THE COMEBACK FACTOR: AN INTRODUCTION
There’s no question that one of the most exciting and exhilarating things that can occur in any game is pulling off an absolutely epic comeback. This is true no matter the game or the sport. Just the simple fact of knowing that a comeback is possible is enough to keep both players and spectators captivated and engaged throughout the entire duration of a game no matter what the deficit might be.
Comebacks are responsible for some of the most powerful emotions that someone can experience in a game, whether you're on the winning end or the losing end. And that's what people remember the most about games – not necessarily what happened, but how it made them feel.
Making sure that the comeback element is present is going to be IMPERATIVE for Frost Giant to not only implement, but absolutely NAIL if they plan on creating a game that stands the ultimate test of time.
What I aim to do is to explain the importance of the Comeback Factor, show the Comeback Factor’s relation to RTS and its history, and then propose game elements in terms of economy and unit balance that can ensure that comebacks play a pivotal role in Frost Giant’s mission to create the next great RTS!

SPORTS & THE COMEBACK FACTOR
To emphasize just how important the comeback element is, let’s just take a look at the top 25 sports in the world and their estimated global following:

Soccer / Association Football (4 billion estimated followers)
Cricket (2.5 billion)
Basketball (2.2 billion)
Ice Hockey, Field Hockey (2 billion)
Tennis (1 billion)
Volleyball (900 million)
Table tennis (875 million)
Baseball (500 million)
American Football, Rugby (475 million) -----------------------
Golf (450 million)
Motorsports
Boxing
MMA
Athletics
Cycling
Badminton
Swimming
Snooker / Billiards
Gymnastics
Shooting
Handball
Wrestling
Skiing
Horse Racing
Bowling

Take a look at the top 9 sports on this list. You know what element they share? The Comeback Factor!
If you are a fan of any of the top 9 sports on this list, I am positive that you have multiple memories burned into your brain of absolutely incredible (or heartbreaking) comeback games, and you’re probably replaying some of those memories in your head right now as you read this. Comebacks create memories that stick with us forever, both for better and for worse (if you’re on the losing end), and these memories are what keep us wanting more and keep us coming back.
But it’s not even the comebacks themselves that create this phenomenon. It’s the fact that we know in the back of our minds that even if the team we’re cheering on gets soul-crushingly behind in a game or even gets ridiculously far ahead, a game is never over until it’s over. That’s because in all of the games at the top of this list, at any given moment the players have the power and the ability to completely turn things around, take control of the game, and have a direct impact on your opponent’s failure or success. In these games, even if your opponent gets a decisive lead – and even if he keeps up the exact same level of performance – you still have the opportunity to either step up your game and go above and beyond your opponent's level, you can drastically change up your approach to totally disrupt your opponent’s gameplay, or you can also take a series of high risks that might result in a complete change of momentum in the game.
This isn’t the case for nearly all the sports at the bottom.
In golf, if you get significantly behind halfway through a match and your opponent is scoring birdies on every hole, what are you going to do? Rack up consecutive hole-in-ones? Not gonna happen.
In bowling, if you get significantly behind in the first few frames and your opponent keeps bowling strikes, what are you gonna do? Bowl even bigger strikes? Keep dreaming.
In racing sports, if your opponent is a lap ahead and they’ve been consistently maintaining the same speed throughout the race, what are you going to do? Hope you roll a blue shell on your next power up? Ha!
The only way that a possible comeback can occur in nearly all of the sports at the bottom of this list is if your opponent just happens to make a disastrous blunder (like missing a pivotal shot in billiards) or suffers an unforeseeable misfortune (like pulling a muscle in swimming or clipping another bike in cycling).
Having to be 100% dependent on your opponent making mistakes or suffering a misfortune in order to win is simply NOT FUN. There’s nothing exciting or exhilarating about it at all!
The interesting thing about RTS games is that they share elements with sports on both the top and the bottom of this list. RTS games have both the direct offensive and defensive aspects of the top 9 sports (attacking your opponent, defending your base) and they also share the same indirect, passive aspects of most of the sports at the bottom of the list (building your army, growing your economy, developing your tech). The challenge to ensuring that comebacks are possible will be finding a happy balance between the two.
But before we get more into RTS, let’s briefly take a look at two other games that have stood the test of time due to their Comeback Factor: Chess and No-Limit Tournament Poker.

CHESS & POKER
RTS games often get compared to Chess and No-Limit Tournament Poker due to their emphasis on preparation, coming up with a game plan, executing different strategies, reading your opponent, adjusting to your opponent, and taking risks. But there are also many elements in Chess and No-Limit Tournament Poker that allow ample opportunity to pull off a comeback, and because of these comeback elements, Chess and No-Limit Tournament Poker are games that will more than likely live on forever.
In Chess, if you’re behind in material, it is very possible to still win if you can coordinate your pieces, give yourself a positional advantage, and execute different tactics to either checkmate your opponent, trap your opponent’s majominor pieces, or promote your pawns. Even if these options aren’t readily available, it’s still possible to cleverly weasel your way out of defeat and force a stalemate. Yes, at the very highest of levels of Super Grandmaster (top 30 players in the world) these comeback possibilities are extremely rare and very blundemiscalculation-dependent since Super GMs nearly always play perfect chess (which is a big reason I feel that chess will never gain mainstream spectator popularity despite having been such a popular game for centuries). But for players of all different levels ranging from just the casual player to even players at the Grandmaster level, the opportunity for a comeback is almost always present and happens in games all the time. In chess, you can also even intentionally give your opponent a material advantage in exchange for a positional or tactical advantage, and these tend to make for the most interesting games in chess! These kind of sacrifices happen regularly at all different levels of chess, including the Super GM level.
In No-Limit Tournament Poker, there is a common term that every poker player knows: “Chip and a chair.” For those who aren’t familiar with NLTP, “chip and a chair” basically means that as long as you have a single chip and a seat at the table, there is still a chance that you can actually comeback and win an entire tournament. This element alone is exactly why so many players are attracted to NLTP, because just like in the top sports mentioned above, a game is never over until it’s actually over. But even before you’re down to your last chip, if your chip stack is dwindling and you’re starting to lose hope, you can decide to risk your entire stack and go all-in and take a shot at a doubling up and giving yourself new life. Not only is this kind of risk taking a possibility, but it’s also REQUIRED if you actually wish to have any kind of long-term success. And on the other end of the spectrum, even if you are the dominant chip leader and have triple the amount of chips as the next biggest chip stack in the tournament, you can go from Hero to Zero and get knocked out of the tournament in just a matter of a few hands if you get unlucky or take a number of unnecessary risks. This dramatic level of constant uncertainty is undoubtedly the element that keeps people playing and also why people will always enjoy watching streams and broadcasts of No-Limit Tournament Poker.
But it’s also very important to keep in mind the difference between No-Limit and Limit Tournament Poker. While both games definitely require a lot of skill and understanding of the game, Limit Tournament Poker almost completely lacks the Comeback Factor. If you are ever down to your last chip in LTP, there is literally close to a 0.00% chance for any sort of eventual comeback. And on the other end of the spectrum, if you’re way ahead of the rest of the field in LTP it’s basically guaranteed that you are going to be there for a long, long time and will have an almost definite chance of placing high in the tournament – of course, that is unless you recklessly make a long series of blunders or get really unlucky back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. There’s nothing exciting about any of that. This is why Limit Tournament Poker isn’t popular at all whatsoever. There actually was a brief period of time when LTP was relatively popular during the Poker Boom of 2003, but after the player population really got a good grasp of the game, that popularity fizzled out pretty quickly, because the game is redundant and simply isn’t exciting or interesting.
We want to create No-Limit Poker, not Limit.
(Note: I am not saying that all of these sports/games are perfect by any means and I believe that there are actually some game balance issues in nearly all of them, but that’s a subject for another time.)
So how can we use all this information and implement the Comeback Factor into the next great RTS?
Before we get into what we can do, it’s very important for us to first take a good look at the economic systems of three of the most successful RTS games of all-time: Brood War, StarCraft II, and yes… WarCraft III.

THE OVERLOOKED INNOVATION OF WARCRAFT III
Now, I have to give credit where credit is due. WarCraft III put forth an honest effort to TRY to get this comeback element right, and while I don't believe that they were successful in really accomplishing it, I do think that it would be a mistake to overlook the innovation that WarCraft III actually did manage to bring to the table.
While developing WarCraft III, Blizzard was well aware that a big reason for Brood War’s success was because even if your opponent got a significant lead, players could still stay in the game and perhaps eventually pull off some sort of a comeback. While the comeback element was definitely present in Brood War, it still wasn’t nearly at the degree of any of the sports/games discussed earlier. Blizzard aimed to change that in WarCraft III by implementing upkeep with the goal of encouraging engagement and aggression while also allowing players who get behind to have a higher flow of income than their opponent so that they can build themselves up and get back into the game more quickly.
For those who are uninitiated on upkeep or just need a reminder, upkeep is basically a tax bracket based on active food supply that essentially punishes you for building an army beyond certain points of supply. The three different levels of upkeep are:
- No Upkeep (0-50 Food: 100% income)
- Low Upkeep (51-80 Food: 70% income)
- High Upkeep (81-100 Food: 40% income)
Unfortunately, the implementation of upkeep made the game very unenjoyable for a large percentage of the RTS player base and you can still find WarCraft III players – both loyal fans and players trying to give War3 another shot – complaining about upkeep to this very day! The different levels of upkeep are so punishing that it discourages players from even building up an army much larger than their opponent’s, as their economies would suffer dramatically and it would give their opponent a significant and completely game-changing economic advantage. As a result, at the top levels of play, you basically never see players go above 80 supply and they are even hesitant to even go above 50 supply until they feel the time is right.
So how on Earth are you supposed to have a comeback when the game is systematically designed to prevent players from even getting ahead?
https://preview.redd.it/xdatdlb7x9x51.png?width=292&format=png&auto=webp&s=4d60b32bc0e7bda9560319a1ecbbe414ee35356f
With all that said, it would be extremely shortsighted for us to only look at the flaws of upkeep without acknowledging what it actually did accomplish. The number one thing that the idea of upkeep got right is that it was successful in encouraging aggression. When a player approaches the maximum threshold in an upkeep bracket (50/80 supply), it’s almost immediately necessary for them to attack their opponent in order to either gain an advantage or keep any advantage that they already have – which ultimately also puts that advantage at risk – and there’s really only a small window of time to be able to do that, because if you don’t, your opponent can quickly and easily equalize. When a player is forced to put his advantage at risk, in theory it should create a perfect opportunity for a possible comeback. However, since the possibility of gaining a significant advantage at all is basically non-existent in the first place due to upkeep, the theory doesn’t really perform well in actual practice in terms of an RTS game. This causes the game to place a much higher emphasis on gaining an advantage through hero development rather than unit, economy, and tech development which are basically the three main elements of all RTS games. And in WarCraft III, once a player’s heroes become significantly more powerful than their opponent’s, the possibility of a comeback is nearly completely lost as there is no opportunity to set back any progress that a hero has already made in leveling.
Now what Blizzard seemed to have possibly overlooked when developing WarCraft III was that Brood War already had a form of upkeep innately implemented into the game that they may not have even realized they already had!

UPKEEP, BROOD WAR, AND WORKER VALUES
Brood War has an economic system that is extremely unique and very different from any game that has ever been made and this system is a huge reason why comebacks are more possible in BW than other RTS games. To further explain this point, it’s important to first compare its economic system to WarCraft III and StarCraft II.
In WarCraft III, each worker holds the same amount of value and this value remains the same throughout the entire course of the game unless it’s affected by upkeep, in which case every worker’s value is affected all at once. In terms of income, each base only allows a maximum of 5 workers to mine gold at a time. If workers that are mining are killed, all the races have a pretty easy time immediately replacing them with very little impact on the economy. Of course, it’s slightly more difficult for Undead, but you can still replace Acolytes relatively quickly without much of an economic effect since you only need 5 for 100% mining efficiency.
In StarCraft II, the first two workers per mineral patch all hold exactly the same value. The amount of minerals that 16 workers can mine per minute is roughly double the amount of minerals that 8 workers can mine per minute on a base that has 8 mineral patches (ever so slightly less than double actually, but not significantly enough where “double” isn’t fair to say in terms of game balance). After 16 and up to 24 workers, each additional worker adds value approximately 40-45% of the income value as each of the first 16. After 24 workers (or 3 workers per mineral patch) there is practically no value at all in having any additional workers. This is why expanding in StarCraft II is so incredibly beneficial and has such a high reward. As a result, expanding is always done as early as possible in nearly every single top-level game, because the value that you get from your first 16 workers at every base is just so ridiculously high.
In Brood War, mining works very similarly to StarCraft II except for one MAJOR difference. The rate of minerals mined per minute IS NOT doubled when you have 16 workers mining as opposed to 8 on eight mineral patches. In fact, all the workers between worker 9 and worker 16 only have about 55-60% of the income value as the first 8 workers, then workers 17-24 only have roughly 35-40% of the income value as the first 8 workers. Like StarCraft II, additional workers after the 24th worker have practically no value. These elements of mining are a big reason why Zerg players in BW can equalize their rate of income with other races despite having a lower worker count because their workers tend to be distributed among more mineral patches at more bases.
So what does all this mean in relation to all 3 games?
In WarCraft III, it means that it’s basically impossible to have a major long-term impact on your opponent’s economy unless you take out an entire base.
In StarCraft II, it means that killing just a handful of workers can be a total economic disaster for a player. For example, if you and your opponent both have 16 workers mining and you kill half of your opponent’s workers, you now effectively have an income rate TWICE that of your opponent.
In Brood War, it means that the effect of killing your opponent’s workers isn’t nearly as punishing, because if you kill half of their 16 workers in Brood War, you have only given yourself a 55-60% economic income advantage, which gives your opponent much more of an opportunity to get back into the game!
“But what if I lose ALL of my workers in BW and SC2?”
This is just ridiculously more punishing in SC2 than in BW because now you have to make 16 workers to equalize your opponent’s economic advantage instead of just having to make 8 to at least somewhat get back into the game.
These reasons are also why Drone kills in Brood War are often considered way more valuable than Probe or SCV kills, however this is compensated by Zerg’s ability to be able to produce many workers at once. If Zerg didn’t have this compensation, then killing Drones in BW would be just as punishing as killing Probes or SCVs in StarCraft II.
Because of the economic comeback elements that Brood War somewhat possesses, it's far more difficult for both players and spectators to ever really have a clear idea exactly who is going to win until the game is all but over, and I believe this plays a huge role in why an ASL quarter-finals match can still attract nearly a quarter-million live viewers 22 years after Brood War's release.
So how can we take what we know about the economy of these games and implement them into the Comeback Factor moving forward?

