Bella, has been born, invigorating them. Back on the tour, the Bellas perform to adoring crowds. Fergus and Amy are gradually making up, until he accidentally reveals that he is only trying to acquire her US$180 million offshore account created by Amy's mother, causing Amy to disown her father. Meanwhile, DJ Khaled asks Beca to open for him without the other Bellas. Beca declines the offer and returns to her room, and doesn't tell the group she was asked.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: The Bellas (without Beca and Amy) are abducted and taken aboard Fergus' yacht, as an attempt to manipulate Amy. When she and Beca learn of the kidnapping, they sneak onboard. Beca distracts Fergus by leading the Bellas in a performance of "Toxic", while Amy sets up and detonates a bomb. The Bellas escape the yacht, and Fergus is later arrested. After the Bellas are rescued by the military, Amy reveals DJ Khaled's proposition to Beca to the others. They encourage her to take the chance, agreeing that it is time to move on with their lives. They know they will stay connected to each other as a family. At the USO's final performance, Beca opens for DJ Khaled, then brings the Bellas onstage to sing their final performance – "Freedom! '90".


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: Gail and John, the public announcers when the Bellas originally competed, have filmed a Bella documentary, only to be appalled when John realizes they didn't record the Bellas' final performance. Now the Bellas' lives are improving: Amy uses her new bankroll for tributes to singers named Amy; Aubrey works as a birthing coach; Flo's juice cart becomes an international brand; Chloe gets into vet school; Cynthia-Rose enlists in the USAF flight school; Emily returns to Barden and to her songwriting; Lilly reveals that she was quiet because she was possessed by Satan, the bomb snapped her out of it, and her real name is Esther, and starts a relationship with DJ Dragon Nutz; Aubrey reconnects with her father; Chloe and Chicago become an item; Beca is now Theo's boss.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: Additionally, Trinidad James appears as Young Sparrow, D.J. Looney appears as DJ Dragon Nutz, Whiskey Shivers appears as the group Saddle Up, Troy Ian Hall appears as Zeke, Moisés Arias appears as Pimp-Lo, Jessica Chaffin appears as Evan, and Michael Rose appears as Aubrey's Father.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: On April 11, 2015, a month before the release of the second film, it was announced that Rebel Wilson would return for a third film, although she stated that she did not know if Anna Kendrick or other cast members would also reprise their roles. She added that she would be "up for a Fat Amy spin-off". Director and producer of the second film Elizabeth Banks acknowledged the possibility of a third film during promotion of "Pitch Perfect 2", saying, "it would be disingenuous to say that no one’s talking about a "Pitch Perfect 3"; the possibility of it."


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: On June 10, 2015, a third film was officially confirmed, and Kay Cannon was set to return to write the script. On June 15, 2015, it was announced that Kendrick and Wilson would both reprise their roles, and on July 28, 2015, Brittany Snow signed on to return as well. Paul Brooks again produced for Gold Circle Films, along with Banks and Max Handelman for Brownstone Productions. On October 27, 2015, Banks was officially announced to return as director for the film, though she exited in that capacity on June 3, 2016. On September 1, 2016, Trish Sie was confirmed to direct the film. On December 13, 2016, it was reported that Ruby Rose was in talks to join the cast, while Anna Camp signed on to return for the sequel. Cannon wrote the script with later drafts by Mike White and Dana Fox; White would eventually receive screenwriting credits alongside Cannon. On January 5, 2017, a table read occurred, with Ester Dean, Hana Mae Lee, Chrissie Fit, Kelley Jakle, and Shelley Regner also being confirmed to reprise their roles, and singer Andy Allo joining as Charity, a rival in a group opposing the Bellas. While it was revealed by vocal director Deke Sharon that Alexis Knapp would return; on February 6, she posted a photo on Instagram, confirming her return, and was on set the following day, filming a short cameo performance.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: Principal photography on the film began on January 5, 2017, and took place in Atlanta, Georgia, Cádiz, Spain and Nice, France, wrapping on April 3, 2017.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: The closing credits included outtakes, rehearsals and behind the scenes footage of the actresses spending time together during production of all three films in the series.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: "Pitch Perfect 3" was initially scheduled for release on July 21, and then August 4, 2017. It had its world premiere in Sydney, Australia, on November 30, 2017, and was released in the United States on December 22, 2017.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: "Pitch Perfect 3" grossed $104.9 million in the United States and Canada and $80.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $185.4 million, against a production budget of $45 million.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: In the United States and Canada, "Pitch Perfect 3" was released alongside the openings of "Downsizing" and "Father Figures", as well as the wide expansions of "The Shape of Water" and "Darkest Hour", and was projected to gross $27–35 million from 3,447 theaters in its opening weekend. The film took in $2.1 million from Thursday night previews, about half of the $4.6 million earned by its predecessor. Over the three-day weekend, which included Christmas Eve, it grossed $19.9 million (down nearly 70% from the second film's $69.2 million debut), finishing third at the box office, behind "" and "". It grossed an additional $6.5 million on Christmas Day, for a four-day total of $26.4 million. It dropped 15% the following weekend, grossing $16.8 million, and a total of $21.7 million over the four-day New Year's frame.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 29% based on 150 reviews and an average rating of 4.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Pitch Perfect 3" strains to recapture the magic that helped the original spawn a franchise, but ends up sending this increasingly unnecessary trilogy out on a low note." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100 based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, the same score earned by its predecessor.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: Owen Gleiberman of "Variety" praised the cast and said, "The new film doesn't add anything revolutionary to the "Pitch Perfect" formula. It still sounds like we're in middle-period "Glee" written by someone who finds Ryan Murphy too solemn. But as directed by Trish Sie, the movie is bubbly, it's fast, it's hella synthetic-clever, and it's an avid showcase for the personalities of its stars."


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: Frank Scheck for "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote "... what started out as a charmingly offbeat comic premise has inevitably degenerated into the sort of crass commercialism that probably would make the Bellas themselves turn up their noses."


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: Pitch Perfect 3 won Choice Comedy Movie Actress for Anna Kendrick at the August 12, 2018 Teen Choice Awards and nominations for Hailee Steinfeld and Rebel Wilson also for Choice Comedy Movie Actress as well as the movie being nominated for Choice Comedy Movie.


title: Pitch Perfect 3

text: When asked about a sequel to "Pitch Perfect 3", director Trish Sie said in December 2017, "Of course that's above my pay grade and I have no idea and am not the one making the decisions but as far as I am concerned, I would see these movies on and on and on until they start sucking. I think whether it's these women in the next stage of life or it's a new group of women going through these things, I think there are endless ways to chart the course of the girls' lives and a woman's life."


title: NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award

text: The NBA's Defensive Player of the Year Award is an annual National Basketball Association (NBA) award given since the 1982–83 NBA season to the best defensive player of the regular season. The winner is selected by a panel of 124 sportswriters and broadcasters throughout the United States and Canada, each of whom casts a vote for first, second and third place selections. Each first-place vote is worth five points, second-place votes are worth three points, and a third-place vote is worth one. The player with the highest point total, regardless of the number of first-place votes, wins the award. Starting in the 2022–23 NBA season, the winner of this award will receive the Hakeem Olajuwon trophy, named after the two–time defensive player of the year winner.


title: NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award

text: Dikembe Mutombo and Ben Wallace have each won the award a record four times. Rudy Gobert and Dwight Howard have won the award three times, with Howard having won it in three consecutive seasons. Sidney Moncrief, Mark Eaton, Dennis Rodman, Hakeem Olajuwon, Alonzo Mourning and Kawhi Leonard have each won it twice. The most recent award recipient is Marcus Smart of the Boston Celtics.


title: NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award

text: Although five of the first six winners were perimeter players, the award has traditionally been given to big men who rebound and block shots. Only eight perimeter players have been honored: Moncrief, Alvin Robertson, Michael Cooper, Michael Jordan, Gary Payton, Ron Artest (known now as Metta Sandiford-Artest), Kawhi Leonard and Marcus Smart. Payton and Smart are the only two point guards to have won. Jordan, Olajuwon, David Robinson, Kevin Garnett and Giannis Antetokounmpo are the only winners to have also won the NBA Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) during their careers; Jordan, Olajuwon and Antetokounmpo won both awards in the same season. In Olajuwon's case, he is the only one to have also won the NBA Finals MVP Award and the NBA championship in the same season. Jordan is the only recipient to have also won the scoring title in the same season, when he also became the only player to win the award while averaging over 30 points per game (35.0). On four occasions, the Defensive Player of the Year recipient was not voted to the NBA All-Defensive First Team in the same year. Robertson in 1986, Mutombo (1995), Tyson Chandler (2012), and Marc Gasol (2013) were instead named to the second team. Whereas the Defensive Player of the Year is voted on by the media, the All-Defensive teams were voted on by NBA coaches prior to 2014.