THE ART OF THE COMEBACK: THE ECONOMY
I’m not going to sit here and act like I’m some sort of creative genius and spitball ideas of whether or not the economy should involve mining minerals, collecting coins, soaking energy from the sun, or picking turnips. I mean, I can if you want, but that’s not what this proposal is about. This is about how to create a fair and effective economic system that finds a good and fair balance between allowing players who are behind to get back into the game while also not too harshly punishing players when they are ahead.
While there was a pretty effective form of economic income control through worker values in Brood War and a somewhat effective form of income control through upkeep in WarCraft III, I believe that both forms of control are still far too dramatic and too immediate (albeit much less immediate in BW since only one worker loses value at a time whereas all the workers lose their value at once in War3).
But there is one thing that both games taught us: Income control is necessary.
I would like to propose a simple idea that can be implemented in a variety of different ways whether it’s through gathering gold, mining minerals, or (ideally) picking turnips from a garden.
What if ONLY the first worker got 100% value from gathering resources at a single location? What if the 2nd worker got 95% value, the 3rd got 90% value, the 4th got 85%, so on and so forth...? Of course, these are arbitrary gradients that mean absolutely nothing right now and we don’t even necessarily have to use workers as our means of getting income, but the idea behind it is that if your early workers have more value and your later workers have proportionally less value but still SOME value, then you aren’t as severely behind when you just have a few workers and you also aren’t drastically punished when you have a lot of workers.
If this were implemented into any RTS it would effectively do three things:

It would encourage engagement and aggression just like upkeep did in WarCraft III.
It would encourage expansion and growth just like in StarCraft II.
It would allow even more of an economic opportunity for a comeback than Brood War.

Q: How would it encourage aggression like in WarCraft III?
-- Because once you reach various levels of economic growth, your opponent will be able to equalize with you much more quickly unless you stop him from doing so.
Q: How would it encourage expansion and growth like in StarCraft II?
-- Because once you reach a certain level of income at one base, it becomes more beneficial to establish another base in order to gain higher value from your workers.
Q: How would it allow even more of an economic opportunity for a comeback than Brood War?
-- Because your earlier workers will have an even higher value compared to your later workers than in Brood War.
In order to give you an even better idea of how earlier workers will have a much higher value and allow for a better chance of a comeback, here are a couple of graphs so you can see it for yourself.
But so that we can compare the worker values in my proposed model to the worker values of StarCraft II and Brood War, I reduced the value of each additional worker in 4% increments rather than the 5% in my example earlier, since we will be using 24 workers to reach maximum saturation. Like I said, the actual numbers are pretty arbitrary anyway. It's the idea that I'm trying to get across. This will allow us to visually compare what it looks like going from 0% to 100% mining saturation in SC2 and BW and it shows what my model would look like in comparison.
https://preview.redd.it/yw8o6jxcx9x51.png?width=2392&format=png&auto=webp&s=81da3bd8b9a2c3d063d9bfe785a03a5f3837b5a9
This graph makes it clear why earlier workers in Brood War are far more valuable than in StarCraft II in the big scheme of things, which is why coming back after taking an economic hit is so much easier in Brood War. But as you can also see, my economic model for Frost Giant takes it a step even further, which would make it even more economically easier to recover should you take a big hit, or any degree of a hit for that matter. But at the same time, it's also not so way over-the-top that it makes it completely unfair to the player who holds the economic advantage either.
I've also included this bar graph if you wanted to take a side-by-side look at the difference of values the workers would have at each level.
https://preview.redd.it/4mpzaptex9x51.png?width=2636&format=png&auto=webp&s=36570527f2781788c5be42cd0bb552606ba4cf89
And here are the raw numbers if anyone wants to take a look and check my math for me...
https://preview.redd.it/s8ingv5hx9x51.jpg?width=435&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8781e32c8dd1d410b36e13ba09a6dfa6bd49f9b2
If you want to know exactly how I got these numbers, you can find the explanation HERE, because it's annoyingly tedious and it really messes up the overall flow and pacing of this proposal.
From an economic standpoint, I don’t see any downside to this if it is implemented to the primary source of income. Plus I’m just going to assume that there will be at least one additional type of secondary resource that players have to gather that could have a more stagnant and consistent gathering rate, so that can also be a way to kind of balance the flow of income between the resources.
(Edit: I wanted to avoid throwing out specific ideas, but quite a few people have commented and messaged me that this would be difficult to realistically implement. I don't see why workers wouldn't be able to extract resources from a single source that loses extraction efficiency the more workers you have on it. There are probably even far more creative/simple ways to accomplish this.)
But while implementing an economic system like this would be very effective, the Comeback Factor cannot be solely dependent on the economy. It will be very necessary to also implement other game elements to allow comebacks to be possible.

THE ART OF THE COMEBACK: UNIT & BUILDING QUALITIES
Now that we can finally push economics completely aside, there are many unit/building qualities that will be necessary in order to ensure that comebacks are possible. The main ones that come to mind are:

Unit and building fragility
Unit fortification advantage
Units that dramatically hard-counter other units
Efficient static defense
Accessible and completely momentum-changing units
Units that can quickly exploit different specific weaknesses

WarCraft III, StarCraft II, and Brood War all have some of these qualities to varying degrees, but it will be very important to put an emphasis on these particular unit/building qualities and make sure that they have a strong, discernible presence in order to ensure that comebacks are more of a possibility. And again, I’m not going to act like I’m some sort of creative genius, so I’m not going to try to tell some of the best professional game developers in the world how they should design their units. If you can find a way to implement turnips, cool. If not, too bad. But I do feel that these six qualities are all absolutely necessary for comebacks, nonetheless. They are mostly all self-explanatory, but I did want to elaborate a little on the importance of the first three.
1.) Unit and Base Fragility is probably the most important quality on this list. Having an opportunity to find weaknesses and deal damage to your opponent quickly can be extremely critical when trying to make a comeback, and this will only be possible if units and buildings have an exploitable level of fragility. If units and buildings are too difficult to kill, then it becomes impossible to do any kind of serious, game-changing damage to your opponent if you’re trying to equalize. It won’t matter that you snuck a covert task force into your opponent’s undefended expansion if it takes 5 minutes to kill a building. It won’t matter that you caught reinforcements on their way to join the main army if you can’t kill them before they get there. It won’t matter that you just built a direct counter to your opponent’s army if you can’t do any damage before he builds a counter to your counter. The lack of unit and building fragility in WarCraft III is also a big reason why it’s so difficult to ever rally together a comeback. In War3, if you have a bigger army than your opponent, it’s just incredibly easy to pull back weakened units to ensure they don’t die because of how long it takes to kill them. And because it takes so long to kill buildings in War3, it’s also very difficult to just run a few strategical units into a base, do some meaningful damage, and get out before your opponent’s army gets there, especially with Town Portals being a factor.
2.) Unit Fortification Advantage is a pretty big quality that I think took a hit with StarCraft II due to the implementation of unlimited unit selection and units being able to move in swarms, which led to the inevitable evolution of death balls. This made it extremely easy to get all of the units in your attacking army to all fight at once. In Brood War, it’s a lot riskier and more punishing to send your army into a fortified group of units since it’s way more difficult to keep your army close and have them all attack together. Another reason why unit fortification is stronger in Brood War is because the units and spells that work best in stationary, defensive positions (such as siege tanks, reavers, dark swarm/lurker, psionic storm) are far more powerful than those in SC2. I am by no means saying that one game’s mechanics and unit makeup are superior to the other, but it is important to acknowledge game elements that offer either more or less opportunity for a comeback.
3.) Units that Dramatically Hard-Counter Other Units will be an absolute MUST if we want to give players a good opportunity for a comeback. And I’m not talking about $1,000 worth of unit “A” will always beat $1,200 worth of unit “B” kind of counters. I’m talking about counters like $500 worth of unit “A” will embarrassingly DESTROY $2,000 worth of unit “B” kind of counters! It might not be necessary to be THAT dramatic, but you get the idea. These kind of dramatic hard-counters are definitely something that will help make it possible for a player who is behind to effectively defend or pre-empt an oncoming attack if they know what’s coming. (Edit: I'm NOT saying that every single unit should have a super hard-counter, just that dramatic hard-counters should play a clear role in the game.)
I really don’t think that I need to touch on the last three qualities at all, as the importance of those are very easy to see and understand. So in terms of units and buildings that haven’t even been invented yet, I think that’s all I got for that.

THE COMEBACK FACTOR: FINAL THOUGHTS
I really hope that I was able to help you understand the vital importance of having comeback elements in a game. And if I did, I really hope that some of the ideas that I proposed help you guys develop a game that makes comebacks possible and results in an RTS that lives on for generations.
I want to thank everyone who took the time to read this, as I always try put a lot of thought into analyzing any game that I really enjoy playing whether it’s a sport, board game, card game, or a video game. I am very passionate about balance and fairness, particularly in games of course, and I especially have a deep affection for RTS games, so even having you just read this really means a lot.
Thanks again for reading. Take care!
https://preview.redd.it/przhw77nx9x51.png?width=77&format=png&auto=webp&s=0acca35bcbaa0c9fe176ed179f629039f45f184c

Source
Note: Based on observing question-taker's profile, he is still taking answers, so two parts may or may not completely summarize the AMA.

Questions	Answers
Space Cadet Pinball, how does it feel to be the most played "bring your child to work day" game? I remember it fondly.	The best part is that I used to "teach" computer lab when my kids were in K through 6th grades, back when Pinball was still included and well known. The kids could care less about anything technically hard or interesting that I'd worked on, of course, but Pinball gave me instant street cred with them.
	Especially cool was being able to walk over and enter a secret code that only I knew that would turn on all the cheats, like infinite lives. They thought I was a wizard at that age!
	The code, by the way, is "hidden test" without the quotes! Then various keys do different things, you can click and drag the ball around, and so on. Google it for the gory details!
	I always like to point out that I was working with a full set of original IP from Maxis, so I had nothing to do with the design of the game, or it's art, etc... that was all done! My contribution was volunteering to port it, including a partial rewrite from asm to C, to work on MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC, IA64, ARM, and so on, which was actually a lot of work. But I got it into the Windows box, which is how and why everyone knows it today. But all credit for the gameplay and so on goes to Maxis, all I did was not screw it up in that case!
^{the below is a reply to the above}
To add a bit of detail re Space Cadet Pinball: we built Space Cadet originally at my company Cinematronics and did a deal with Microsoft to ship it with the Plus Pack that accompanied Win 95 and Win 98. While it technically didn't ship w/ Windows, the Plus Pack had something like a 25% attach rate and pinball wound up on most systems anyway. Microsoft actually had an option in our original contract from 1994 to ship it with the OS itself or the Plus Pack. Maxis was our publisher for the subsequent retail version, and later bought my company. More germane to this thread: I believe Dave's port entered the picture a few years later, after Win 98, and was likely critical to pinball continuing to ship on later iterations of the Windows OS (i.e. 32-bit). I definitely appreciate the time he put in to give the game extra years of life on the Windows platform. Kevin Gliner, game designer and producer for 3D Pinball, and co-founder of Cinematronics.	Pleased to FINALLY put a name to the game design! You should update the Wikipedia article for the game, as I think it lists Matt Ridgway, who might have been sound? I've been crediting Maxis for years, not knowing the role of Cinematronics who was who. One thing that confused me: wasn't there a company that did video games in the 80s called Cinematronics? Any relation? Star Castle, Armor Attack, etc...
	As for timing, this likely between the Win95 and Win98 Plus! packs. It was very early on at least, and shipped at least in NT4, and perhaps earlier in "SUR" release that ran atop NT 3.51, but I don't have access to any source files to check dates!
^{the below is a reply to the above}
I keep meaning to fix that wikipedia article, there's a significant number of people that worked on the game and for some reason only Matt (an independent sound guy who did some excellent part-time contract work for us) is listed. There's also a lot of confusion about the timing of various releases and the companies involved, and who owns it now (EA). I actually have all the original source, although no rights to any of it anymore. Hard to say on the timing of the port. I was working in Redmond in '99 when I got word someone had done an NT4 and Win2000 port (I'm assuming that was you), so that was the first time the port showed up on my radar. I have a more confident memory (and contracts, email, etc) of all the events related to how pinball came about and the first couple years after it was released. I like to think pinball was the very first Win95 game (it was fun to watch Gates and Leno pretend to play it on stage at the Win95 launch event), but of course there were other games that shipped with the launch too. You're correct, there was an 80s arcade game company called Cinematronics that went out of business long before we started in 1994, and someone had let the trademark lapse. How we came to be called Cinematronics is a long story for another time...	NT shipped in 96, so the version I did for it would have been done in 95. I remember working on it about the time Win9X was shipping or in late beta. I could be wrong on that part, but Nov 95 would be my guess.
^{the below is another reply to the original answer}
Damn dude, porting assembly? You are a legend!	Thanks - we actually did all of our debugging in assembler. We didn't have any source-level or line-level debugging at all (except as noted below). So you'd connect to a machine through an ssh-like tool and then, if the symbols were right, you could get a callstack and inspect memory, disassemble functions, and so on. But since we spent much of our day staring at assembly, I became reasonably adept at it.
	I say "reasonably" as I was lazy enough that I would compile the components of interest to me with Visual Studio PDB symbols so that, if I could repro on my own machine, I could then source-level debug it. That made me fast at some stuff that others were slow at, but I likely never got as proficient at asm debugging as someone who never had an alternative. I had a developer friend named Bob whom was an ntsd (our debugger) superstar, and he'd write expressions inside of breakpoints to fire conditionally, that kind of thing. So I did learn that trick, but I'm sure there were dozens I just never knew.
	That all said, we rarely if ever coded in assembly. All coding was in C/C++.
	In the Pinball case, parts of the original were written in hand-coded in asm by Maxis, like the sound engine, and wouldn't have had a hope of working on anything but an x86. Rather than be lame and not have sound on the RISC platforms, I opted to rewrite that stuff in C so that it was portable.
	The RISC platforms also bring their own set of problems like 32-bit alignment for data. And being on Windows NT (now just "Windows") meant being Unicode, but fortunately there isn't a TON of text in a pinball game!
^{the below is a reply to the above}
boytekka: damn, the only time that I did assembly language is when we tried moving a small machine through the printer port.. I miss those days LordApocalyptica: Only time I did assembly was when I wanted to make a game on my TI-84, and decided that I didn't want to. I miss those days too.	First game I wrote in assembly I did in a machine language monitor on my C64. You can't (easily) relocate 6502 so to add code you'd have to jump out, do stuff, and jump back... Crazy!
^{the below is another reply to the original answer}
If I can ask a question, how does it feels to go from coding with basically zero help to working with modern IDE and code editors that give you a lot of infos, tips, error notifications and so on? I've started programming like a year ago from zero, and I don't think I could be able to program like y'all did 20 years ago or more. Thanks for doing this AMA anyways!	You're very welcome! The progression in tools has been amazing, really. I remember HESMON and my first machine language monitors for the PET and C64, then really nice ROM dev environments, and CygnusEd for the Amiga... all the way up to PlatformIO and Visual Studio Code.
	My most recent "WOW" moment was adding a line to my lib_deps line in platformio, which magically included the library being developed at the URL on github. So you can link to online projects... cool.
^{the below is another reply to the original answer}
Just wanted to say thanks for the Alpha port!	Alpha AXP was by far the hardest to debug! "Branch later, maybe"
^{the below is another reply to the original answer}
I just want to thank you for my first experience with pinball. I am now a top 100 competitive pinball player and own 16 pinball machines.	That's cool, which do you collect primarily? I was always a fan of Williams, and am FB friends with a couple of their older devs like Steve Ritchie, Larry DeMar, and Eugene Jarvis (but I should be careful, Bill Gates warned me never to name drop :-) )
	I have a Black Knight 2000 as my own machine right now!
^{the below is a reply to the above}
I have a wide range. Some modern Sterns like Metallica, Jurassic Park, Tron and Iron Maiden. Older Bally’s like Frontier and Fathom. 2 classic Bally/Williams Dr Who and Attack From Mars. Plus a few EMs. I like them all! Attack From Mars was the game that got me into the physical world of pinball. Collecting has been more of a recent pandemic thing since I can’t go out and play. I miss traveling around the country playing in big tournaments. Oh yeah and Steve Ritchie is quite the character. You must meet him some day. I’ve met him a few times and each time has earned a place in my pinball stories I talk about with friends.	Congrats on the collection, that's a nice set! I've never met Steve - I did meet Larry DeMar in vegas. I was playing at a slot machine and he was next to me, and had a name tag, and I was like... "Excuse me sir, but does the word Robotron mean anything?" and it turned out to be him!
Asking as someone pretty new in software development, did you experience impostor syndrome? If so, how did you deal with it?	My first couple of years were very productive, so I wasn't insecure about my output, but even so I definitely experienced imposter syndrome. I think most people who achieve aspirational roles do... I have a friend who was in the NFL who describes the same feeling.
	Being as productive as your peers is sort of the pre-requisite, and if that's true, then remind yourself that when you were in fifth grade, the eighth graders on the playground seemed so old and mature! It's odd in that I started in 1993, but to me anyone who started in the 80s was a "true" Old Timer and remains so in my head to this day. And similarly I'm no doubt the grizzled veteran to people I hired a few years later.
	I know when I started I felt like the dumbest guy in the room, and by the end I felt like the smartest guy in the room, and I don't think I'd gotten any smarter along the way. So it's all relative and perception. Well, that and the stock caused some serious attrition of the "really smart"!
	I remember visiting Google a couple of years ago in the bathrooms they had posters that read "YOU ARE NOT AN IMPOSTER", and info about seminars and so on about it, so it's very common! I wish I had a concrete strategy for you, but I don't other than "It's commonplace, and I bet there are a ton of resources on the Web. Don't be surprised you're experiencing it!"
What would you encourage someone to start learning today related to your field?	I'm learning React at the moment. Let's face it, the web development experience is utter nonsense. So I kept hoping for something that would make it clean, and easy to make components, and to work with REST apis. So I went looking for a solution. Then I read about Angular, and it seemed like "too much" to learn for the sake of making a SPA.
	But React seems understandable enough and solves a ton of problems with web development, not the least of which is being able to intermingle HTML and Javascript (via JSX).
	As for languages, I'd probably start with Python. I prototyped a complicated LED system a couple of years ago and it was admirable what it could accomplish for an interpreted language. And you probably have to know modern Javascript as well.
Now, would you be rather interested in working for windows, macos or linux ?	I work in all three. For my own projects I write to the ASP.NET Core 3.1, and that's available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I originally wrote my LED server to it under MacOS, then moved it to Windows with about 5 minutes of changes (related to the consoles being somewhat different). Then I moved it to Linux, where I made it work and then containerized it with Docker. I got it up and running on my Raspberry Pi and in a Windows HyperV and under WSL using Ubuntu. To me that kind of stuff is super cool.
	Once I had it working in a Docker container I deployed it to my Synology NAS, which is some variant of Linux. So my NAS runs my Christmas lights!
	I love stuff like that when it works!
	My main workstation is a Dell monitor that has an internal KVM. I have a 2013 Mac Pro connected to it, which is maxed out and then has an eGPU and eRAID setup via Thunderbolt. And then I have a 3970X Windows PC connected as well, and I can jump back and forth with a button.
	I spend most of my day in Windows now, unless it's video related, in which case I use Final Cut Pro.
Hi Dave, thanks for the AmA! In regards to task manager - often times I have to click the 'end task' button more than once to get the frozen program to actually close. Why is this? Thanks again.	Remember that, at least in my day, End Task is different than End Process. The former sends a "Please close yourself" message to the app, and if it's hung, it should then detect it and so on, but doesn't always. Imagine the app is in a weird state where it's still pumping messages, it's not hung, but it's broken. End Task likely won't work.
	That's when you need End Process, which tears everything down for you. The substantive difference is that the program gets no choice in the matter and no notification. End Task can be graceful. End Process is brutal.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
What about when the task manager stops responding? We need a task manager manager to manage the task manager. Lol	I've never seen that happen, ever, unless the system itself or the window manager is bunged in some way. Your puny Task Manager cannot save you now.
	Then again, nothing can, save a reboot.
What cool new tech are you excited about?	Right now I'm actually trying to productize something of my own, a system for doing hidden, permanently-installed LED holiday lighting. It receives the effect entirely over WiFi, or it can fall back to built-in effects and so on. Quick demo from 4th of July here:
	https://youtu.be/7QNtj2hZtaQ
	I'm done the software on the ESP32 and on the desktop, and working on the phone app now. So the next step is to find someone to manufacture the actual addressable LED strip fixtures. They'd be like under-counter LED strips that snap together end to end, but weatherproof, and with WS2813 LEDs internally.
	In terms of stuff that I'm just benefitting from, the latest CPUs from AMD are amazing. I have the 32-core 3970X and the raw computing power is hard to comprehend. That you can buy a 32-core chip for $2K (or 64-core for $4K) amazes me! Now I need to learn AI or something to make use of all of that hardware...
After the rise of WinRAR, did you continue to use the trial or did you pay?	From: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
	Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2006 3:14 PM
	To: Dave
	Subject: Your BuyRAR.com Order #: 122229610 License Key