title: Card counting

text: Card counting is a blackjack strategy used to determine whether the player or the dealer has an advantage on the next hand. Card counters are advantage players who try to overcome the casino house edge by keeping a running count of high and low valued cards dealt. They generally bet more when they have an advantage and less when the dealer has an advantage. They also change playing decisions based on the composition of the deck.


title: Card counting

text: Card counting is based on statistical evidence that high cards (aces, 10s, and 9s) benefit the player, while low cards, (2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, and 7s) benefit the dealer. High cards benefit the player in the following ways:


title: Card counting

text: On the other hand, low cards benefit the dealer. The rules require the dealer to hit stiff hands (12–16 total), and low cards are less likely to bust these totals. A dealer holding a stiff hand will bust if the next card is a 10.


title: Card counting

text: Card counters do not need unusual mental abilities; they do not track or memorize specific cards. Instead, card counters assign a point score to each card that estimates the value of that card. They track the sum of these values with a running count. The myth that counters track every card was portrayed in the 1988 film "Rain Man", in which the savant character Raymond Babbitt counts through six decks with ease, and a casino employee comments that it is impossible to do so.


title: Card counting

text: Basic card counting systems assign a positive, negative, or zero value to each card. When a card is dealt with, the count adjusts by that card's counting value. Low cards increase the count; they increase the percentage of high cards in the deck. High cards decrease the count for the opposite reason. For example, the Hi-Lo system subtracts one for each 10, jack, queen, king, or ace and adds one for any card between 2 and 6. 7s, 8s, and 9s count as zero and do not affect the count.


title: Card counting

text: A card counting system aims to assign point values roughly correlating to a card's "effect of removal" (EOR). The EOR is the estimated effect of removing a given card from play. Counters gauge the effect of removal for all cards dealt and how that affects the current house edge. Larger ratios between point values create better correlations to actual EOR, increasing the efficiency of a system. Such systems are classified as level 1, level 2, level 3, and so on. The level corresponds to the ratio between values.


title: Card counting

text: The Hi-Lo system is a "level-1" count; the running count never increases or decreases by more than one. A "multilevel" count, such as Zen Count, Wong Halves, or Hi-Opt II, further distinguishes card values to increase accuracy. An advanced count includes values such as +2 and −2, or +0.5 and -0.5. Advanced players might also keep a "side count" of specific cards like aces. This is done where betting accuracy differs from playing accuracy.


title: Card counting

text: Many side count techniques exist, including special-purpose counts used for games with nonstandard profitable-play options such as an over/under side bet.


title: Card counting

text: Keeping track of more data with higher level counts can hurt speed and accuracy. Some counters earn more money playing a simple count quickly than by playing a complex count slowly.


title: Card counting

text: The primary goal of a card counting system is to assign point values to each card that roughly correlate to the card's "effect of removal" or EOR (that is, the effect a single card has on the house advantage once removed from play), thus enabling the player to gauge the house advantage based on the composition of cards still to be dealt. Larger ratios between point values can better correlate to actual EOR, but add complexity to the system. Counting systems may be referred to as "level 1", "level 2", etc., corresponding to the number of different point values the system calls for.


title: Card counting

text: The ideal system is a system that is usable by the player and offers the highest average dollar return per period of time when dealt at a fixed rate. With this in mind, systems aim to achieve a balance of efficiency in three categories:


title: Card counting

text: Some strategies count the ace (ace-reckoned strategies) and some do not (ace-neutral strategies). Including aces in the count improves betting correlation since the ace is the most valuable card in the deck for betting purposes. However, since the ace can either be counted as one or eleven, including an ace in the count decreases the accuracy of playing efficiency. Since PE is more important in single- and double-deck games, and BC is more important in shoe games, counting the ace is more important in shoe games.


title: Card counting

text: One way to deal with such tradeoffs is to ignore the ace to yield higher PE while keeping a side count which is used to detect an additional change in EV which the player will use to detect additional betting opportunities that ordinarily would not be indicated by the primary card counting system.


title: Card counting

text: The most common side counted card is the ace since it is the most important card in terms of achieving a balance of BC and PE. In theory, a player could keep a side count of every card and achieve a near 100% PE, however, methods involving additional side counts for PE become more complex at an exponential rate as you add more side counts and the ability of the human mind is quickly overtasked and unable to make the necessary computations. Without any side counts, PE can approach 70%.


title: Card counting

text: Since there is the potential to create an overtaxing demand on the human mind while using a card counting system another important design consideration is the ease of use. Higher-level systems and systems with side counts will obviously become more difficult and in an attempt to make them easier, unbalanced systems eliminate the need for a player to keep tabs on the number of cards/decks that have already entered play typically at the expense of lowering PE.


title: Card counting

text: The running count is the running total of each card's assigned value. When using a balanced count (such as the Hi-Lo system), the running count is converted into a "true count", which takes into consideration the number of decks used. With Hi-Lo, the true count is the running count divided by the number of decks that have not yet been dealt; this can be calculated by division or approximated with an average card count per round times the number of rounds dealt. However, many variations of the true count calculation exist.


title: Card counting

text: Back-counting, or "Wonging", consists of standing behind a blackjack table and counting the cards as they are dealt. Stanford Wong first proposed the idea of back-counting, hence the name.


title: Card counting

text: The player will enter or "Wong in" to the game when the count reaches a point at which the player has an advantage. The player may then raise their bets as their advantage increases, or lower their bets as their advantage goes down. Some back-counters prefer to flat-bet, and only bet the same amount once they have entered the game. Some players will stay at the table until the game is shuffled, or they may "Wong out" or leave when the count reaches a level at which they no longer have an advantage.


title: Card counting

text: Back-counting is generally done on shoe games, of 4, 6, or 8 decks, although it can be done on pitch games of 1 or 2 decks. The reason for this is that the count is more stable in a shoe game, so a player will be less likely to sit down for one or two hands and then have to get up. In addition, many casinos do not allow "mid-shoe entry" in single or double deck games which makes Wonging impossible. Another reason is that many casinos exhibit more effort to thwart card counters on their pitch games than on their shoe games, as a counter has a smaller advantage on an average shoe game than in a pitch game.


title: Card counting

text: Back-counting differs from traditional card-counting in that the player does not play every hand they see. This offers several advantages. For one, the player does not play hands without a statistical advantage. This increases the total advantage of the player. Another advantage is that the player does not have to change their bet size as much (or at all). Large variations in bet size are one way that casinos detect card counters.


title: Card counting

text: Back-counting has disadvantages, too. One is that the player frequently does not stay at the table long enough to earn comps. Another disadvantage is that some players may become irritated with players who enter in the middle of a game. They believe that this interrupts the "flow" of the cards. Their resentment may not merely be superstition, though, as this practice will negatively impact the other players at the table; with one fewer player at the table when the card composition becomes unfavorable, the other players will play through more hands under those conditions as they will use up fewer cards per hand. Similarly, they will play fewer hands in the rest of the shoe if the advantage player slips in during the middle of the shoe, when the cards become favorable; with one more player, more of those favorable cards will be used up per hand. This negatively impacts the other players whether they are counting cards or not. Also, a player who hops in and out of games may attract unwanted attention from casino personnel and may be detected as a card-counter.


title: Card counting

text: While a single player can maintain their own advantage with back-counting, card counting is most often used by teams of players to maximize their advantage. In such a team, some players called "spotters" will sit at a table and play the game at the table minimum, while keeping a count (basically doing the back "counting"). When the count is significantly high, the spotter will discreetly signal another player, known as a "big player", that the count is high (the table is "hot"). The big player will then "Wong in" and wager vastly higher sums (up to the table maximum) while the count is high. When the count "cools off" or the shoe is shuffled (resetting the count), the big player will "Wong out" and look for other counters who are signaling a high count. This was the system used by the MIT Blackjack Team, whose story was in turn the inspiration for the Canadian movie "The Last Casino" which was later re-made into the Hollywood version "21".


title: Card counting

text: The main advantage of group play is that the team can count several tables while a single back-counting player can usually only track one table. This allows big players to move from table to table, maintaining the high-count advantage without being out of action very long. It also allows redundancy while the big player is seated as both the counter and big player can keep the count (as in the movie "21", the spotter can communicate the count to the big player discreetly as they sit down). The disadvantages include requiring multiple spotters who can keep an accurate count, splitting the "take" among all members of the team, requiring spotters to play a table regardless of the count (using only basic strategy, these players will lose money long-term), and requiring signals, which can alert pit bosses.


title: Card counting

text: A simple variation removes the loss of having spotters play; the spotters simply watch the table instead of playing and signal big players to Wong in and out as normal. The disadvantages of this variation are reduced ability of the spotter and big player to communicate, reduced comps as the spotters are not sitting down, and vastly increased suspicion, as blackjack is not generally considered a spectator sport in casinos except among those actually playing (unlike craps, roulette, and wheels of fortune which have larger displays and so tend to attract more spectators).


title: Card counting

text: A mathematical principle called the Kelly criterion indicates that bet increases should be proportional to the player's advantage. In practice, this means that the higher the count, the more a player should bet to take advantage of the player's edge. Using this principle, a counter can vary bet sizes in proportion to the advantage dictated by a count. This creates a "bet ramp" according to the principles of the Kelly criterion. A bet ramp is a betting plan with a specific bet size tied to each true count value in such a way that the player wagers proportionally to the player's advantage to maximize bankroll growth. Taken to its conclusion, the Kelly criterion demands that a player not bet anything when the deck does not offer a positive expectation; "Wonging" implements this.


title: Card counting

text: Historically, blackjack played with a perfect basic strategy offered a house edge of less than 0.5%. As more casinos have switched games to dealer hits soft-17 and blackjack pays 6:5, the average house edge in Nevada has increased to 1%. A typical card counter who ranges bets appropriately in a game with six decks will have an advantage of approximately 1% over the casino. Advantages of up to 2.5% are possible at normal penetrations from counting 6-deck Spanish 21, for the S17 or H17 with redoubling games. This amount varies based on the counter's skill level, penetration (1 – a fraction of pack cut off), and the betting spread (player's maximum bet divided by minimum bet). The variance in blackjack is high, so generating a sizable profit can take hundreds of hours of play. The deck will only have a positive enough count for the player to raise bets 10%-35% of the time depending on rules, penetration, and strategy.


title: Card counting

text: At a table where a player makes a $100 average bet, a 1% advantage means a player will win an average of $1 per round. This translates into an average hourly winning of $50 if the player is dealt 50 hands per hour.


title: Card counting

text: Under one set of circumstances, a player with a 1-15 unit bet spread with only one-deck cut off of a six-deck game will enjoy an advantage of as much as 1.2% with a Standard Deviation of 3.5 on a 2.1 unit average bet. Therefore, it is highly advisable for counters to set aside a large dedicated bankroll; one popular rule of thumb dictates a bankroll of 100 times the maximum bet per hand.


title: Card counting

text: Another aspect of the probability of card counting is that, at higher counts, the player's probability of winning a hand is only slightly changed and still below 50%. The player's edge over the house on such hands does not come from the player's probability of winning the hands. Instead, it comes from the increased probability of blackjacks, increased gain and benefits from doubling, splitting, and surrender, and the insurance side bet, which becomes profitable at high counts.


title: Card counting

text: Card counting is not illegal under British law, nor is it under federal, state, or local laws in the United States provided that no external card counting device or person assists the player in counting cards. Still, casinos object to the practice, and try to prevent it, banning players believed to be counters. In their pursuit to identify card counters, casinos sometimes misidentify and ban players suspected of counting cards even if they do not.


title: Card counting

text: Atlantic City casinos in the US state of New Jersey are forbidden from barring card counters as a result of a New Jersey Supreme Court decision. In 1979, Ken Uston, a Blackjack Hall of Fame inductee, filed a lawsuit against an Atlantic City casino, claiming that casinos did not have the right to ban skilled players. The New Jersey Supreme Court agreed, ruling that "the state's control of Atlantic City's casinos is so complete that only the New Jersey Casino Control Commission has the power to make rules to exclude skillful players." The commission has made no regulation on card counting, so Atlantic City casinos are not allowed to ban card counters. As they are unable to ban counters even when identified, Atlantic City casinos have increased the use of countermeasures.


title: Card counting

text: Macau, the only legal gambling location in China, does not technically prohibit card counting but casinos reserve the right to expel or ban any customers, as is the case in the US and Britain. The use of electronic devices to aid such strategies, however, is strictly prohibited and can lead to arrest.


title: Card counting

text: Monitoring player behavior to assist with detecting the card counters falls into the hands of the on-floor casino personnel ("pit bosses") and casino-surveillance personnel, who may use video surveillance ("the eye in the sky") as well as computer analysis, to try to spot playing behavior indicative of card counting. Early counter-strategies featured the dealers learning to count the cards themselves to recognize the patterns in the players. Many casino chains keep databases of players that they consider undesirable. Casinos can also subscribe to databases of advantage players offered by agencies like Griffin Investigations, Biometrica, and OSN (Oregon Surveillance Network). Griffin Investigations filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2005 after losing a libel lawsuit filed by professional gamblers. In 2008 all Chapter 11 payments were said to be up to date and all requirements met, and information was being supplied using data encryption and secure servers. If a player is found to be in such a database, they will almost certainly be stopped from play and asked to leave regardless of their table play. For successful card counters, therefore, skill at "cover" behavior, to hide counting and avoid "drawing heat" and possibly being barred, may be just as important as playing skill.


title: Card counting

text: Detection of card counters will be confirmed after a player is first suspected of counting cards; when seeking card counters, casino employees, whatever their position, could be alerted by many things that are most common when related to card counting but not common for other players. These include:


title: Card counting

text: Card counters may make unique playing strategy deviations not normally used by non-counters. Plays such as splitting tens, doubling soft 18/19/20, standing on 15/16, and surrendering on 14, when basic strategy says otherwise, may be a sign of a card counter.


title: Card counting

text: Extremely aggressive plays such as splitting tens and doubling soft 19 and 20 are often called out to the pit to notify them because they are telltale signs of not only card counters but hole carding.


title: Card counting

text: Several semi-automated systems have been designed to aid the detection of card counters. The MindPlay system (now discontinued) scanned card values as the cards were dealt. The Shuffle Master Intelligent Shoe system also scans card values as cards exit the shoe. Software called Bloodhound and Protec 21 allows voice input of card and bet values, in an attempt to determine the player edge. A more recent innovation is the use of RFID signatures embedded within the casino chips so that the table can automatically track bet amounts.


title: Card counting

text: Automated card-reading technology has known abuse potential in that it can be used to simplify the practice of "preferential shuffling –" having the dealer reshuffle the cards whenever the odds favor the players. To comply with licensing regulations, some blackjack protection systems have been designed to delay access to real-time data on the remaining cards in the shoe. Other vendors consider real-time notification to surveillance that a shoe is "hot" to be an important product feature.


title: Card counting

text: With card values, play decisions, and bet decisions conveniently accessible, the casino can analyze bet variation, play accuracy, and play variation.


title: Card counting

text: "Bet variation". The simplest way a card counter makes money is to bet more when they have an edge. While playing back the tapes of a recent session of play, the software can generate a scatter plot of the amount bet versus the count at the time the bet was made and find the trendline that best fits the scattered points. If the player is not counting cards, there will be no trend; their bet variation and the count variation will not consistently correlate. If the player is counting and varying bets according to the count, there will be a trend whose slope reflects the player's average edge from this technique.


title: Card counting

text: "Play variation". When card counters vary from basic strategy, they do so in response to the count, to gain an additional edge. The software can verify whether there is a pattern to play variation. Of particular interest is whether the player sometimes (when the count is positive) takes insurance and stands on 16 versus a dealer 10, but plays differently when the count is negative.


title: Card counting

text: Casinos have spent a great amount of effort and money in trying to thwart card counters. Countermeasures used to prevent card counters from profiting at blackjack include:


title: Card counting

text: Some jurisdictions (e.g. Nevada) have few legal restrictions placed on these countermeasures. Other jurisdictions such as New Jersey limit the countermeasures a casino can take against skilled players.


title: Card counting

text: Some countermeasures result in disadvantages for the casino. Frequent or complex shuffling, for example, reduces the amount of playing time and consequently the house winnings. Some casinos use automatic shuffling machines to counter the loss of time, with some models of machines shuffling one set of cards while another is in play. Others, known as continuous shuffle machines (CSMs), allow the dealer to simply return used cards to a single shoe to allow playing with no interruption. Because CSMs essentially force minimal penetration, they greatly reduce the advantage of traditional counting techniques. In most online casinos the deck is shuffled at the start of each new round, ensuring the house always has the advantage.