	Attachments: rarkey.rar
	My WinRAR order number, from about 15 years ago, is above. And my WinZip license is much older than that. As someone who (a) made their real living in shareware and (b) worked on Product Activation, I'm the kind of guy who always licenses everything! You'll notice in my PlatformIO/"Arduino" video I even walk people through how to contribute to show how easy it is. I love good, cheap software.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
Would you download a car?	My wife's Tesla downloads update all the time. I'm sure they're just as complex as the mechanical components of the car, so in a sense, we already do!
^{the below is another reply to the original answer}
But... why did you keep the email?	I have a folder on my OneDrive called Registrations where I keep copies of license keys and registrations. So it was handy. Looks like Telix is my oldest registration from 1989 or so.
Also what was Microsoft really like back in the 90s? As a user of MS-Dos 3.30 forward till now. I’m assuming there has just been a whole tide of changes. Was double space really as funny on the dev side as it was on the user side with the slowness and the pufferfish as a logo :)	I worked on Doublespace in that I wrote a thunking layer that could live in low memory and then moved the rest of the code into the HMA. I didn't work on the compression, but odds are the guy who did is reading along right now, I bet!
	I don't really know if it was faster or slower than its contemporaries like Stacker. I wrote one for the Amiga, though didn't get it quite finished before starting at MS, and it's an interesting and hard problem to do well. At least on the AmigaDOS it was, FAT would be a tad easier.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
I mean for its time it was great. But back then floppy disks and 10M RLL-MFM drives were more the norm. It was actually awesome to have it included IN the OS instead of having to buy stacker. I think this is why I get so much of a kick out of every phishing AD that says download this to double your RAM. It just takes me back.	RAM Doublers are a whole 'nother ball of wax. Raymond Chen, in his blog "The Old New Thing", covers them well. If I understand it correctly, in the most famous case the code to do the actual memory compression was disabled, so it literally did nothing, but did it with overhead.
	On the other hand, I note that current Windows, the HyperV, and even my Synology NAS offer "Memory Compression" now so perhaps there's a time and a place on modern cpus and systems.
I'm an Engineer and regularly use MS Office to produce reports and calculations. Subscript and Superscript are something I use all the time. For at least the last 15 years, in MS Word I can hit "Ctrl +" & "Ctrl Shift +" to make the highlighted text Subscript or Superscript. But MS Word sucks for calculations, so I use MS Excel. But MS Excel it's about 8 clicks to make something super or subscript, and the hotkey technology hasn't made it in. So my question is, why was MS Office 2003 the best version of office that was ever produced?	I retired in 2003. Coincidence? I'll leave that one up to the scholars.
If you could go back and change anything about Windows without consequences or worrying about backwards compatibility, what would it be?	Format! I wrote that and since I was used to using the Visual Studio Resource Editor for dialogs, but couldn't in this case, I just laid out a stack of buttons and labels, content in the knowledge that a Program Manager or Designer would come up with a proper design for it that I would then code up. But somehow, no one did, and no one has for 25 years! So it's a big tall stack of buttons like a prairie grain elevator.
Ever met Bill Gates or have an interesting personal experience with him or another higher up you can share?	Yes, even when I was a new college hire he had the 30 of us or so over for beer and a burger in his back yard. It was a nice touch and quite informal. Obviously, at some scale, it wasn't 30 people anymore and they couldn't continue it!
	Ever play the video game Star Castle? It was like that. Concentric circles of people standing around BillG each armed with what they hope is a question or comment so clever they'll stand out in some way!
If every software you need would be available for both systems. Would you use a Linux distribution or Windows 10?	Right now I'd use Windows 10 because, if the same client software is available, I'd do it on Windows simply because I have a new 3970X w/ 128G of RAM and triple RAID0 SSDs plus an Optane stick. All for about 1/10th the price of a Mac Pro. Since the hardware is so cheap and powerful, it's really hard to resist.
	Even if all the client software were magically available, or Parallels for Linux were a thing, I'd stick with Windows because I haven't seen a Linux UI that I really like. I know everyone has a favorite... if there's an actually good and attractive one that works out of the box, let me know what distro, and maybe link a screenshot!
^{the below is a reply to the above}
Give Mint 20 with Cinnamon a fair shot! I have struggled for years trying to like a Linux distro but never found one that felt and looked right which I think had been the reason Linux hasn't been adopted mainstream but Mint20 with Cinnamon is possibly it..if not its very very close.. Has awesome multi-desltop winodws feature and you can make it basically just like Win10.. Would love to know what you think of it! 20.1 BETA just dropped and has a super interesting feature called Web Apps that needs to be checked out asap! Heres a link to the 20 long term support version.. some people do not like the Minto Logos/Backgrounds out of the box..keep in mind there are a ton of nice ones included and many more you can get quickly if that's something you don't like..what is really neat is that you can make Mint20 look like any OS.. there are themes that make it exactly like MacOS I just have not personally tried those out yet. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3928	Thanks, I'll check out Mint!
I am looking at my copy of Douglas Coupland's "microserfs". Although it's fiction, do you think it resembles the Microsoft Culture of the time?	Lord no, that book bugged me. On the one hand, they're a bunch of pretentious and precocious, annoying kids. I worked on a team (NT) where the tone was set by Dave Cutler and the guys he brought over from Digital, so it was rather different. On the other hand, it's such a big company that odds are those four main people DID exist somewhere in the company. Just not around me!
Why was (is) a monolithic registry preferred over distributing the settings in a number of files like Unix? Why did windows remain single-user focused for so long when Unix was multi-user since the 70s? In my understanding, if there is just one user, that user has to be admin which opened Windows up to security issues. (I don't even recall any sudo-like privilege escalation in pre-XP Windows.)	Windows NT was multiluser from birth. And there's nothing about the Windows architecture that requires users to be admin; the reality, I think, is that most apps started out in Win95 land and just didn't work if they were run as non-admin, so people ran as admin because the apps required it.
	We couldn't just break all those apps and say "Oh well, get better apps" so what you got was a convention of people running as admin. But again, there's no need to. Same as Unix.
	The one exception is that under Unix it's easy to sudo and so admin work briefly. I wish Windows had (or exposed) a simpler mechanism for letting me run as a non-admin credential and escalate when needed. I know UAC does the same thing, more or less, if used cautiously.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
Yeah NT did eventually get around to fixing it. My question was really about the earlier systems, because I think you said you worked on MS-DOS? Since there were existing systems with multi-user and privilege escalation even before the first Windows, somebody must have made a conscious decision to not include that functionality.	MS-DOS was only the second or third OS I can think of for a Microprocessor (CPM, SCP, then MS-DOS). What existed for mainframes and minis didn't matter much in the memory limits available on the desktop.
What was the inspiration for Space Cadet Pinball and what is your high score?	I don't know, I wasn't the designer, the inspiration part happened separate, I provided the perspiration part! I was actually pretty good at the game, since I was literally paid to play and test it... but I don't know the score, sorry! I do have the world high score on Tempest, though! But not Pinball :-)
1. What's something super useful within Task Manager you think even seasoned Windows users don't know they can do? 2. What do you think a future version of Task Manager should be able to do?	I think CTRL_SHIFT_ESC is a surprise to a lot of people!
	I think Task Manager needs Dark Mode, and a way to show who has locked what file or device so you can kill the offender when needed.
Why is it that I can still find dialogs in Windows 10 that were clearly built using 16 bit Visual Studio 97 version?	This should explain it. When you achieve perfection, you leave it alone:
	https://youtu.be/l75a8CvIHBQ
^{the below is a reply to the above}
Please for the love of God, use your Microsoft contacts to stop the snipping tool from going away. It's literally perfect but they keep trying to discontinue it.	One Compound Word: SnagIt. It's what you need to make your life complete.
	After my time, but I heard the new snipping and history that's being built in to replace it is pretty good. It better be if they kill snipping tool!
Thanks for task manager! I use it for so many things. How do you feel about newer versions of Windows de-emphasizing the control panel in favor of their new settings app?	I'm all for it if they made sure they had 100% coverage of all settings. It's sort of weird that in this day and age, with an R&D budget in the billions, we still have a mix of new control panel and old property pages. But I like the new stuff if it covered all cases!
Hello Dave! Why does Windows have such a rough time transferring a lot of small files? Is it a limitation of NTFS?	It's not Windows, it's all operating systems. Part of it is filesystem related:
	Imagine copying a file takes 200ms of overhead plus 10ms per MB. Coping 100M of large files will take 200ms + 1000ms = 1.2 seconds.
	Now imagine you have 100M of 1M files. Now you have 100*200ms + 1000ms = 20000ms or 20 seconds. 20 times as long for the same amount of data.
Did you ever get a chance to work in/on OS/2? I stuck with OS/2 until 2005/2006, before moving onto Linux, and would love to hear any opinions and stories you might have.	I didn't! I used OS/2 a bit but never had a chance to work on it. Many of the people I worked with did, though... but if OS/2 were Kevin Bacon, I'm one degree removed.
I had waited more than 20 years to ask this... What the fuck is Trumpet Winsock?	That's what you need to use TCP/IP on Windows before it was included in Windows. You're welcome.
What was the idea behind having "generic" activation keys starting in Windows XP that would activate any version, it was said they were for [educational purposes], did Microsoft provide them to 501c3/non-profit schools, or was there a different reasoning?	I'm not sure what you mean by "generic". I remember retail and oem, but what was a generic key?
^{the below is a reply to the above}
There was a set of keys that became public knowledge partway through XP life that appeared to activate unlimited machines as valid, though added a banner "For Educational Purposes Only". I remember trying it back in the day and always wondered what the intention was that was important enough the key activations were never blocked. [I did have multiple legal keys, but curiosity killed the cat and I had to swap one to the "educational" key to see for myself, lol]	I don't actually know! But I can surmise that if it was displaying a banner down in the bottom right corner of the screen, it knew it was not licensed and was likely limited or time-limited in some way. Unless you could actually ACTIVATE them with that key, which would surprise me.
How does OLE still work? I can't think of anything else that complex and old that still runs. We've got a legacy piece in our application that uses it and I can build against it using .net 4.0, in an Azure pipeline and deploy to windows 10 hosts and a piece of 90s technology still works perfectly. How and why?	It was complex, but pretty well written and very well tested. That's not to say there aren't a lot of bugs outside the common case codepaths, but I bet if Office used it, it's pretty solid, and will be forever.
Other than your personal phone number, did any Easter eggs make it to general availability?	There was one in the Win9X shell, but I think we removed it for Windows XP and later. So not that I'm aware of!
Have you ever wanted to make a "sequel" to Space Cadet?	There are actually two other tables available in the original Maxis game that should work, in theory, but I think Space Cadet was the best of the 3, so...
Were there ever any 3rd party edit/change to shell that made you think, "Why didn't we think of that?"	Not offhand, but "Stacks" on MacOS where it tries to rescue your mess by grouping things by filetype (Images, Docs, etc) is pretty clever. So that's something I wish we'd though of!
Have you worked at all with Bryce Cogswell and Mark Russinovich?? Also, what was your initial response to Process Explorer /the Sysinternals stuff??	No, but the SysInternal guys are geniuses of the highest order, so far as I'm concerned (and I say that based on their products, no knowing them). They know their stuff.
What are your best/oddest purchases you were able to justify as a work expense (for example, were you able to get MS to buy pinball machines as an R&D cost)?	I had DirecTv in my office! I was working on the Media Center prototype and we couldn't get cable on campus, so I got the dish installed on the roof, etc....
	I had a Tempest machine in my Office but at my own expense. I started right around the days of the "shrimp vs weenies" memo, so they were pretty cost conscious.
Is it true that you and Dave Cutler got into a knife fight over a hand of poker gone bad?	A broken bottle is not a knife.
Was DoubleSpace stolen from Stacker?	No. As I understand it, DoubleSpace was licensed from an Israeli developer. Then I heard that Stacker had somehow been awarded a patent on using a hash table in compression, which sounds pretty ludicrous if true. There was a trial, and even though it revolved around hash tables and math and compression engines, and no one on the jury had been to college, as I heard it. So the big guy lost. That's the story I heard, your mileage may vary. I'm not a spokesman, etc.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
MS-DOS 6.21, the most useless version. I remember writing an extra "2" on my 6.2 OEM disks when the update came out (no point wasting disks).	You say "useless", I say "canonical".
	I think I actually worked on 6.22, not sure. It was 6.2 something. In terms of usefulness, the features I added to it personally were:
	- Moving Doublespace to HMA to free up a lot of low mem, as noted
	- Giving Diskcopy ability to do it in a single pass with no swaps
	- I wrote a new version of Smartdrv that added CD-ROM support
	- I wrote a special version of Setup that worked via deltas and put everything on a single floppy (no point wasting disks).
	Mind you, I was just a summer intern when I did that, and it took me about 3 months.
What are your favorite DOS command-line tricks that still work in Windows 10?	doskey!
What actually happens if someone deletes Win32?	Human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria. Do not attempt.
Did Bill ever swing by your cubicle and tell you'd he'd take your assignment home and finish it in a weekend if you didn't hurry up?	Cubicle? It was the 90s at Microsoft! I had a corner office with a table, chairs, a Tempest machine, and a sofabed.
What is the best project you worked on or had friends work on that was canceled, that you would revive if you had the resources?	Windows Media Center, I'd say! And I wish they'd done a great AutoPC that the OEMs could have licensed and made common to most cars.
There has been a lot of hate on Windows / Microsoft from the Unix / Linux advocates. What are some narratives that you disagree / don't think are true?	I used to love the Amiga, so I know what it's like to feel a sense of advocacy for a platform that you feel is superior but overlooked in the marketplace.
	I think the most untrue narrative I've heard about them is that they all have neckbeards. I think it's only "most", not all.
How do you introduce yourself at parties?	"Does anyone here know how to update my Groove subscription on my Zune?"
What OS are you using now? What's your favorite OS of all time? What's the worst OS of all time? What's the worst Microsoft OS (if different)?	The best OS of all time was Windows NT 4.0 with the Shell Update Release.
	The worst OS of all time was the TRS-80 Model 1, Level 1 DOS that didn't have the keyboard debounce code in ROM yet so you couldn't even type on the thing.
[deleted]	No, I never put a true easter egg in anything. Especially in an operating system, I don't believe in them. You have to be able to trust the OS, and I think it goes against that.
How did you get started in this specific field?	I first wandered into a Radio Shack store in about 1979 when I was 11, where I saw my very first computer. It was not connected yet, as the staff had not figured out how to set it up yet. Being somewhat precocious, I asked if I might play with it if I could manage to set it up. On a lark they said, “Sure kid, have a shot”, and ten minutes or so later I had it up and running. This endeared me to the manager, Brian, enough that every Thursday night and Saturday morning I would ride my bike down to the store: I’d type in my crude BASIC programs and they were kind enough to indulge my incessant free tinkering on their expensive computer. So that's pretty much how I started!
Do you ever have moments where you’re like “they have it so easy nowadays” or do you think that because of the groundwork put in place 30 years ago that systems have become exponentially more complex?	Only when someone spools up an entire docker instance to pipe something to it on the command line... then it's like "Really? You're basically booting a virtual computer as a command?"
What's the best C++ expert tip you can share for fellow programmers?	If you make anything in your class virtual, make the destructor virtual, particularly if there's any chance that anyone might delete an instance of your derived class through a base class pointer. Otherwise, the behavior is undefined, I think, but even if it works, it's not what you want!
^{the below is a reply to the above}
Wow this is eerie. I literally fixed a bug a couple weeks ago that was this specific case.	They can be weird bugs to track down, too!
Tabs or spaces?	Spaces on an indent of 4, tabs set to 8.
How can I open an MS Binder file?	Push down on the metal tabs at the top and bottom of the central spine of the binder. That will release the 3-hole punch claws, and then you can remove your printed file.
"It's now safe to turn off your computer" Why was this splash removed?	I think most current BIOSes can do it on their own by now!
Do you have any insight as to why MS decided to build Windows 95 from the ground up instead of building off of an existing *nix system the way Apple did with OSX? Was it just for backwards compatibility or were there other reasons? Also, had you gone this way, how do you think Windows, and the industry in general, might be different? I'm asking as someone who thinks that WSL is the best thing to happen to Windows in years.	Windows 95 was not built from the ground up, but NT was. The most succinct reason (and just a guess, I'm not a spokesman) is that even though MS had Xenix on hand, there were fundamental problems in the way Unix handled SMP multiprocessor locks and so on at the time. I presume these have long since been solved in Linux, etc, but not without significant work.
	WSL is one of my favorite things too, but for the library of tools and software, it makes available to me, not because of some fundamental architectural superiority, I don't think!
What are your feelings about "Microsoft Bob"?	https://youtu.be/rXHu9OmLd8Y
What did source control look like in the 90's? How did MS keep its code from leaking out to the public? How did you handle versioning and different developers working on the same feature?	We used a tool called SLM, or Source Library Manager. It was sort of available briefly as a product under the name Microsoft Delta.
	It was OK for smaller teams but did not support branching, so just before I left we moved to Source Depot.
Why was Ctrl + Alt + Delete changed to Ctrl + Shift + Escape?	It wasn't! Ctrl-Alt-Delete raises the "Secure Alert Sequence" which triggers the OS to switch to the secure desktop, where you have the ability to click a button which will start task manager upon return to your regular desktop.
	Ctrl-Shift-Esc is a feature built into Winlogon that launches a TaskManager on the current desktop without switching to the secure desktop.
	There are theoretically hacks and exploits that can only be caught by switching to the secure desktop, so if you're ever in doubt, ctrl-alt-del is the more secure way to go.
How did DOS ever get away with just pulling device names like "COM1" out of thin air when it came to output redirection etc..?	That's for compatibility with MS-DOS.
What are you currently working on?	Mostly on LED and Microcontroller projects that I detail on my YouTube channel, and the channel itself takes a fair bit of my time! If you're curious, you can check out my current successes and failure adventures at http://youtube.com/d/davesgarage
Did you work with Kris Hatleid on Super Hacker and the game Evolution?	I worked with Kris on an unreleased title called "Commander Video". That's largely where I learned assembly language, since he did the bulk of the coding, I watched and did level design, etc. 1982 or so I believe!
Got any dev back door mainframe access codes for pinball?	hidden test
Dave, how did you manage to do all that without being able to google everything?	That's one of the craziest things... I got a degree in computer science before you could even look anything up!
	The hardest part was OLE2. Coming form a different platform (the Amiga) it was a monster to wrap my head around, and the book (Inside OLE2) was not the best for introducing devs to OLE. It scared me, and I sure could have used a YouTube tutorial or two!
Hi Dave! So here's a bit of an odd one. I loved your Space Cadet Pinball! I must have spent countless hours on it as a kid, and even now I still occasionally try to find ways to boot it up. A legitimate classic. But lately, the version windows offers just... don't feel the same. They aren't as nice. Is there a game you can name that you would say feels like a worthy successor to Space Cadet Pinball? Or even any more general pinball games you would recommend?	I have a real Black Knight 2000 machine here in the house that I fully restored, so I'm a fan of physcial pinball as well!
	I think the two best video games are (a) arcade Tempest, and (b) XBox Geometry Wars 3.
	GW3 is a classic, or should be!
Woah woah woah, University of Regina?!? Are you from here? Cool to see a UofR grad had such a major impact!	Yup! Check out the regina sub for a recent article
When working on MS-DOS what did you think of alternatives such as 4DOS, NDOS or DR-DOS, were they source of inspiration for new features or not at all ?	No in general, but Norton had NCD. It was a change folder command that could jump around the disk, so if you typed "NCD drivers" from the root, it could go down to "C:\windows\system32\drives". Super handy.
	So I tried to write one for NT, but it meant changing the working directory of the PARENT process (cmd.exe) and I could never figure out a clean and elegant way to do it without modifying CMD itself!
Which is the best version of Windows? (Figuratively speaking).	Windows NT 4.0

Today I'm taking a shot in the sunday mill and will update you guys

Casino trio

Iron Clays: Unboxing and Discussion

Top 7 Online Card Games For Money Played By Professionals

More Tales From 2+2: A Very Controversial $70k prop bet

I enjoyed writing up and seeing positive feedback from this post so I decided to write up about an interesting prop bet that came from the 2+2 poker forums that I feel went under the radar. It's way longer than I thought it would be but this story has it all: large amounts of money being bet, furious grinding, 25 buy in swings, community outrage and Doug Polk.

The Site

The modern cash game grinder may be surprised to hear that there used to be a Sharkscope style tracking website for online cash games, it was called PokerTableRatings or PTR. It tracked hands fairly accurately. Today, it doesn’t exist and has been shut down for years but it was a valuable resource for grinders and having one browser open to check out opponents was useful. PTR showed your graph and win rates at different stakes, it also had an achievement system. Some achievements were serious like ‘1 Million Dollars In Profit’ and some were less serious like ‘Check Raise 3 Times In A Hand’. One coveted achievement given by PTR was the ‘Ultimate Grinder’. This was given to the most profitable player each month at each stake, this was all tracked on the Ultimate Grinder Leaderboard. So for example: if you are the top of the leaderboard for 50NL in December 2008, you will receive the ‘Ultimate Grinder December 50nl 2008’ badge on your PTR profile.

The Bets

The year is 2010. Johnathon Duhamel has won the WSOP Main Event. Poker, especially online poker is still booming. The grinders are plentiful. The fish are more plentiful. Posts flow on 2+2 like wine.
Enter Silent_0ne. He puts out a proposition bet on BBV (Beats, Brags and Variance: a subforum of 2+2 which is the precursor to Poker’s weekly BBV thread). Back in the golden days of online poker and 2+2 it was common for large prop bets to be made on BBV. Silent_0ne’s prop bet is he will be the ultimate grinder for December 2010 at 100nl. No easy feat, the previous months' ultimate grinders had won between $12k-18k and Silent_0ne claimed to have never played more than 10 tables or ever played on Pokerstars. The odds were set at 6:1 odds in Silent’s_0ne’s favour. Jalexand42 was selected to be the escrow and judge of this prop bet, so he will be the middleman for the money and he will arbitrate any disputes. The rules were set down covered many different situations. The judge was confident of this:

Jalexand42: Just a quick note about the judging... I'm optimistic there won't be any controversy in this bet the way the rules have been defined. (#83)

He would turn out to be so wrong.
Many 2+2 posters weighed their opinions in and started to place bets:

Chicago Joey (Joey Ingram): damn that is going to be interesting for a bunch of reasons(#46)
Canoodles: If I was OP, I wouldn't take this for less than 100-1. (#18)
Chinz: Settling for 6-1 and doing it on December when lots of SNE chasers are playing really high volume... You don't seem to like money. (#218)

Nearly all the posters doubted Silent_0ne but he seemed confident and Jalexand42 started collecting money.
By the 28th November, with 3 days to go until the challenge begins the bets were placed and finalized, 14 people put up between $600-$3k. Silent_0ne stood to gain $67,500 or lose $11,250 from the bet alone. In just a few days he would put himself at the mercy of variance and would dedicate himself to destroying 100nl. If he overcomes this challenging month, he stood to win a significant amount of money.

The Play

December the first rolled in and Silent_0ne starting playing. It was a rocky start for him, he finished day two down more than $2k and received comments from 2+2 posters like:

ChicagoJoey [Joey Ingram]: lol trainwreck (#392)
MinSixBet: are you still taking action? (#399)

But some posters really believed in him and were rooting hard:

Eaglesfan1: Forget about the leaderboard and focus on your game and playing ur best. (#406)

However things got worse and Silent_one seemed to be losing hope, on day 4 he posted this:

Silent_0ne: just got owned
bad rly bad "hero call" for big pot
set of 8s < set of As
KK < AK
bad river bluff shove
set of 6s < str
10s < Js
AK < AA
AK on AK6 board < 66
AA < 99 on 974 board
^ all greater than 200 big blind pots
could have prevented half of those if I didnt suck so much (#410)

Day 5 and Silent_0ne was doing better but was down a few buy ins, still far behind his target. Remember, he needs to be number one in profit in the massive 2010 pool of 100nl Pokerstars players. He posted this astonishing hand:
Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em $0.20 Ante - 9 players

Silent_0ne: $568.55 UTG+1: $444.30 UTG+2: $519.10 MP1: $226.75 Hero (MP2): $257.70 CO: $250.00 BTN: $100.00 SB: $257.70 BB: $120.90
Pre Flop: ($3.30) Silent_0ne is MP2 with 9h 9c
Silent_0ne raises to $4.80, UTG+1 raises to $18.60, 1 fold, MP1 calls $18.60, 5 folds, Silent_0ne calls $13.80
Flop: ($59.10) 2h 8s 5s(3 players)
Silent_0ne checks, UTG+1 bets $32, MP1 folds, Silent_0ne raises to $92, UTG+1 calls $60
Turn: ($243.10) Kc (2 players)
Silent_0ne checks, UTG+1 checks
River: ($243.10) 4s (2 players)
Silent_0ne bets $127, UTG+1 raises to $333.50 all in, Silent_0ne calls $206.50
Final Pot: $910.10
Silent_0ne shows 9h 9c (a pair of Nines)
UTG+1 shows 9d Jc (high card King)
Silent_0ne wins $907.10

As you can see, 2010 was truly an amazing place for online poker.
Silent_0ne was bringing out his inner grinder and was playing 16 hour sessions and seeing huge swings in the first week. Day 7 and he posted some hands that shocked the community and his growing fan base:

DPred123: wtf at those HHs. (#520)
Transa: LoLolLololooLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL (#521)

Here are two of the hands he posted:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em $0.20 Ante - 9 players
Pre Flop: ($3.30) MP1: $365.20 Hero (CO): $342.35 Silent_0ne is CO with 7s 7d
3 folds, MP1 raises to $4, 1 fold, Silent_0ne raises to $15.50, 3 folds, MP1 raises to $41.90, Silent_0ne raises to $342.15 all in, MP1 calls $300.25
Flop: ($687.60) Th Kc 6s(2 players - 1 is all in)
Turn: ($687.60) Ts (2 players - 1 is all in)
River: ($687.60) 2h (2 players - 1 is all in)
Final Pot: $687.60
MP1 shows Ac Ah (two pair, Aces and Tens)

and:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em $0.20 Ante - 3 players
BTN: $656.85 Silent_0ne(SB): $288.00 BB: $345.00
Pre Flop: ($2.10) Silent_0ne is SB with 4d 4h
BTN raises to $3, Silent_0ne raises to $12, 1 fold, BTN calls $9
Flop: ($25.60) 3h 6d 5s(2 players)
Silent_0ne checks, BTN bets $18, Silent_0ne raises to $275.80 all in, BTN calls $257.80
Turn: ($577.20) Js (2 players - 1 is all in)
River: ($577.20) 9c (2 players - 1 is all in)
Final Pot: $577.20
BTN shows 3d 5d (two pair, Fives and Threes)
Hero Silent_0ne 4h 4h (a pair of Fours)
BTN wins $576.20

Silent_0ne explained:

Silent_0ne: barely ate anything last few days. i just get up and play, dont prepare anything. im playing right now btw. down around 2700$ for the month. im really dumb for spewing off 3k+ just cause i was tilted/ran bad, and snapped. another problem that people overlook is the extra attention i get at the tables for doing this prop bet. lots of regs can exploit my plays and then all tend to focus on owning me. (#554)

Silent_0ne had started the month on a $3k downswing, then won $2.5k before going on another $3k downswing in just one week. He must have felt desperate as after an hour and a half Silent_0ne had an idea and events took a shocking turn:

Silent_0ne: any interested if i give up 100nl and start tomorrow on day 7 at 50nl to try and get the badge there for 6 to 1. i wanna gamble and break even on the month, so im willing to put up 5k on this if any1 is interested? (#570)

This new bet must have seemed too good to be true. At this point he had been relentlessly grinding 100nl for a week, was losing badly, he was tilting, was likely playing more tables than he can handle and he’s a week behind getting to the top of the 50nl leaderboard. The bets started to pour in and within an hour he had 7 people place action. The community commented:

Absurd: This is adsurd (#601)
jalexand42: Seriously, take a day to cool off. (#599)
King Fish: I'd be interested but highly advise you to reconsider this and maybe take an hour and step back. Edit: will take $1800 to your $300 assuming same judge and escrow. (#574)
loK2thabrain: I call dibs on first bet when he moves down to win the 25nl badge. (#700)

Everyone on the thread couldn’t believe what they reading, However, Silent_0ne seemed to accept that the 100nl bet was dead and he wasn’t getting the $67k prop bet win. He was willing to pay the $11k out and enter a new prop bet. Now, being the Ultimate Grinder at 50nl is his goal. Again, the bets were substantial and he had 8:1 odds in his favour for being the Ultimate Grinder for December at 50nl. The same day he made the new bet, he started at 50nl and was off.

The New Bet

Enter Fees. Fees is the 2+2 username of Ryan Fee (Currently on Team Upswing), at this point he was known for being a fearsome 2000nl grinder and writing Ryan Fee’s 6 max guide, which he distributed for free. In a world where succinct and good poker strategy was hard to come by, this was a valuable guide for many players. He takes interest in the thread on the 7th of December:

Fees i'll take all the action, PM me (#746)

Fees booked action late and the details of this booking were not listed in the thread. The next day, Fees acts a question about the rules:

Fees: what if kerpowski or jeffmet wins the ugl and he gets second? (#878)

Kerpowski and Jeffmet are players who took action against Silent_0ne. They are also 50/100nl grinders. The case of fellow grinders taking action was covered in the rules. A poster quotes the rules and informs Fees that they have to be existing 50nl/100nl grinders. Fees then asks the following question:

Fees: i think that implies at the same tables as him, but what if they just play completely different games and just win the ugl?

Remember these probing questions, they’ll become relevant later.
By the 10th of December things looked tough for Silent_0ne, the player of the top of the 50nl leaderboard was already at $2.5k profit (50 buy ins). Silent_0ne was up $1.1k and estimated he was only 2-3 days behind pace. By the 12th of December he was still playing brutally long sessions:

Silent_0ne: just finished 11 hour session, too tired to post anything, ill go to bed for a couple hours then post graphs/hands when i wake up. was tilted throughout entire session, played 12k hands...eyes burn...ran bad for once (6 buyins below ev)

He also posted eight hands that looked pretty spewy, here is one of them:

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em $0.10 Ante - 5 players BB: $50.00 UTG: $103.40 CO: $137.65 BTN: $133.00 Silent_0ne (SB): $144.60
Pre Flop: ($1.25) Hero is SB with Ad Qh
1 fold, CO raises to $1.50, BTN calls $1.50, Silent_0ne calls $1.25, BB calls $1
Flop: ($6.50) 6c 6d 6s(4 players)
Silent_0ne checks, BB checks, CO bets $4, BTN folds, Silent_0ne raises to $14.75, BB folds, CO calls $10.75
Turn: ($36.00) 8h (2 players)
Silent_0ne bets $25.75, CO calls $25.75
River: ($87.50) 4d (2 players)
Silent_0ne bets $102.50 all in, CO calls $95.55 all in
Final Pot: $278.60
CO shows Jd Jc (a full house, Sixes full of Jacks)
Silent_0ne shows Ad Qh (three of a kind, Sixes)
CO wins $276.60

Even people taking action against him gave him advice:

King Fish: I am speechless … It's NL50. Stop trying to get so fancy. (#1038)

But then, Silent_0ne has an explosive session and is up an incredible $2800 in one day, that’s 56 buy ins! The posters go wild as he moves into 3rd place on the 50nl Ultimate Grinder leaderboard:

vaike $3,142, 19.38 Hands BB/100
zzn1980 $2,833, 2.46 Hands BB/100
Silent_0ne69 $2,634, 5.19 Hands B/100

For the first time people are starting to believe that he can do this.
Fast forward to the next day, December 13th and with another miraculous winning session he reaches number one on the leaderboard. He has $3.4k profit at 50nl and number two is close behind with $3.1k, if he can maintain his win rate of 6b/100 hands then he should have a very real chance of making an incredible comeback.
14th December. Fees posts:

Fees: still taking action, I want 2:1

Despite Silent_0ne being top of the leaderboard when he posted this and Fees already buying action Fees seemed willing to take 2:1 in Silent_0ne’s favour.
Soon after, a poster in the thread reveals that:

tightmaniac: fees is 4th

It is revealed that Fees who is normally a 2000nl player is playing 50nl HU and is 4th on the leaderboard. HU 50nl still counts towards the 50nl leaderboard. With the higher rate of hands of HU, bigger winrates of HU and Fees' skill, it could mean he would soon reach the top of the leaderboard. 10 minutes after TightManic’s post Fees lowers his odds:

Fees: Looking to take action on this at 1:1 (#1180)

The judge weighs in:

Jalexand42: If fees' didn't disclose this to whoever has his action, it's obviously pretty questionable, although that probably should have been asked. As far as the prop bet tho, I specifically asked Silent whether HU players should be included/excluded and he said included. The rules clearly don't exclude some random player from dropping down and playing $50nl (or $100nl for the original bet). They DO clearly state that people who bet against Silent one as part of the prop bet are NOT allowed to interfere with the bet, but I don't have anything to do with whatever side action fees may have on this. I told kerpowski last night that I didn't want him to play HU to try to win the badge, since I felt like it was a gray area in the intent of the rules (since he obviously doesn't normally play those stakes).
Kind of sucks for OP if this is going on, but I can't really change the rules after it's started since that would affect the people that bet against Silent. (#1196)