title: Card counting

text: American mathematician Edward O. Thorp is the father of card counting. His 1962 book, "Beat the Dealer", outlines betting and playing strategies for optimal play. Although mathematically sound, some of the techniques no longer apply, as casinos took countermeasures (such as no longer dealing with the last card). The counting system in "Beat the Dealer," the 10-count, is harder to use and less profitable than later systems. A history of how counting developed can be seen in David Layton's documentary film "The Hot Shoe".


title: Card counting

text: Before "Beat the Dealer", a small number of professional card counters were beating blackjack games in Vegas and elsewhere. One was Jess Marcum, who developed the first full-fledged point-count system. Another pre-Thorp card counter was professional gambler Joe Bernstein. He is described in 1961's "I Want To Quit Winners" by Reno casino owner Harold Smith as an ace counter feared throughout Nevada. And in the 1957 book, "Playing Blackjack to Win", Roger Baldwin, Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel, and James McDermott (known as "The Four Horsemen") published the first accurate blackjack basic strategy and a rudimentary card counting system, devised solely with the aid of crude mechanical calculators – what used to be called "adding machines".


title: Card counting

text: From the early days, some have been succeeded, including Al Francesco, the inventor of blackjack team play and the man who taught Ken Uston how to count cards, and Tommy Hyland, manager of the longest-running blackjack team in history. Ken Uston, perhaps the most famous card-counter through his "60 Minutes" television appearance and his books, tended to overstate his winnings, as documented by players who worked with him, including Al Francesco and team member Darryl Purpose.


title: Card counting

text: In the 1970s and 1980s, as computing power grew, more advanced and harder card counting systems came into favor. Many card counters agree, however, that a simpler and less advantageous system that can be played flawlessly for hours earns an overall higher return than a more complex system prone to user error.


title: Card counting

text: In the 1970s Ken Uston was the first to write about a tactic of card counting he called the Big Player Team. The book was based on his experiences working as a "big player" (BP) on Al Francesco's teams. In big-player blackjack teams a number of card counters, called "spotters", are dispatched to tables around a casino, where their responsibility is to keep track of the count and signal to the big player when the count indicates a player advantage. The big player then joins the game at that table, placing maximum bets at a player advantage. When the spotter indicates that the count has dropped, they again signal the BP to leave the table. By jumping from table to table as called in by spotters, BP avoids all play at a disadvantage. In addition, since BP's play appears random and irrational, they avoid detection by the casinos. The spotters, who are doing the actual counting, are not themselves changing their bet size or strategy, so they are relatively inconspicuous.


title: Card counting

text: With this style of play, a number of blackjack teams have cleared millions of dollars through the years. Well-known blackjack teams with documented earnings in the millions include those run by Al Francesco, Ken Uston, Tommy Hyland, various groups from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and, most recently, a team called "The Greeks". Ken Uston wrote about blackjack team play in "Million Dollar Blackjack" (), although many of the experiences he represents as his own in his books actually happened to other players, especially Bill Erb, a BP Uston worked with on Al Francesco's team. Ben Mezrich also covers team play in his book "Bringing Down The House" (), which describes how MIT students used it with great success. See also the Canadian movie "The Last Casino" and the American movie "21", which was based on Mezrich's book.


title: Card counting

text: The publication of Ken Uston's books and of his landmark lawsuits against the casinos, both stimulated the growth of blackjack teams (Hyland's team and the first MIT team were formed in Atlantic City shortly after the publication of "Million Dollar Blackjack") and increased casino awareness of the methods of blackjack teams, making it more difficult for such teams to operate. Hyland and Francesco soon switched to a form of shuffle tracking called "Ace sequencing". Also referred to as "cutting to the Ace", this technique involves various methods designed to spot the bottom card during a shuffle (ideally an Ace) and expertly cut the deck and play future hands to force the player to receive the Ace. This made it more difficult for casinos to detect when team members were playing with an advantage. In 1994, members of the Hyland team were arrested for ace sequencing and blackjack team play at Casino Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It was documented in court that Nevada casinos with ownership stakes in the Windsor casino were instrumental in the decision to prosecute team members on cheating charges. However, the judge ruled that the players' conduct was not cheating, but merely the use of intelligent strategy.


title: Card counting

text: Automatic shuffling machines (ASMs or batch shufflers), that randomly shuffle decks, interfere with the shuffle tracking variation of card counting by hiding the shuffle. Continuous shuffling machines (CSMs), that partially shuffle used cards back into the "shoe" after every hand, interfere with card counting. CSMs result in shallow penetration (number of seen cards), reducing the effectiveness of card counting.


title: Calabash

text: Calabash (; "Lagenaria siceraria"), also known as bottle gourd, white-flowered gourd, long melon, birdhouse gourd, New Guinea bean, Tasmania bean, and opo squash, is a vine grown for its fruit. It can be either harvested young to be consumed as a vegetable, or harvested mature to be dried and used as a utensil, container, or a musical instrument. When it is fresh, the fruit has a light green smooth skin and white flesh.


title: Calabash

text: Calabash fruits have a variety of shapes: they can be huge and rounded, small and bottle-shaped, or slim and serpentine, and they can grow to be over a metre long. Rounder varieties are typically called calabash gourds. The gourd was one of the world's first cultivated plants grown not primarily for food, but for use as containers. The bottle gourd may have been carried from Asia to Africa, Europe, and the Americas in the course of human migration, or by seeds floating across the oceans inside the gourd. It has been proven to have been globally domesticated (and existed in the New World) during the Pre-Columbian era.


title: Calabash

text: Because bottle gourds are also called "calabashes", they are sometimes confused with the hard, hollow fruits of the unrelated calabash tree ("Crescentia cujete"), whose fruits are also used to make utensils, containers, and musical instruments.


title: Calabash

text: The bottle gourd has been recovered from archaeological contexts in China and Japan dating to ca. 8,000–9,000 B.P., whereas in Africa, despite decades of high-quality archaeobotanical research, the earliest record of its occurrence remains the 1884 report of a bottle gourd being recovered from a 12th Dynasty tomb at Thebes dating to ca. 4,000 B.P. When considered together, the genetic and archaeological information points toward L. siceraria being independently brought under domestication first in Asia, and more than 4,000 years later, in Africa.


title: Calabash

text: The bottle gourd is a commonly cultivated plant in tropical and subtropical areas of the world, and was eventually domesticated in southern Africa. Stands of "L. siceraria", which may be source plants and not merely domesticated stands, were reported in Zimbabwe in 2004. This apparent wild plant produces thinner-walled fruit that, when dried, would not endure the rigors of use on long journeys as a water container. Today's gourd may owe its tough, waterproof wall to selection pressures over its long history of domestication.


title: Calabash

text: Gourds were cultivated in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas for thousands of years before Columbus' arrival to the Americas. Polynesian specimens of calabash were found to have genetic markers suggesting hibridization from Asian and American cultivars. In Europe, Walahfrid Strabo (808–849), abbot and poet from Reichenau and advisor to the Carolingian kings, discussed the gourd in his "Hortulus" as one of the 23 plants of an ideal garden.


title: Calabash

text: The mystery of the bottle gourd – namely that this African or Eurasian species was being grown in the Americas over 8,000 years ago – comes from the difficulty in understanding how it arrived in the Americas. The bottle gourd was theorized to have drifted across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to South America, but in 2005 a group of researchers suggested that it may have been domesticated earlier than food crops and livestock and, like dogs, was brought into the New World at the end of the ice age by the native hunter-gatherer Paleo-Indians, which they based on a study of the genetics of archaeological samples. This study purportedly showed that gourds in American archaeological finds were more closely related to Asian variants than to African ones.


title: Calabash

text: In 2014 this theory was repudiated based on a more thorough genetic study. Researchers more completely examined the plastid genomes of a broad sample of bottle gourds, and concluded that North and South American specimens were most closely related to wild African variants and could have drifted over the ocean several or many times, as long as 10,000 years ago.


title: Calabash

text: Bottle gourds are grown by direct sowing of seeds or transplanting 15- to 20-day-old seedlings. The plant prefers well-drained, moist, organic rich soil. It requires plenty of moisture in the growing season and a warm, sunny position, sheltered from the wind. It can be cultivated in small places such as in a pot, and allowed to spread on a trellis or roof. In rural areas, many houses with thatched roofs are covered with the gourd vines. Bottle gourds grow very rapidly and their stems can reach a length of 9 m in the summer, so they need a solid support along the stem if they are to climb a pole or trellis. If planted under a tall tree, the vine may grow up to the top of the tree. To obtain more fruit, farmers sometimes cut off the tip of the vine when it has grown to 6–8 feet in length. This forces the plant to produce side branches that will bear flowers and yield more fruit.


title: Calabash

text: The plant produces night blooming white flowers. The male flowers have long peduncles and the females have short ones with an ovary in the shape of the fruit. Sometimes the female flowers drop off without growing into a gourd due to the failure of pollination if there is no night pollinator (probably a kind of moth) in the garden. Hand pollination can be used to solve the problem. Pollen size is ~60 microns.


title: Calabash

text: First crop is ready for harvest within two months; first flowers open in about 45 days from sowing. Each plant can yield 1 fruit per day for the next 45 days if enough nutrients are available.


title: Calabash

text: Like other members of the family Cucurbitaceae, gourds contain cucurbitacins that are known to be cytotoxic at a high concentration. The tetracyclic triterpenoid cucurbitacins present in fruits and vegetables of the cucumber family are responsible for the bitter taste, and could cause stomach ulcers. In extreme cases, people have died from drinking the juice of gourds.


title: Calabash

text: The toxic cases are usually due to the gourd being used to make juice, which the drinkers described as being unusually bitter. In three of the lethal cases, the victims were diabetics in their 50s and 60s. In 2018, a healthy woman in her 40s was hospitalized for severe reactions after consuming the juice and died three days later from complications.


title: Calabash

text: The plant is not normally toxic when eaten. The excessively bitter (and toxic) gourds are due to improper storage (temperature swings or high temperature) and over-ripening.


title: Calabash

text: In Central America the seeds of the bottle gourd are toasted and ground with other ingredients (including rice, cinnamon, and allspice) to make one type of the drink "horchata".


title: Calabash

text: In Japan, it is commonly sold in the form of dried, marinated strips known as "kanpyō" and is used as an ingredient for making "makizushi" (rolled sushi).


title: Calabash

text: Traditionally in Korea, the inner flesh has been eaten as "namul" vegetable and the outside cut in half to make bowls. Both fresh and dried flesh of "bak" is used in Korean cuisine. Fresh calabash flesh, scraped out, seeded, salted and squeezed to draw out moisture, is called "baksok". Scraped and sun-dried calabash flesh, called "bak-goji", is usually soaked before being stir-fried. Soaked "bak-goji" is often simmered in sauce or stir-fried before being added to "japchae" and gimbap. Sometimes uncooked raw "baksok" is seasoned to make "saengchae".


title: Calabash

text: In Burma, it is a popular fruit. The young leaves are also boiled and eaten with a spicy, fermented fish sauce. It can also be cut up, coated in batter and deep fried to make fritters, which are eaten with Burmese mohinga.


title: Calabash

text: In the Philippines, calabash (known locally as ) is commonly cooked in soup dishes like tinola. They are also common ingredients in noodle ("pancit") dishes.


title: Calabash

text: In Vietnam, it is a very popular vegetable, commonly cooked in soup with shrimp, meatballs, clams, various fish like freshwater catfish or snakehead fish or crab. It is also commonly stir-fried with meat or seafood, or incorporated as an ingredient of a hotpot. It is also used as a medicine. Americans have called calabashes from Vietnam "opo squash".


title: Calabash

text: A popular north Indian dish is "lauki chana", ("chana dal" and diced gourd in a semi-dry gravy). In the state of Maharashtra in India, a similar preparation called "dudhi chana" is popular. The skin of the vegetable is used in making a dry spicy chutney preparation. It is consumed in Assam with fish curry, as boiled vegetable curry and also fried with potato and tomatoes. "lauki kheer" (grated bottle gourd, sugar and milk preparation) is a dessert from Telangana, usually prepared for festive occasions. In Andhra Pradesh it is called "anapakaya" and is used to make "anapakaya pulusu" (with tamarind juice), "anapakaya palakura" (curry with milk and spices) and "anapakaya pappu" (with lentils). "lau chingri", a dish prepared with bottle gourd and prawn, is popular in West Bengal. Although popularly called "lauki" in Hindi in northern part of the country, it is also called "kaddu" in certain parts of country like eastern India. Interestingly kaddu popularly translates to pumpkin in northern India. It is consumed as a dish with rice or roti for its medicinal benefits. In Gujarat, a traditional Gujarati savoury cake called handvo is made primarily using bottle gourd (in Gujarati, "dudhi"), sesame seeds, flour, and often lentils.


title: Calabash

text: In Nepal, in the Madheshi southern plains, preparations other than as a normal vegetable include "halva" and "khichdi".


title: Calabash

text: In Sri Lanka, it is used in combination with rice to make a variety of milk rice, which is a popular dish in Sri Lanka.


title: Calabash

text: In Southern Italy and Sicily, a variety, Lagenaria siceraria var. longissima, called zucca da vino, zucca bottiglia, or cucuzza is grown and used in soup or along with pasta.


title: Calabash

text: In Sicily, mostly in the Palermo area, a traditional soup called “Minestra di Tenerumi” is made with the tender leaves of var. Longissima, peeled tomato and garlic. These young leaves are called “Tenerumi”, and Lagenaria is cultivated both professionally and in home orchards mostly for the leaves, being the fruit almost a secondary product.


title: Calabash

text: Hollowed-out and dried calabashes are a very typical utensil in households across West Africa. They are used to clean rice, carry water, and as food containers. Smaller sizes are used as bowls to drink palm wine. Calabashes are used in making the West African instruments like the Ṣẹ̀kẹ̀rẹ̀, a Yoruba instrument similar to a maraca, "kora" (a harp-lute), "xalam"/"ngoni" (a lute) and the "goje" (a traditional fiddle). They also serve as resonators underneath the "balafon" (West African marimba). The calabash is also used in making the "shegureh" (a Sierra Leonean women's rattle) and "balangi" (a Sierra Leonean type of" balafon") musical instruments. Sometimes large calabashes are simply hollowed, dried and used as percussion instruments, especially by Fulani, Songhai, Gur-speaking and Hausa peoples. In Nigeria the calabash has been used to attempt circumventing a law requiring the wearing of a helmet on a motorcycle. In South Africa it is commonly used as a drinking vessel and a vessel for carrying food by communities, such as the Bapedi and AmaZulu. Erbore children of Ethiopia wear hats made from the calabash to protect them from the sun. South Africa's FNB Stadium, which hosted the 2010 FIFA World Cup, is known as The Calabash as its shape takes inspiration from the calabash. The calabash is also used in the manufacture of puppets.


title: Calabash

text: Calabash also has a large cultural significance. In many African legends, Calabash (commonly referred to as gourds) are presented as a vessel for knowledge and wisdom.


title: Calabash

text: The "húlu" (葫芦/葫蘆), as the calabash is called in Mandarin Chinese"," is an ancient symbol for health. Hulu had fabled healing properties due to doctors in former times carrying medicine inside it. The "hulu" was believed to absorb negative, earth-based "qi" (energy) that would otherwise affect health, and is a traditional Chinese medicine cure. The bottle gourd is a symbol of the Eight Immortals, and particularly Li Tieguai, who is associated with medicine. Li Tieguai's gourd was said to carry medicine that could cure any illness and never emptied, which he dispensed to the poor and needy. Some folk myths say the "gourd had spirals of smoke ascend from it, denoting his power of setting his spirit free from his body," and that it "served as a bedroom for the night..." The gourd is also an attribute of the deity Shouxing and a symbol of longevity.


title: Calabash

text: Dried calabash were also used as containers for liquids, often liquors or medicines. Calabash gourds were also grown in earthen molds to form different shapes with imprinted floral or arabesque designs. Molded gourds were also dried to house pet crickets. The texture of the gourd lends itself nicely to the sound of the insect, much like a musical instrument. The musical instrument, "hulusi", is a kind of flute made from the gourd.


title: Calabash

text: In Hawaii the word "calabash" refers to a large serving bowl, usually made from hardwood rather than from the calabash gourd, which is used on a buffet table or in the middle of the dining table. The use of the calabash in Hawaii has led to terms like "calabash family" or "calabash cousins", indicating an extended family grown up around shared meals and close friendships. This gourd is often dried when ripe and used as a percussion instrument called an "ipu heke" in contemporary and ancient hula.