As of the 15 December Silent_0ne was still top of the board with $4.4k and most posters were expressing their displeasure if Fees were to continue playing 50nl. Silent_0ne drops this bombshell:

Silent_0ne: ‘2. Actions must be in accordance with the intent of having a fair prop bet. No actions (chip dumping, collusion, ghosting/coaching players on Silent_0ne's tables, etc) can be taken with the intent to affect the outcome of the prop bet. Violations will result in the violator's action being forfeited and may result in additional modification/extention to neutralize the interference.’ [Silent_0ne is quoting the rules here.] ‘The spirit of the bet is that OP is competing against players who 'really' play NL100, both ring and heads up.’
I know a friend of Fees and his friend said he was legit and everything. alittle after the bet started and action was full, fees approached me and my friend about taking additional action at 10 to 1. my friend and I took an additional 2.5k to his 25k and escrowed to wcgrider. the bet was under the assumption that the same rules as the 100nl bet were going to be used, and whatever the judge decides would be final.
so given the quotes above, it is against the rules that someone betting against me should also be able to compete against me given that he does not regularly play at 50nl (he plays 6max 2knl and WON the UGL badge last month at that stake) also, im not allowed to play 50nl HU which is really fishy and easy to win the UGL badge at if you put in enough volume.
regardless of if fees action is with Jalex or not, i think the same rules apply, because he is not a regular at the stakes and he accepted the same rules when making the bet with my friend and I going to eat something then start up a grind session, hopefully I continue to crush and run good, though my heart has sunk when I looked at fees in forth, and I feel ill and tilted (#1205)

Silent_0ne posted that he did a deal, off with main thread with 10 to 1 odds (Fees betting $25k to Silent_0ne’s $2.5k that Silent_0ne will win ultimate grinder 50nl) with Fees and that WCGRider (Doug Polk, currently of Upswing Poker and poker Youtube fame) is the escrow, not Jalexand42. Most posters now seem outraged:

King Fish: Wow what an angle shoot by Fees on this. This does help define the measure of what type of person he is that he is even attempting it. (#1207)
Tumaterminator: sickest hustle ever. (#1210)
kp1022: wait, doeboyfre$h is fees?
he sat me in 50nl HU a few days ago FWIW
after PTR'ing him , i asked why was he playing so low? he replied, "busto" (#1234)

Some of the posters were trying to play Fees at the 50nl in attempt to slow down his winning streak and tell Fees that he is breaking the rules. Silent_0ne expressed his displeasure and downed mental state:

Silent_0ne: this is horrible. im going to start my first grind right now. imo what fees is doing is against the rules and is unfair. i really hope i dont lose alot right now, but im in a pretty poor emotional state
please whoever is decent, sit it up with fees and discouarge him to continue what hes doing. 2knl player won badge last month, makes big bet against me and decides to compete for 50nl badge against me... (#1267)

For the first time in a few days Fees posts:

Fees: Hey,
Just to clear a few things up,

I haven't broken any rules, there isn't a rule that explicitly states that I cannot win the UGL.

I'm not trying to scam/do anything shady/etc, when I made the bet I posted in this thread asking if a bettor could win the UGL […] anyway I'm going to try and win the 50nl UGL this month... I haven't done anything wrong and there is nothing wrong with me going for it.

Then, an enflamed debate about the rules erupts, almost every poster is furious at Fees

Silent_0ne: had a conversation with WCGRider over the phone. the assumption was that jalex is the judge of this bet, and his word is final. WCGRider is simply just an escrow. fees and I agreed on the rules of the bet and having jalex of the judge. #1352

Then WCGRider (Doug Polk) posts for the first time:

WCGRider: Wanted to make a quick post here because i talked to colin earlier about this and i want to clear up a few things.
First off, I was never told i was going to be an escrow. I literally woke up with colins [Silent_0ne] money in my account. I was never asked anything, I was never told anything, I just was sent the money and thats it.
So now im being brought into this to make a decision, which i dont think really is fair. I haven't read any of this thread, I haven't read the rules. Also, fees has to be one of my best friends here in las vegas, and I want that to be clear before i give my opinion about this. I think its sort of unfair that i get put into this situation.

jalexand42 then posts his judgment in a lengthy post (#1526) but I believe this excerpt sums it up:

jalexand42: So, while it is not UNFAIR of fees to be playing $50nl, he has CLEARLY taken actions that will influence the outcome of the bet IF he wins the UGL for $50nl for December. Fees would clearly NOT be playing $50nl (and in fact is still playing his normal stakes) if he didn't have action on this bet. Fees also clearly understood this was a questionable area with regard to the rules based on his posts in this thread and he did not clarify it with the judge. He posts also indicate clearly that he felt he was subject to the rules. Therefore, I rule that Fees' standing on the UGL for December WILL BE IGNORED for purposes of determining this bet if he wins.

Many posters praise Jalexand42. But Jalexand42 does not have the money from the sidebet between Silent_0ne and Fees. WCGrider does. Silent_0ne gives his piece of mind and a quick poker update:

Silent_0ne: yes, i agree with this [Jalexand42's judgment].
also, fees can keep the 25k in the bet without any forfiet. im just really happy things worked out okay.
however i probably should have read this before my session I just played. probably wouldnt have spewed as much at the endodays been my worst day since the start of the 50nl bet so far. gonna play 1 more session later tonight and going to be in alot better and focused mood (#1561)

Then, another bombshell drops, a friend of WCRrider’s reveals that Fees didn’t even escrow his money to Doug:
theskillzdatklls: Afaik, Fees did not ship his $25k share to Doug, only Colin [Silent_0ne] sent his part. (#1669)
2+2 reacts:

Handbaggio: LOL wtf, fees hasn't escrowed his bet??? (#1676)
rnb0sprnkles: LOL and when I thought the drama was starting to die down, the thread gets even crazier (#1698)

Jalexand42 has a conversation with WCGRider to reach an agreement and reports:

Jalexand42: Okay, so here's the summary of my conversation with WCGRider:

He is only holding Silent & the_most's action, $2,500.

He did talk to Fees. Fees told him he was going to talk to Colin [Silent_0ne] today and 'hopes to work out something reasonable'.

I asked what that means, he said he didn't feel like he could tell me, because he felt like what Fees told him was as a friend, but that it sounded fair in WCGRider's opinion.

WCGRider said he thought my decision making sounded reasonable.

WCGrider said that noone told him what to do, so he figured he was just holding on to Silent's money.

I told WCGrider I was willing for him to ship me the $2.5k now if he was feeling uncomfortable, he said he'd wait to see what Silent & Fees work out. ( #1703)

Back to actual poker and Silent_0ne reports a bad losing session on the 16th December citing all the ongoing drama:

Silent_0ne: 22 buyin downswing im playing really bad right now, and I really wish I didn't have to think about and deal with all these other problems.

The community are rooting really hard to him at this point and are all telling him to stay strong. Things start to get messy when Jalexand42 speaks with WCGRider and Fees and in a long post ( #1957) said that WCGRider protested his participation was unfair and Jalexand42 accused him of not of not already sending the $25k to Jalexand42. Fees also tried to offer Silent_0ne a $1k buy out saying it was ‘super generous’, it was refused. Silent_0ne states that the reason fees doesn't want his money escrowed by Jalexand42 is that he is afraid that his bet will be forfeited due to breaking the rules. WCGRider chimed in to defend himself (he also spoke about playing 50nl-100nl and having a rough year, which is interesting as he developed into the top HU player for a time and couldn’t get action, even at the highest stakes.) The 2+2 community then debate and lightly harass WCGRider and Fees to concede and send the money to Jalexand42. Fees finally agrees to a 50% buyout.

The Outcome

On the 17th of December and Silent_0ne slips to number 2 on the leaderboards.

vaike $3,835 ,17.44BB/100
Silent_0ne69 $3,523, 4.25BB/100

Silent_0ne then makes a post that changes everything:

Silent_0ne : Hello everyone
firstly, I would like to say thank you so much to everyone who supported me throughout this bet. i cant stress how much it meant to me to see any post wishing me goodluck, or someone pming me given me some life lessons and more encouragement.
ive been approached by the bettors on numerous occasions regarding a buyout. the original buyout deal offered was 33%. eventually 37% was offered, and then 44%, and finally I agreed on 50% of total wagers from all 6 bettors as their buyout.
I am not really satisfied with a buyout, and I was not the one originally looking for the buyout. the bettors wanted it and I decided to see what they had to offer. what I wanted was time to spend with friends and family throughout the christmas break. With continuing this bet, I do have alot of confidence of accomplishing it, but at the expense of isolation through one of the most special times of each year. My family was mad at me when I tried explaining to them I probably wouldn't be able to particpate in any family events and have much if any celebration of christmas.
my goal the next 14 days was to just grind it out 10 hours each day with breaks inbetween, and sleep. Instead I will be able to go back to my regular, stress free grinding, and shipping 50% of the total wagers after half the month as gone by. In the end, including both the 100nl and 50nl prop bets, I made a net of roughly +20k. The other two options would be risking a net of -20k or a net of +60k. I took the variance free route, and all the bettors did the same thing. None of us wanted to lose the bet obviously, so I think we worked out a fair resolution with this buyout.
I have no hard feelings against fees or wcg rider. Perhaps a different scenerio would have occured if the recent issues did not occur, but thats in the past now and i'm looking forwards to a postive future. (#2511)

So, in the end all the parties involved reached a buyout agreement on the 50nl prop bet. Silent_0ne would stop playing the 50nl prop bet and would be up $20k. The community replies:

Ditch Digger: Silent, nice job. 50% is more than reasonable. (#2516)
kelnel: gg on +20k, u rocked!! (#2520)
shhhnake_eyes: I call this the most anticlimactic finish ever. (#2522)

Link to original thread.
Note: Please note I’ve tried to be impartial in writing this. Please let me know publicly or privately if there are any errors or you feel I misrepresented something or someone. The quotes I’ve included don’t always show the full post made but I’ve included the post number in each quote so you can read it on 2+2 in full context. If you want to be fully informed you should read the whole 2+2 thread.

Iron Clays distribution

[HIRING] 40 Jobs in CA Hiring Now!

Ultimate Gambling Guide for GTA Online - odds, probabilities, and optimal strategies

Company Name	Title	City
McDonald's	$15 Anytime Crew Team Member	Cabazon
McDonald's	Crew Team Member	Twentynine Palms
McDonald's	Crew Team Member	Yucca Valley
Morongo Casino Resort and Spa	Steward (Part-Time)	Cabazon
Morongo Casino Resort and Spa	Cashier - Fiesta Taco (Part-Time)	Cabazon
Morongo Casino Resort and Spa	Chip Runner - Poker (Part-Time)	Cabazon
Aspen Dental	Dentist - DDS / DMD	Fresno
The Home Depot	Warehouse Associate	Livermore
Walmart	Warehouse Associate - (Fri-Mon Days) Make up to $19!	Beckwourth
Walmart	Distribution Center Team Member - (M,T,Th,F Days) Make up to $18	Beckwourth
Walmart	Warehouse Team Member - (Fri-Mon Overnights) Make up to $20!	Beckwourth
ABC Supply co.	CDL Delivery Truck Driver	Castroville
ABC Supply co.	CDL Delivery Truck Driver	Chico
ABC Supply co.	CDL Delivery Truck Driver (51)	Gardena
FedEx Ground	Package Handler- Warehouse	s San Francisco
YRC Freight	Truck Driver CDL A - Great Home Time	Adelanto
YRC Freight	Truck Driver CDL A	Altadena
YRC Freight	Truck Driver CDL A	Angelus Oaks
Aerojet Rocketdyne	Heat Treated and Brazing Furnace Operator (2nd Shift)	Canoga Park
Aerojet Rocketdyne	Senior Director, Human Resources - Total Rewards	El Segundo
Bluecrew	Shipping Specialist	Verdi
Shane Co.	Jewelry Consultant	Cupertino
Shane Co.	Jewelry Consultant	Walnut Creek
Harbor Freight Tools	Quality Ops Specialist I	Calabasas
Avalonbay Communities	Maintenance Manager	Chino Hills
The Wonderful Company	Health Coach or RD - Nutritionist	Delano
Harbor Freight Tools	Retail Stocking Manager	Poway
The Wine Group	Shipping Receiving Clerk 2	Glen Ellen
Montage Health	Registered Nurse - Med Surg/Oncology	Monterey
The Wine Group	Lab Technician 1	Ripon
Randstad USA	MC Staffing Manager	Santa Fe Springs
Hired	Software Engineer (Security Clearance Required) - Remote - Acampo, CA	Acampo
Centra Healthcare Solutions	Speech Language Pathologist (SLP - CCC) - SNF / LTC - Part Time	Bell
Hired	Full-Stack Software Engineer - Bodega, CA	Bodega
Hired	Backend Engineer - Remote - Bodega, CA	Bodega
Centra Healthcare Solutions	Speech Language Pathologist (SLP - CCC) - SNF / LTC	Calpella
Reddaway Trucking	Truck Driver CDL A	Cantua Creek
Primal Pet Foods, Inc.	Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS) Supervisor	Fairfield
The Home Depot	Customer Service/Sales	Felton
Reddaway Trucking	Truck Driver CDL A	Firebaugh

Since the Diamond Casino update, I have seen a large number of 12-year-olds posting Blackjack memes on this sub. As a parent, this has me very worried.
On top of that, I have seen some of the most trustworthy GTA Youtubers giving flawed gambling advice, which can have damaging impact on their gullible audiences.
So that's why I decided to write this up, to educate everyone on the subject, so there will be no more misunderstandings.
(2020 Update down at the bottom.)
If you're one of those Youtubers that wants to use this information in a video, feel free to do so. The more people (especially kids) that become educated about gambling, the better.
But then also please go back and review your own work, and delete or edit the videos that are giving out the wrong advice, like where you're saying you have "a good strategy for making money with roulette", or some other nonsense that I've heard this week. Delete that please.
Before I get into the individual games, I need to discuss a few concepts first, that will make understanding the rest a lot easier.