title: Calabash

text: The Māori people of New Zealand grew several cultivars of calabash for particular uses like "ipu kai" cultivars as food containers and "tahā wai" cultivars as water gourds. They believed the gourd as a representation of Pū-tē-hue, one of Tāne (their god of forests)'s offspring.


title: Calabash

text: The calabash is used as a resonator in many string instruments in India. Instruments that look like guitars are made of wood, but can have a calabash resonator at the end of the strings table, called "toomba". The "sitar", the "surbahar", the "tanpura" (north of India, "tambura" south of India), may have a "toomba". In some cases, the "toomba" may not be functional, but if the instrument is large, it is retained because of its balance function, which is the case of the "Saraswati veena". Other instruments like "rudra veena" and "vichitra veena" have two large calabash resonators at both ends of the strings table. The instrument, Gopichand used by the Baul singers of Bengal is made out of calabash. The practice is also common among Buddhist and Jain sages.


title: Calabash

text: These "toombas" are made of dried calabash gourds, using special cultivars that were originally imported from Africa and Madagascar. They are mostly grown in Bengal and near Miraj, Maharashtra. These gourds are valuable items and they are carefully tended; for example, they are sometimes given injections to stop worms and insects from making holes in them while they are drying.


title: Calabash

text: Hindu ascetics ("sadhu") traditionally use a dried gourd vessel called the "kamandalu". The juice of a bottle gourd is considered to have medicinal properties and be very healthy (see juice toxicity above).


title: Calabash

text: In parts of India a dried, unpunctured gourd is used as a float (called "surai-kuduvai" in Tamil) to help people learn to swim in rural areas.


title: Calabash

text: In the Philippines, dried calabash gourds are one common material for making a traditional "salakot" hat.


title: Calabash

text: In 2012, Teófilo García of Abra in Luzon, an expert artisan who makes the Ilocano "tamburaw" variant using calabash, was awarded by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts with the ""Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan"" (National Living Treasures Award). He was cited for his dedication to practising and teaching the craft as an intangible cultural heritage of the Philippines under the Traditional Craftsmanship category.


title: Calabash

text: In Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and southern Brazil, calabash gourds are dried and carved into "mates" (from the Quichua word "mathi", adopted into the Spanish language), the traditional container for mate, the caffeinated, tea-like drink brewed from the yerba mate plant. In the region the beverage itself is called "mate" as well as the calabash from which the drinking vessels are made. In Peru it is used in a popular practice for the making of mate burilado; ""burilado"" is the technique adopted for decorating the "mate" calabashes.


title: Calabash

text: In Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador calabash gourds are used for medicinal purposes. The Inca culture applied symbols from folklore to gourds, this practice is still familiar and valued.


title: Calabash

text: Calabash's watertight features allowed it to be often used as container to ship seeds across the translantic slave trade. They were also used by enslaved people to carry seeds for planting on plantation fields. On plantations that held enslaved African Americans, the Calabash symbolized freedom—as alluded to in the song "Follow the Drinking Gourd" that referenced the Big Dipper constellation that was used to guide the Underground Railroad. Cultural reference: Jimmy Durante would always close his performances with the cryptic admonishment "Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!", a phrase he adopted after a visit to Calabash, North Carolina in 1940.


title: Calabash

text: The gourd can be dried and used to smoke pipe tobacco. According to American consular reports from the early 20th century calabash pipes were commonly used in South Africa. Calabash was said to bestow a "special softness" of flavor that could not be duplicated by other materials. The lining was made of meerschaum, though tin was used for low-grade models. A typical design yielded by this squash is recognized (theatrically) as the pipe of Sherlock Holmes, but the inventor of this character, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, never mentioned Holmes using a calabash pipe. It was the preferred pipe for stage actors portraying Holmes, because they could balance this pipe better than other styles while delivering their lines.


title: Calabash

text: The gourd is used traditionally to administer enemas. Along the upper Congo River an enema apparatus is made by making a hole in one end of the gourd for filling it, and using a resin to attach a hollow cane to the gourd's neck.


title: Zhang Yiming

text: Zhang Yiming (; born April 1, 1983 in Longyan, Fujian) is a Chinese internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012 and developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform TikTok (Douyin/抖音), formerly known as Musical.ly. As of October 2022, Zhang's personal wealth was estimated at US$55 billion according to "Bloomberg Billionaires Index" (US $49.5 billion in net worth by Forbes) which makes him the second-richest person in China after Zhong Shanshan. On November 4, 2021, Zhang Yiming stepped down as CEO of ByteDance, completing a leadership handover announced in May 2021.


title: Zhang Yiming

text: Zhang was born on April 1, 1983, in Longyang Fujian, China. In 2001, he enrolled at Nankai University in Tianjin, where he majored in microelectronics before changing to software engineering, and graduated in 2005. He met his wife at university.


title: Zhang Yiming

text: In February 2006, Zhang became the fifth employee and the first engineer at the travel website Kuxun, and he was promoted to technical director a year later.


title: Zhang Yiming

text: In 2008, Zhang left Kuxun to work for Microsoft, but he felt stifled by the corporate rules of the company. He soon left Microsoft to join the startup Fanfou, which eventually failed. In 2009, when Kuxun was about to be acquired by Expedia, Zhang took over Kuxun's real estate search business and started 99fang.com, his first company.


title: Zhang Yiming

text: Zhang thought that Chinese smartphone users were struggling to find information in mobile apps available in 2012 and the search giant Baidu was mixing search results with undisclosed advertising. His vision was to push relevant content to users using recommendations generated by artificial intelligence. This vision, however, was not shared by most venture capitalists, and he failed to secure funding until Susquehanna International Group agreed to invest in the startup. In August 2012, ByteDance launched the Toutiao news app and within two years attracted more than 13 million daily users. Sequoia Capital, which rejected Zhang the first time, came around and led a US$100 million investment in the company in 2014.


title: Zhang Yiming

text: Zhang focused on expanding ByteDance globally, as opposed to other Chinese tech CEOs who focused on the domestic growth of their companies. Zhang insisted that ByteDance's workplace productivity app Lark be targeted at the American, European and Japanese markets, rather than limiting the focus to China as originally proposed. Zhang's management style with ByteDance was modeled on US tech companies such as Google and included bi-monthly town hall meetings and discouraging employees from referring to him as "boss" or "CEO," as is the Chinese convention.


title: Zhang Yiming

text: In September 2015, ByteDance launched its video sharing app TikTok (known as Douyin in China) with little fanfare. The product was an instant hit with millennials and became popular worldwide. ByteDance bought Musical.ly a year later for US$800 million and integrated it into TikTok.


title: Zhang Yiming

text: ByteDance's first app, Neihan Duanzi, was shut down in 2018 by the National Radio and Television Administration. In response, Zhang issued an apology stating that the app was "incommensurate with socialist core values", that it had a "weak" implementation of Xi Jinping Thought, and promised that ByteDance would "further deepen cooperation" with the ruling Chinese Communist Party to better promote its policies.


title: Zhang Yiming

text: As of late 2018, with more than 1 billion monthly users across its mobile apps, ByteDance is valued at US$75 billion, surpassing Uber to become the most valuable startup in the world.


title: Zhang Yiming

text: In September 2020, the United States Department of Justice referred to Zhang as a "mouthpiece" of the Chinese Communist Party in a legal filing.


title: Zhang Yiming

text: Zhang was named in the 2013 China 30 Under 30 list by "Forbes". In 2018, he was included in "Fortune" magazine's 40 Under 40 list. Zhang was named one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People of 2019".


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is an action role-playing game developed and published by Konami for the PlayStation. It was directed and produced by Toru Hagihara, with Koji Igarashi acting as assistant director. It is a direct sequel to "", taking place four years later. It features Dracula's dhampir son Alucard (returning from "") as the protagonist, rising from his slumber to explore Dracula's castle which resurfaced after Richter Belmont vanished. Its design marks a break from previous entries in the series, re-introducing the exploration, nonlinear level design, and role-playing elements first experimented with in "".