Expected return and variance
A game like Roulette or Slots has a fixed expected return on your bets. This is a percentage that you have no way of influencing. Say you are flipping a coin against a friend, and you both put up $1. The winner gets the pot. Since the odds are even at 50%, in the long run, you will expect to break even. Your expected return is 100% of your bet.
But imagine if you would play this coin flipping game in a casino against the house. On the "house rules" listed at the table they would probably say that you would only get 95 cents back for every win, while you are forfeiting a dollar on every loss. Would you still play?
Sounds stupid to do so, but still, everybody does it. Every bet they place on Roulette, every coin they put into a Slot machine, is based on the same concept.
Those few cents they take on every bet are their profit margin, and has paid for all the Vegas lights, the Mirage volcanoes, and the Bellagio fountains. Make no mistake - casino gambling games are not designed to make you lose, because sure, you can get lucky on a single night, but they are designed to make them win. That's the beauty of it. They can both exist at the same time.
Too many people that don't see how this works, are just destined for disaster. Just because you went on a lucky streak and won 8 games out of 10, does not mean that flipping coins is a profitable game, or that choosing tails is a winning strategy. Always be aware of the house edge, your true chances of winning, and just realize that you got lucky. There is no such thing as a strategy in flipping a coin that will give you a higher expected return, so it's just pure gambling, just like Slots and Roulette.
Most casino games are made in such a way, that your expected return is a little under 100%. This means that from every dollar bet at the tables, the casino expects to keep a few cents. For individual players, results may vary. Some will win, most will lose. But for the house, it doesn't matter. They take millions of bets each day, so for them, the expected average works out a lot sooner. In short: the house always wins.
When looking at the house edge, we're talking about the expected long-term result, based on the game's house rules. But for a player, it can take literally tens of thousands of hands or spins before you also reach this average number. Until that time, you can experience huge upswings and downswings, that are the result of nothing but short-term luck, which is called variance.
Some games and some bets have a much higher variance than others, which means your actual results will differ enormously from what you're expected to be at.
Take for example betting on red/black at the Roulette table. This is a low-variance proposition, because it has a high percentage chance of occurring, and a low payout.
Contrast this with betting single numbers in Roulette, which only win once every 38 spins on average. This bet has a much higher variance, meaning you can easily hit a dry spell, and not hit anything for 200 bets in a row, or you can see a single number hit three times in five consecutive spins. This is not a freak occurrence in high-variance bets.
Even though the expected return in both these bets is exactly the same, there's a huge difference in variance, causing massive differences in short-term results, which can go both ways. You need to be aware of this, before you decide what types of bets you are comfortable with placing.

Gamblers' Fallacy
Another thing to realize, is that each individual game, hand, or spin, is completely independent from the one(s) before it, and after it.
Gamblers tend to believe, that the chance of a certain outcome is increased, based on previous results.
The most famous example comes from the Casino de Monte Carlo, where the Roulette wheel managed to land on black 26 times in a row. Gamblers lost many millions during that streak, all frantically betting on red, believing that the odds were in favor of the wheel coming out on red, after producing so many blacks. This is not true. Each round is completely independent, and the odds are exactly the same.
You will hear people say things like a Blackjack table being "hot" or "cold", which is completely superstitious, and should be ignored. The exception was when Blackjack was being dealt from a shoe. It made card counting possible. But with the introduction of shuffle machines, and continuous shuffling like is being used in GTA, this no longer exists.
This is also why "chasing your losses" is a very bad idea. After being on a losing streak for some time, many gamblers believe that now it's their turn to start winning. So they will often increase their bet size, believing that when their predicted winning streak comes around, they will win back their losses, and more.
The reality of it, more often than not, is that people will indeed start playing higher and higher limits, until they are completely broke. Nobody is ever "due for a win". There is never a guarantee that you're about to start winning. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true. You are, after all, in a casino.

Betting systems
Some people like to think that they have a fool-proof betting system, like the Martingale system. Simply increase or even double your bet when you lose, and keep doing that until you win. In theory, this system will always win. So that's why table limits were introduced, and where the system fails.
If you start at the Roulette table, playing red/black, with a small 750 chip wager, and just double your bet every time you lose, you only have to lose 6 times in a row, before you will be betting the table limit of 48,000, just to get that 750 chip profit.
Sure, you can go on all evening without this happening, winning 750 chips each time, but this losing streak only has to happen once, and you're bust. Any betting system like this is ill-advised, because you are hugely increasing your so-called "risk of ruin", and that's what we were trying to avoid.
And even if your starting bet is only 100 chips, after only nine straight losses, and nine doubled bets, you are betting the table limit at 50,000 chips. If you lose that bet, you're 100,000 chips in the hole, with no way to recover that with your 100 chip base wager.
So don't believe anyone that says this is the perfect system to always win in the casino. Sooner or later they will understand why they were wrong, when they're asking you for a loan.

Set your limits BEFORE you start playing
One final point before we get into the games, a general tip for people that head out to play: money management.
Just like in real life, before you go to the casino, decide on a maximum amount that you are WILLING TO LOSE.
Bet small enough, so that amount can last you through the entire evening, and you will not be tempted to run to the ATM to continue playing.
Considering GTA money, some people will be comfortable losing 1% of their GTA bank balance, some people will be comfortable with gambling away 5% of their total GTA savings. It's up to you what you can handle. Decide for yourself where it will start to hurt, and don't cross that line.
But whatever number you decide on, as soon as you lost that amount, get up and walk away. Don't chase your losses, stick to your limits, and accept that this has not been your day. There is always another game tomorrow. Always agree with yourself on a simple stop-loss rule, how much you would want to lose at most, and simply stop playing when you get there.
Same goes for winning. You can decide on a number, how much profit you would like to take away from the casino. You can go on a hot streak and be up half a million in a short period of time, but if you would continue to play longer, looking for more, chances are that you're going to lose it all back.
Most people are happy with doubling their daily casino budget, for example. Others are looking for 10 bets profit in Blackjack. Whatever you choose, when you hit that number, you can stop playing and bank your profits, or you can continue playing if you're still enjoying the games, but then only just play minimum bet sizes. Then you're just playing for fun, not for money. You've already made your profit, so simply keep it in your pocket, and don't risk losing it again.
Either way, decide on what your money management strategy will be, and STICK TO IT.

Casino games in GTA Online
Now, I'm going to dive into the games that you can find at the Diamond casino, ordered from worst to best.

6) Slots
Generally the rule is this: the less strategy a game has, the worse it is for the player. And with slots, this is definitely the case.
The only influence you have, is choosing what type of machine you're going to play. Basically, there are two types of slot machines:
-high frequency, low payout slots
-low frequency, high payout slots
In the first type, there is no huge (progressive) jackpot on offer, just your average selection of prizes that don't go up to crazy amounts.
This will result in a player having many more spins resulting in a win. The amounts that you win on the bigger prizes, will be smaller, but they do come around more often. This type of slot machine has a lower variance, which means that your money should last you longer, winning many smaller prizes along the way to keep you going.
The second type of slot machine lures you in with the temptation of a huge jackpot prize. Even though the long-term expected return on these machines is the same as the previous type, the prize distribution is hugely different. The large jackpot prize weighs heavily on the scale of expected return, but the chance of it hitting is extremely small. This results in a much higher variance on this type of machine. Usually your money will go down very fast, because the smaller prizes are less rewarding than on the other type of machine.
At the Diamond, the info screen says the player return at slots is set at 98.7%. This means that, on average, for every maximum bet of 2,500 chips, you expect to lose 32.5 chips.
This might not seem like a lot, but the danger of slots is that the game is extremely fast. You can spin about once every 6 seconds, which would result in an expected LOSS of about 20,000 chips per hour of playing.
But again, in this long-term expected number, the large jackpot awards are also factored in, and as long as you don't hit those big prizes, you'll see your money go down a lot faster.
In any case, thank heavens the max bet is only set at 2,500, or else we would see more players go bankrupt at alarming rates.
Optimal strategy for slots:
There is none. Because after betting, you have no more influence over the outcome. The only choices you have, is what type of machine you want to play at, and how much money you are going to risk. And those are all personal preference. As long as you stick to your loss limits, as discussed above, there's no harm in having a go every once in a while, hoping to get a lucky hit. Just realize that you don't have a high chance of scoring a big win, so as soon as you do, get up and walk away.

5) Roulette
Roulette is also a game where you have no influence over the outcome. There is zero skill involved. You place your bet, and that's it.
In traditional French roulette, a table has only the single-zero, but of course, for American casinos that wasn't enough of a house edge, so they simply doubled their profits by adding a second zero. The house edge was increased from 1/37 to 1/19, which is huge.
This makes playing on a double-zero roulette table by definition a sucker's play.
The payouts scale evenly, which means that a bet on a single number, and a bet on half of the numbers, and everything in between, yields the same expected return. The only difference, again, being the variance that you are willing to subject yourself to.
The player return for double-zero Roulette for all bets is 94.74%.
Except for the 5-number bet, which can only be made by placing a bet on the two top rows that contain 0, 00, 1, 2 and 3. The expected return on this bet is lower: 92.1%. This is because it only pays out 6-1. Why? Well, the number 36 isn't divisible by 5, so the greedy people that came up with double-zero Roulette had to round it off someway, and as expected, it wasn't going to be in the players' favor.Just remember that that 5-number bet is the worst bet at the table, and should be avoided. All other possible bets have the same expected return.
So it really doesn't matter how you spread your bets, if you bet only one chip, or if you litter the entire table with a bucketload of chips. Each chip you put out there, has the same expected return, so there is no strategy that will improve your long-term results.
Assuming that you're betting the maximum table amount of 50,000 chips, you will be looking at an expected loss of about 2,630 chips per spin. Considering that a round takes about 45 seconds to complete, your expected LOSS at the GTA Roulette tables will be around 200,000 chips per hour of playing.
Optimal strategy for double-zero roulette:
Stay away. Stay far away.

4) Three Card Poker
With Three Card Poker, we come across the first game where there is actually some strategy involved. You get to look at your cards, and then decide if you want to fold, and surrender your ante, or double your bet.
Additionally, you can choose to place a side bet on "Pair Plus", which offers progressive payouts.
There are some websites out there that ran all the numbers with computer simulations, and even though I would like to quote the source here, these websites are understandably littered to the max with online casino ads, so that's why I have decided against doing that.
Optimal strategy for Three Card Poker:
For this game you only have to remember one strategy rule: Always bet on any high card queen-six-four or better, and fold any high card queen-six-three or lower. That's it. Just don't forget to double check if you're not folding a straight or a flush, and you'll be fine.
This strategy will result in an expected return of 96.63%.
The Pair Plus sidebet, with the payout table that is used at the Diamond casino, gives you an expected return of 97.68%, which is actually a bit better than the main ante bet.
So by playing both wagers, you're reducing your expected losses per bet, but since you're betting more, you're also increasing your expected loss per hour.
My advice would obviously be to not play this game at all, but if you do, put as much of your bet as possible on the Pair Plus, while making our Ante bet as small as you can.
To be able to compare it to the other games at the Diamond, let's stay on that 50,000 maximum wager, meaning making your ante bet 35,000, and your pair plus bet 15,000, if the table would allow it.
This results in an expected loss of about 1,525 chips per hand, and with a round taking about 45 seconds, this adds up to an expected LOSS of around 120,000 chips per hour of playing. In comparison, if you would only play the ante bet for 50,000 per hand, you expect to lose 1,685 chips per hand, which means an expected LOSS of about 135,000 chips per hour. So the more out of that 50,000 wager you can put on the "Pair Plus" sidebet, the better.
Even though it may be fun to try out this game for a bit, since there's only one simple strategy rule to follow, you'll soon find yourself robotically grinding down your bankroll until it has vaporized. You're not missing out on anything if you skip these tables, there is no real challenge.
Just like with Roulette and Slots, if you want to try it out nonetheless, you can just bet the minimum amounts and only play for fun, so it won't matter if you win or lose.

3) Blackjack
Blackjack is the most complicated game by far. Simply because the player has to make a series of decisions, which will largely decide the outcome. Luckily, there is such a thing as an optimal strategy, which will be outlined below.
However, the strategy is also dependent on the house rules. These not only affect your expected return, but in some places also your decisions.
Here are the house rules at the Diamond casino:
-The game uses 4 standard decks, and a continuous shuffle.
-Blackjack pays 3 to 2, dealer checks for early blackjack.
-No insurance offered, no surrender.
-Dealer stands on soft 17.
-Double down on any two cards.
-Player can split only once, but doubling after split is allowed.
-Seven-Card Charlie.
Under these rules, and following the "basic strategy" chart, your expected return at Blackjack is a shade under 99.6%, which is extremely good for a casino game, that's why Blackjack should be your table game of choice.
But it comes at a price: you are going to have to memorize the relatively complicated strategy chart, or at least stick it to your monitor until you have it in your head. But in case you ever stumble into a real-life casino, you won't regret having this table memorized, so I would definitely advise you to work on that.
The strategy chart might look complicated at first, but you will be able to notice certain patterns. Your decisions are mainly based on the dealer's upcard, which is basically divided into a weak card (2 to 6), and a strong card (7 to ace).
When a dealer shows a strong card, you will be hitting more often with the risk of going bust, but when a dealer shows a weak card, you're not taking that risk, and you will be standing more, but also doubling and splitting more. You want to increase your bets when the odds are in your favor, and get out cheap when they're not.
But it also helps to take some time to think about why a certain advice is given. For example, why does it say that you always have to split two eights, even against an ace. Well, that's because two eights equals 16, which is the worst total you can have. It's better to split them up, and give yourself a chance of finding a 17, 18 or 19 with the next card. Once you see the logic in that, you'll have one less thing to memorize.
The playing advice in the basic strategy chart is a result of computer simulations that ran all possible outcomes against each other, and produced the most profitable decision for each situation. So you can't go wrong following it.
Optimal strategy for Blackjack with Seven-Card Charlie
The added house rule of Seven-Card Charlie, adds a small advantage for the player, and it does influence a few strategy decisions. For example, you might have a 14 with 6 cards, against the dealer's 5 upcard.
Normally this would be an automatic stand, but if you're only one card away from the Seven-Card Charlie, meaning an instant win for the player, regardless of the dealer's hand, it turns it into a hit.
Here's the most optimal strategy chart to follow for the Diamond Casino house rules: https://prnt.sc/olct6g
You'll see that two fives are missing from the chart, and that's because you never split them. You treat them as a regular 10. You also never split tens. Just stand on 20.
If you follow this strategy religiously, even with a maximum wager of 50,000 chips, you only expect to lose about 215 chips per hand, and with rounds taking about 30 seconds, that amounts to an expected LOSS of 26,000 chips per hour, which is only half a bet. A small price to pay for an hour of entertainment.
But since the expected return is so extremely close to 100%, you will see more positive short-term results than with other games. But obviously it can also swing the other way. Again, this is supposed to be the game where your money lasts you the longest, but always set your loss and win limits before you sit down. That rule simply always applies.