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: "Symphony of the Night" initially sold poorly. However, it gradually gained sales through word-of-mouth and became a sleeper hit, developing a cult following and selling over 700,000 units in the United States and Japan. The game garnered widespread acclaim, often cited by critics as one of the best video games of all time, praising its gameplay innovations, atmosphere, visuals and soundtrack. It is also considered a pioneer of the Metroidvania genre, inspiring numerous exploration-based action-adventure games. "Symphony of the Night" would have a lasting impact on the "Castlevania" series, with numerous subsequent mainline entries adopting its gameplay model.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: "Symphony of the Night" uses 2-dimensional side-scrolling gameplay. The objective is exploring Dracula's castle to defeat an entity named Shaft who is controlling Richter Belmont, the self-proclaimed lord of the castle and hero of the events which took place in "Castlevania: Rondo of Blood". Shaft can only be seen with a particular item obtained during gameplay. Once he is defeated, the second portion of the game is revealed, an upside-down version of the first castle, with new enemies and bosses. Alucard has to find five specific bosses to collect five pieces of Dracula (in reference to "Castlevania II: Simon's Quest"), eventually leading to the final battle with a newly awakened Dracula.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: The game is non-linear, but most of the castle is inaccessible until various items and abilities are collected, including shapeshifting into a bat, wolf, or mist. As the player uncovers more of the castle, a map is updated to show progress.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: While player characters in previous "Castlevania" games typically used a whip, the player can find and use a wide variety of weapons. The game includes an inventory and other role-playing game elements.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" incorporates elements found in role-playing video games. Alucard's hit points determine the maximum amount of damage he can withstand before dying while his magic points decide how frequently a magical attack may be cast. Alucard can also collect hearts dropped from candles and enemies to use sub-weapons like in previous games. Alucard has four other attributes: strength, the power of his physical attack; constitution, his resilience to damage inflicted by the monsters; intelligence, the power of magical attacks and sub-weapons; and luck, the frequency that items are dropped by enemies as well as the chance to score a critical hit.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: Defeating monsters provides Alucard with experience points and he will level up after reaching a predetermined amount, increasing his attributes in the process. In addition to level-ups, Alucard can also find Life Vessels and Heart Vessels scattered around the castle, which permanently increase Alucard's maximum hit points and hearts respectively. Alucard may cast eight different spells, which requires the player to input directional combinations and will use up varying amounts of his magic points. During the course of the game, Alucard can acquire the ability to summon familiars, which function as complementary entities, aiding him in battle and exploration.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: Alternative modes of gameplay can be unlocked after completion of the game. By inputting Richter Belmont's name as the user name, the player can play as Richter, who uses a whip as his main weapon and various sub-weapons. In the Sega Saturn version, the port included in the PlayStation Portable game "", and in the PlayStation 4 port, "Castlevania Requiem", Maria Renard is playable.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" begins during the ending of the previous game in the series, "", where Richter Belmont confronts and defeats Count Dracula. Four years later, in 1796, Richter goes missing and Dracula's castle reappears. Alucard arrives at the castle to destroy it, meeting Maria Renard, who once fought alongside Richter and is searching for him. Alucard meets Richter, who claims to be the new lord of the castle. Convinced that Richter is under somebody else's control, Maria urges Alucard not to hurt him and gives him the Holy Glasses, which allows him to see past illusions. In the castle's keep, Alucard confronts Richter and learns that he plans to resurrect Dracula so the two can fight for an eternity. During a fight, Alucard breaks the spell controlling Richter, and Dracula's servant Shaft appears and tells them that Dracula will still be resurrected soon.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: Alucard leaves Richter and Maria to confront Shaft, venturing into an upside-down duplicate of the castle to seek him out. Shaft reveals he planned to end the threat of the Belmont clan by controlling one of them and forcing the clan to fight one another. After defeating Shaft, Alucard faces his father, who vows to bring an end to humankind because Alucard's mother Lisa was executed as a witch. Alucard refuses to join his father in his revenge and he defeats him. Alucard tells Dracula that he has been thwarted many times because he lost the ability to love after Lisa's death, and that Lisa's final words were of eternal love for him and a plea not to hate or at least harm humanity. Before Dracula dies, he asks for Lisa's forgiveness and bids his son farewell.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: After escaping the collapsing castle, Alucard rejoins Maria and Richter. Maria is relieved that he escaped while Richter blames himself as the reason for Alucard's fight with his father. Alucard tells Richter, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing", (a quote attributed to Edmund Burke) and resolves to disappear from the world because of his cursed bloodline. Depending on how much of the castle the player has explored, Maria either chases Alucard in the hope of changing his mind, or resigns herself to Alucard's fate and leaves with Richter.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: In 1994, development began on a "Castlevania" game for the Sega 32X, retroactively known under the title "Castlevania: The Bloodletting". A playable prototype was created, but Konami decided to refocus its efforts on the PlayStation, and the game was cancelled as a result. Changes were made to these initial ideas, and the project became "Symphony of the Night".


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: The game was directed and produced by Toru Hagihara, who had directed the previous entry, "Rondo of Blood". Igarashi had creative influence and was involved with the story-writing and programming. Part way through production, Hagihara was promoted to head of the division and asked Igarashi to finish the game as the assistant director. From the outset, the game was intended to represent a new direction for the franchise. According to Igarashi, "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" began development as "something of a side story for the series, we were able to break of "Castlevania" conventions and introduce a lot of new elements that we still use today". Their primary motivation for the abrupt design change was the sight of dozens of "Castlevania" games in bargain bins of Japanese video game stores; linear "Castlevania" games offered limited replay value after completion. A noted fan of 2D games, Igarashi was instrumental in refining the game's control scheme.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: Igarashi felt that regular action games were too short, and he wanted to create a game that "could be enjoyed for a long time". Consequently, the development team abandoned the traditional stage-by-stage progression of the previous "Castlevania" games in favor of an open castle that the player could freely explore. Igarashi looked to Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda" series, which involved much exploration and backtracking to extend the amount of gameplay. Igarashi was able to use the critical reaction from "", which was more focused on exploration than action, to pitch "Symphony of the Night" to Konami. The development team used inspiration from "The Legend of Zelda" to make most of the castle areas initially inaccessible to the player. The player would gradually obtain items and abilities that progressively opened up the castle. Their idea was to reward exploration while retaining the hack-and-slash action of the previous games.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: Role-playing mechanics were added because Igarashi felt the earlier "Castlevania" games were too challenging for average players. To change that, the team implemented a leveling-up system with experience points, which rewarded players with better attack and defense statistics as they beat enemies. This system, combined with a variety of items, armors, weapons and spells, allowed the exploration to become less difficult for unskilled players.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: "Symphony of the Night" marked the debut of artist Ayami Kojima in the video game industry. She worked on the game as a character designer, conceptualizing the game's main and supporting cast. Her designs for the game are heavily influenced by bishōnen-style art. The game is presented using 2D visuals, mainly sprites animated over scrolling backgrounds. The PlayStation had no hardware for scrolling, which lead to the developers using the same methods for displaying character sprites to display the backgrounds. Occasionally, the 3D capabilities of the PlayStation are utilized. The game contains opening and ending cinematics, which were created by another group at Konami. Igarashi and the development team were disappointed in the quality of the cinematics, which featured flat models lacking textures.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: The music used in "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" was composed by Michiru Yamane. The soundtrack contains elements from multiple musical genres, including classical, techno, gothic rock, new-age, jazz, and subgenres of metal, specifically elements of thrash metal. "I Am the Wind", a vocal ending theme written by Rika Muranaka and Tony Haynes, and performed by Cynthia Harrell, is played during the credits.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" was released in Japan on March 20, 1997, in North America on October 2, 1997, and in Europe in November 1997. The Japanese release was packaged with an art book containing a small manga based on the game and a soundtrack compiled from most of the previous "Castlevania" games.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: The North American and European version's localization was handled by Jeremy Blaustein, although he was not present for the voice recording. Blaustein added the lines "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets", which were taken from the novel "Man's Fate" by André Malraux. Other changes made in localization included AI improvements, the addition of a sound test, and the correction of a game-crashing bug found in the Japanese release. The game was low-balled as a prospect for release in the United States, given relatively little advertising, received limited funding for its North American production, and was initially not a major financial success. The game was re-released in Japan on the "PlayStation the Best" label on March 19, 1998, and in North America on "Greatest Hits" in 1998.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: In 1998, a port of "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" was released in Japan for the Sega Saturn. In this version, Maria Renard is both a fully playable character as well as a boss fight, and Richter is available to play at the start of the game. When playing the game as Alucard, a "third hand" is available, but only for stat-altering items like food and potions and not weaponry. Alucard can use exclusive items, such as the Godspeed Boots, which grant him the ability to run like Richter. New areas, the Cursed Prison and the Underground Garden, which include new bosses, can be visited. The port also contains remixes of songs from previous "Castlevania" games. However, loading is more frequent and takes longer in the Saturn version than in other versions. Because the Saturn has limited hardware transparency support, transparency effects such as the mists and the waterfall were replaced with dithering effects, though partial translucency does exist in a few areas such as with Saturn exclusive enemies and one of the final boss fights. Rather than taking advantage of the Saturn's increased resolution, the graphics were stretched to fill the screen, causing some sprites to be distorted. The overall quality of the Saturn port's video is said, according to Igarashi, to be lower than the PlayStation version because it is a simple port handled by another team and was not programmed to take advantage of the Saturn's 2D capabilities. Igarashi overall expressed disappointment with the Saturn version.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: In 2006, Konami announced that the PlayStation version of the game would be ported to the Xbox 360, distributed via Xbox Live Arcade. The game was ported by Backbone Entertainment. It was the first Xbox Live Arcade title to exceed the 50 MB file size restriction for games on the service at the time. Xbox Live Arcade group manager Greg Canessa stated that an exception was made for "Symphony of the Night" to "ensure that the gameplay experience is the best it can be". This version was released on March 21, 2007. As with most Xbox Live Arcade games, "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" features leaderboards that track players' progress through the castle and features 12 achievements worth 200 points. To save space, all full motion video sequences were removed from the North American and European versions of the game. They have since been returned to the Japanese version, which is approximately 25 megabytes larger. While the unpatched version on Xbox Live Arcade still featured "I Am the Wind" as the game's closing music, a later patch replaced it with "Admiration Towards the Clan", the closing song in "" due to licensing reasons. This patch also fixed a distorted background image in one ending. In 2009, Konami released "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" alongside "Super Contra" and "Frogger" on the "Konami Classics Vol. 1" compilation for Xbox 360.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: "Symphony of the Night" was re-released as a "PSone Classics" title on the PlayStation Network store on July 19, 2007, in North America, on December 16, 2010, in Japan, and on December 12, 2012, in Europe for use with the PlayStation 3, the PlayStation Portable, and the PlayStation Vita.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: A port of "Symphony of the Night" was included as unlockable bonus content in "" for the PlayStation Portable, which was released in North America on October 23, 2007, in Japan on November 8, 2007, and in Europe on February 18, 2008. Except for the Japanese release, the English translation features a new script and newly recorded voice acting, with the option to use the original Japanese voices. The PSP release is a port of the PlayStation version, but contains some additions and changes. Maria Renard is a playable character and a boss in this version, sporting a new moveset modeled after her abilities in "Rondo of Blood". Like the Xbox 360 version, "I Am the Wind" was replaced with "Mournful Serenade", a new piece composed by Michiru Yamane, as the closing theme. An English-recorded version of the song "Nocturne" was added along with several familiars, both of which had been removed in previous international releases of the game. The "Dracula X Chronicles" versions of "Symphony of the Night" and "Rondo of Blood" were re-released for the PlayStation 4 on October 26, 2018 as part of the "Castlevania Requiem" compilation. Android and iOS ports of the game were released on March 4, 2020, based on the "Dracula X Chronicles" version.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" received wide critical acclaim at the time of its release. Critics lauded the massive, free-to-explore game world with its numerous secrets to uncover, and praised the game for integrating role-playing elements without compromising the series' basic gameplay. Multiple critics also made mention of the ingeniously designed enemies and the story's many plot twists. "GameSpot" hailed it as "easily one of the best games ever released and a true testament to the fact that 2D gaming is not dead by any stretch of the imagination." "Computer and Video Games" commented, "This may be old-skool style, but it feels like the freshest thing of the year." "Next Generation" stated that ""Symphony of the Night" has classic written all over it" and called it "spectacular" for a 2D side-scrolling platformer in the age of 32- and 64-bit games. "GamePro" gave it a perfect 5.0 out of 5 in all four categories (graphics, sound, control, and fun factor), calling it "one of the best games of the year."