Still, even with optimal strategies applied, all these games are expected to lose you money in the long run. So betting any kind of large amounts is not advised. If you simply want to enjoy playing these games, there's nothing wrong with betting a minimal amount. Playing these games for a longer period of time will already cost you money anyway, since your daily property fees will still be charged while you're playing in the GTA casino. As long as you can play for fun, there's nothing wrong, but when you see yourself betting insane chunks of your entire bank balance to try to recoup some unfortunate losses, you're doing it wrong.
As the commercials in Britain all correctly say: when the fun stops, stop.

2) Virtual Horse Racing
Now onto the good stuff. I ran some numbers, and I believe Rockstar has made a mistake with the horse racing game. Because as it stands, and if I read the numbers correctly, this game is actually profitable for the player. You can actually make money with this, at least, until Rockstar figures out their mistake and patches it.
If anyone wants to jump into the math and double check this to make sure, please do so. I will add any corrections to this post. This is one of those "to good to be true" things, so I keep thinking that I might have overlooked something. So please verify it if you can.
The setup is this. There is a pool of 100 horses, each with their own attached payout. These are divided into 3 groups, ranked by their odds. From each group, 2 horses are randomly selected to provide a pool of six runners for you to bet on.
Now it's not an actual race you're looking at. You are looking at a raffle. This is important to realize.
Each horse gets awarded a certain number of raffle tickets. The favorites get awarded more tickets than the underdogs, and therefore, have a higher chance of winning.
If this distribution works like it does in the real-life casinos, then the raffle tickets are awarded according to the betting odds.
Example 1: imagine a race with 3 runners, all have 2/1 odds, representing a 33.3% chance of winning. (Because 2/1 means 2 AGAINST 1, so 3 total.) In this case, each horse gets one third of the raffle tickets, giving them an equal chance to win.
Example 2: imagine a race with 3 runners, one has 1/1 odds (or EVENS), representing a 50% chance of winning, and the other two horses are marked up as 3/1, with a 25% chance of winning. The favorite gets half the tickets, the other two get a quarter of the tickets each.
A ticket is drawn, and you'll have a winner.
It doesn't matter in this game which horse you bet on, because the expected return is always the same: 100% or break-even, for the above examples.
Now, what happens if the percentages don't exactly add up to 100%?
They must add up to 100%, because there will always be a winner. And only one winner.
So when this is the case, the actual winning chances of the horses are adjusted to meet the 100% requirement, using their payout odds to determine the scale.
So, if the represented percentages add up to more than 100%, the actual winning chances of the runners will be DECREASED, resulting in all bets becoming losing propositions for the players.
Example: In a 6-horse race, all runners are listed at 4/1, representing a 20% chance. Only with six runners that amounts to 120%. So all chances are scaled down by 1/6th, to end up at 100%.
This means your horse's chances are reduced from 20% to 16.67%, turning it into a losing bet: 5 times you will lose your bet, and 1 time you will win, but only get 4 bets back in this instance, instead of 5. A losing bet in the long run.
This is the type of odds that you find in regular casinos, with fields as large as 15 runners to bet on, where the assumed winning chances always add up to more than 100%, therefore are decreased for all runners, resulting in a house edge.

But in GTA Online's Inside Track, there are other scenarios, because of the small field, and the way that they are put together.
In some cases, the represented percentages when added up, are LESS than 100%, meaning that the actual winning chances of all runners, are INCREASED.
This creates profitable bets for the players, because in the long run, you're expecting to win more money than you lose. This is a gambler's dream, pure and simple.
So, according to the in-game information, the three groups of horses are divided as follows:
-Favorites: EVENS to 5-1
-Outsiders: 6-1 to 15-1
-Underdogs: 16-1 to 30-1

Let's take the two most extreme examples to show what's happening.
The worst possible field to bet on: two runners at EVENS, two runners at 6-1, and two runners at 16-1.
EVENS represents a 50% chance, 6-1 is 14.29%, and 16-1 is 5.88%. Add those up and you land on a total of 140.34%.
This means that the actual winning chances of the horses are decreased by 28.75% (to get that 140% down to 100%), which makes betting on this field extremely unwise.
A horse at EVENS will only come in as a winner 35.63% of the time, instead of 50%,
a horse at 6-1 will only win 10.18% of the time,
and an underdog at 16-1 will only win 4.19% of the time.

The expected return on a bet on any of the horses in this field is only 71.26%, so a maximum bet of 10,000 chips on any of these horses holds an expected LOSS of 2,875 chips.
These returns are the same, because the winning chances are scaled equally, according to the payout numbers. So it really doesn't matter which horse you bet on, in the long run, you expect the same results.
But as explained before, it does influence variance, and therefore your short-term result, which can swing both ways.

But now, the best possible field to bet on: two runners at 5-1, two runners at 15-1, and two runners at 30-1.
Odds at 5-1 represents a winning chance of 16.67%, 15-1 odds means 6.25% chance, and 30-1 odds means a 3.23% chance of winning. Add these six horses together, and you only get 52.285%.
This means that, to get from 52% to 100%, the actual winning chances of these horses will be almost doubled! Multiplied by 1.91 to be exact.
So the 5-1 favorites will now win 31.88% of the time, instead of 16.67%,
the 15-1 runners will win 11.95% of the time,
and the underdogs at 30-1 odds will still win 6.17% of the time.
When betting on this field, the expected return on your bet is 191.25%!
This means that a max bet of 10,000 chips will result in an expected PROFIT of 9,125 chips.
This is printing money, if there ever was such a thing.
Optimal strategy for Virtual Horse racing
So all you have to do, is only bet high on the games where you have an expected positive return, and bet the absolute minimum on the games where your expected return is negative. Or back out of the racing game to refresh the field.
If you don't have a way to quickly add up all the percentages, and until somebody shows up here with a neatly formatted table, just use a few general rules of thumb:
-Always bet the maximum on a race with favorites at 2/1 and 3/1 or higher in it.
-Simply skip all races with two favorites at EVENS in it, and at EVENS and 2/1. Or bet the minimum, if you can't skip or refresh the field.
-To decide if you should play races with other favorite combinations EVENS and 3/1, EVENS and 4/1, EVENS and 5/1, or two favorites at 2/1, the payouts on the other four runners determine whether or not it's profitable to play them. The results of betting on these fields vary from an expected 1,330 chip loss (worst-case) to an expected 1,680 chip win (best-case), with a max bet of 10,000 chips.
But if you're not looking for another strategy chart, you might just want to skip these borderline cases, and just cherry pick the best ones, which are easy to recognize, and with which you can never go wrong.
It's difficult to put a number on an expected win-rate, because it all depends on which fields you get presented with, but it's not unreasonable to state that you can maintain a steady win-rate of around 200,000 chips per hour, with about 50 seconds per race.
Remember, you're not trying to win every race. You're trying to win the most money per hour. So don't sweat it when you bet on a 4/1 favorite, and lose a couple of races in a row. It will still be more profitable in the long run. You have the math on your side.
To reduce negative variance, always bet on the favorite, when betting on profitable fields. We're not gambling anymore, we're grinding out a steady profit. We want to keep the swings to a minimum.
I contacted Rockstar support to verify if this is indeed how it works, but the only reply I got after 6 weeks is that they were "looking into it".
User u/Garsant made a useful Excel-worksheet, available for you to download, where you can quickly type in the payouts on the horses, to see if it produces a profitable bet or not. You can find it in his post here: https://www.reddit.com/gtaonline/comments/ekp8na/gta_online_inside_track_odd_calculato

1) Wheel of Fortune
The number one profitable casino game in GTA Online is obviously the Wheel of Fortune, because it costs you nothing to play.
Unfortunately, you only get one free spin per day, but it holds great value, so make sure you do it.
With a chance to win a super car, vehicle discounts, expensive mystery prizes (which also can be vehicles), and a lot of cash and chips, the expected return on a single spin is around $100,000 in value.
So don't forget your daily spin, it's definitely worth your time.

2020 Update:
As of the Diamond Casino Heist update, the Inside Track horse racing is confirmed to still be as profitable as outlined above.The only thing that seems to be changed, is that you can't refresh the field anymore by backing out of the screen. This does affect your hourly rate in a negative way, but does not change the fact that this game has a huge positive expected return, and should be your go-to when you're trying to take money from the house, without having Lester's nagging voice in your ear. That should also be worth something.

And with that, I conclude my 5,000 word essay on gambling in GTA. Questions, comments, feel free to add your input to this guide.

Cliffs:
-Gambling games should only be played for fun, not for big money. You should expect to lose in the long run. The house always wins.
-A casino game doesn't have a memory, and betting systems don't work.
-Set your limits before you start, how much you are willing to lose or win, and then walk away when you get there.
-Don't play slots, roulette, or three card poker.
-Only play blackjack following a basic strategy chart (https://prnt.sc/olct6g).
-Inside Track betting can be played profitably, if you only bet on fields WITHOUT a heavy favorite.
-Wheel of Fortune is always your best bet, because it's a free bet.

poker chip distribution $20 video

Poker Chip Values and Stack Distribution for Home Games. by Jim James | Poker Basics, If you want to play higher stakes, say $5/$10 or $10/$20, you will need black and possibly purple chips. Or, you can just convert the white chips to $100 and red to $500 if your set does not contain black and purple. I want to run a casual $20 home cash game and am wondering what suggested blinds and chip distribution are recommended for that sort of game. Most of the info I found searching relates to tournaments. Poker Chip Calculator. If you think you might need a few more chips, or you're looking to buy your first set of poker chips it helps to know how many you'll need for a good game. Once you have your chips this calculator should help you work out a good distribution of chips for the initial buy-in. Holdem Poker Chip Distribution In the past, many online casinos required the player to enter a bonus code in order to receive a deposit bonus. This was mostly due to the fact that the gambling sites back-offices weren’t that user-friendly, and it was hard to configure triggers for various types of bonuses. You also may want to prepare for if the game grows into a higher stakes game such as $2/5.Here is a suggestion for extra chips that will cover deep games and slightly higher stakes: 80 - $25 chips = $2000 30 - $100 chips = $3000 Also, consider adding extra poker chips for the occasional lost chip: 50 - $1 chips 50 - $5 chips As you can see, with the cash game there are more poker chips to The distribution of poker chips you'll require is all dependent on how long you want the game to last, how many players are playing and whether it's a freezeout or rebuy. Poker Chip Distribution $20, aspers casino london poker tournaments, witch poker, f4fun casino lisboa $20 Poker Chip Distribution, sun city philippines casino, tropicana casino atlantic city reviews, mobile casino no deposit bonuses Before you start - chip distribution Nothing works without chips. Without chips, there won't be much to your home game, since there will be nothing to play for. For maximum enjoyment in a tournament, you must take several things into consideration when deciding on chip distribution. If you think $20 Poker Chip Distribution you may have a problem, click here. Min Deposit $20. 32red Casino App. With a no deposit bonus and over 150 games available, this app is a good choice for players that want variety. This Online Casino website is $20

poker chip distribution $20 top

Watson's Pick! - $20 Super Break The Bank - Texas Lottery Scratch Off

To buy the Fixin To Scratch Poker Chip Set, please visit http://fixintoscratch.com/buymerchandise.htm This purchase will also help support this channel so Wa... This video was created by Brybelly for use of its wholesale and retail customers. This item may be rebroadcast or hosted by customers of Brybelly.com only. Please contact us at 888-765-3740 for ... How many poker chips do you need? What about a tournament? What about a cash game? Don't worry, you can figure this out.Once you do your (max buy-in)(max pla... Learn how to cut chips like a professional, casino dealer would in a poker dealer school. We take you step by step through the motions of how to cut a stack ... New New York Lottery scratch off tickets with poker chips scratching see what the results are in these new games. Skip navigation ... 5×,20×,50× All New and Hit 600 Set for Life New York ... My home poker chip set by Milano. My home poker chip set by Milano. Skip navigation Sign in. ... Should You Oil Your Poker Chips? - Duration: 14:20. Hobbyphilic 9,011 views. 14:20. Chip Breakdowns ... To buy the Fixin To Scratch Poker Chip Set, please visit http://fixintoscratch.com/buymerchandise.htm This purchase will also help support this channel so Wa... Hopefully this helps anyone considering buying a set of Milano poker chips. I use my own 2500+ chip set of almost all denominations for the review. Enjoy and... POKER - $10/$20 Cash Game Session (NLHE) Americas Card Room Online Poker ... BC Reviews51 4,774 views. 27:33. How To Chip-Up in Poker Tournaments With Bad Cards - Duration: 19:04. Gripsed ...

$20 Poker Chip Distribution

poker chip distribution $20

poker chip distribution $20 - win

Comeback Opportunities will determine the game’s long-term survival: Here’s how we do it.

[Table] I am Dave Plummer, author of Windows Task Manager, Zip Folders, and worked on Space Cadet Pinball, Media Center, Windows Shell, MS-DOS, OLE32, WPA, and more. (pt 1/2)