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: Despite the popular consensus of the time that 2D had become outmoded, critics also highly praised the game's graphics for their smooth animation, impressive effects, and evocation of atmosphere. John Ricciardi of "Electronic Gaming Monthly" wrote that "everything is animated with an amazing attention to detail, and the special effects used throughout provide an atmosphere that just begs to be experienced." However, there were a few detractors of the use of 2D. "Entertainment Weekly" said that the visuals were dated and flat, when compared to "Nightmare Creatures" which featured 3D environments, while "IGN" commented, "The graphics are initially similar-looking to SNES and Genesis incarnations of the game, the character animation isn't particularly smooth and 3D is resigned to limited background effects and the odd special effect." A few criticized the voice acting, though "GameSpot" instead praised it. The music was met with almost unanimous approval, "IGN" describing it as "sometimes daunting, sometimes rousing and always doing what music should—enhancing the action."


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: In "Electronic Gaming Monthly"s Editors' Choice Awards, "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" was awarded "PlayStation Game of the Year" and "Side-Scrolling Game of the Year", and was a runner-up for "Best Music" (behind "PaRappa the Rapper") and "Game of the Year" (behind "GoldenEye 007"). It also was named "Best Sequel" in their annual Buyer's Guide. It was named "Game of the Year" by "PSM" in its list of the top ten games of 1997.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" received a nomination for "Console Adventure Game of the Year" at the inaugural AIAS Interactive Achievement Awards (now known as the D.I.C.E. Awards).


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: The game has developed a large cult following and copies of the original PlayStation version are considered collector's items. It demonstrated the continued popularity of 2D games during the fifth generation of video game consoles in the 32-bit era, which saw rapid advancements in 3D gaming.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: The game has continued to receive critical acclaim, and it has appeared on several other "greatest game" lists. The same year it was released, it was ranked the 12th best console video game of all time by "Electronic Gaming Monthly", which said it "is not only the best 2-D game on the PlayStation, it's one of the best, period." It appeared on "GameSpot"s "The Greatest Games of All Time" list. It was placed 16th on IGN's "Top 100 Games of All Time" and 24th in "Game Informer"s "Top 200 Video Games Ever", down six places from its 2001 ranking. GameZone ranked it the best "Castlevania" title ever made. "GamePro" listed the discovery of the inverted castle as the 26th-greatest moment in gaming. GamesRadar named "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" the second-best PlayStation game of all time, behind "Metal Gear Solid". It was ranked 4th place on EGM's list of 100 greatest games of all time, and was the highest PS1 game on the list. "Edge" ranked the game No. 35 on its list of "The 100 Best Games To Play Today", stating "When you get to that moment when the castle turns on its head, you see that it's a work of genius".


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: The gameplay of "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" and its 2D successors is often compared in the gaming press with the popular series "Metroid", with both "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" and "Super Metroid" seen as pioneers in the genre, leading to the coinage of the term "Metroidvania" (a portmanteau of "Metroid" and "Castlevania"), used to describe video games that share some of their elements.


title: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

text: Initially, the game's commercial performance was mediocre, particularly in the United States where it was meagerly publicized, but thanks to praise by critics, it gained sales through word-of-mouth and became a hit. The PlayStation and Saturn versions sold 225,862 units in Japan, while the PlayStation version sold 477,304 units in the United States, for a total of units sold in the United States and Japan.


title: Old age

text: Old age refers to ages nearing or surpassing the life expectancy of human beings, and is thus the end of the human life cycle. Terms and euphemisms for people at this age include old people, the elderly (worldwide usage), OAPs (British usage which stands for Old Age Pensioner), seniors, senior citizens (American usage), older adults (in the social sciences), and the elders (in many cultures).


title: Old age

text: Elderly people often have limited regenerative abilities and are more susceptible to AIDS, herpes, hemorrhoids, and other illnesses than younger adults. A number of other disciplines and domains concern the aging and the aged, such as organic processes of aging (senescence), medical studies of the aging process (gerontology), diseases that afflict older adults (geriatrics), technology to support the aging society (gerontechnology), or leisure and sport activities adapted to older people, such as senior sport. The elderly face various social issues concerning retirement, loneliness, and ageism.


title: Old age

text: Old age is not a definite biological stage, as the chronological age denoted as "old age" varies culturally and historically.


title: Old age

text: In 2011, the United Nations proposed a human rights convention that would specifically protect older people.


title: Old age

text: Definitions of old age include official definitions, sub-group definitions, and four dimensions as follows.


title: Old age

text: Most developed Western countries set the retirement age between 62 and 67; this is also generally considered to mark the transition from middle to old age. Having one's age within this range is commonly a requirement to become eligible for senior social programs. In non-Western nations, old age can begin as early as the mid-40s or as late as the 70s.