So I recently picked up Gwent in my search to replace yugioh and I'm thoroughly impressed with the game. I started lurking on the Gwent reddit and cdpr forums and despite mostly positive comments, much to my dismay I see that many Gwent players have no idea how good they really have it. I read complaints about poor balance and lack of diversity in the meta and I can't help but facepalm 🤦‍♂️ I will address these complaints and others I've seen in the forums so that maybe you can see how well designed Gwent really is.
First a brief history of my experience with card games: I played yugioh semi-competitively for 5 years but power creep has changed how the game is played and it really bears no resemblance to the game I fell in love with so many years back. Since 2016 I've been on the hunt for a game that could fill the void that yugioh left. I started Hearthstone 3 years ago but left after a relatively short span of time due to the terrible amount of RNG and the difficulty of obtaining a top tier deck quickly. From my understanding, Hearthstone has only gone downhill since then. My next game was Magic the Gathering and I'll admit, its a great game, but not without its own faults which ill get into later. I primarily played standard and commander formats of live paper magic. Very little MTGA. I'm also a professional poker player as my sole occupation, so card games are quite close to my heart.
I started Gwent mid October 2020, about 6 weeks back. I climbed to pro rank my first season playing a homebrewed Fruits of Ysgith deck up until about rank 3 where I switched to OH. I now play MO OH, NR Revenants, and SK warriors for my meta decks and mess around with Fruits and Force of Nature when I'm not worried about MMR (which is often since I dont have 4 faction decks yet).
On to addressing complaints:
"The meta has no diversity!" This one is first because I see it most often and it drives me the most crazy. Currently in pro rank I regularly run into: OH both devotion and non, NR shield wall, NR revenants, SK warriors, SK Lippy, SK battle trance, ST symbiosis, ST deadeye ambush, ST precision strike, NG lock down, NG imposter ball, SY congregate, and SY passiflora. All of these decks have a competitive shot except maybe NG but there are posts on here where experienced players pilot even NG to high MMR. That's 14 viable decks at the highest level. For comparison, in yugioh, there are regularly tier 0 formats where 60% of the field is the same OP deck and the other 40% are decks specifically designed to counter that deck. Gwent game design ensures this can't happen since you have to play at least 4 different decks to climb the pro ladder. Even OH with its ridiculous play rate last season was only 12% of the field.
"I want to play X deck but there's not enough support so I lose!" This is a universal issue with card games but Gwent handles it better than most despite having a massive obstacle in the way of doing so. Because we have unmixable factions, CDPR essentially has to create 6 different card pools and try to support each of them while maintaining balance. In yugioh, Konami can release a few sets supporting only a couple archetypes and then drop them and move on since they don't have to worry about faction balance. This means more developed archetypes in Yugioh, but it also means that deck you've been playing for 2 years is now power crept and has no hope of getting support in future sets. Easily 95% of yugioh archetypes are entirely unplayable and will never become playable again. We are very lucky in Gwent to have a lot of support for a lot of decks.
"They changed the effect of my card and now my deck doesn't work!" HA! Try spending hundreds of real money dollars on a deck only to have your main engine banned for the foreseeable future and see your deck turn into fire kindling before your eyes. 'Greatsword is too strong' CDPR- let's make it less strong. Konami- kill it with fire! Not to mention, Gwent has no rotation like Magic and Pokémon do. Rotation makes your cards that are older than a certain time (2 years in Standard Magic) no longer legal for play. So your fun meme deck that wasn't hurting anyone is now illegal for tournament play cause its old and they want you to spend your money on new cards.
"Gwent is too hard for new players!" I won't consider myself a typical "new player" but I was able to go from the tutorial to pro rank in 3 weeks without knowing anyone who plays or watching any streams. For comparison, yugioh is so complicated that even reading the entire rule book will not teach you the majority of the rules. If you don't have people to help you along you will NEVER understand the game fully. Not to mention, Gwent's reward system and semi-synergistic starter decks alow a new player to really experience the true joy of the game even in the beginning. An MTG or yugioh starter deck (that you have to spend real money on) is literally a jumble of seemingly random cards with little to no synergy.
"Net decking is killing Gwent!" Welcome to card games in general. I have no good retort except to say that every card game has it and its not going anywhere. Just because there are decks that everyone knows are good doesn't mean there aren't decks flying under the radar. When everyone is net decking but you're being creative, you will find an edge in knowing how your opponent's deck works and what it contains while they have to play a guessing game with you. In yugioh and magic, we call this playing a rogue strategy and rogue decks often achieve a lot of success. I've seen this referred to as "surprise value" in Gwent and it shouldn't be overlooked.
There are also many parts of Gwent that are very appreciated by the player base and are big parts of what makes the game so great. The reward system is unbelievably generous (i really don't know how CDPR is making money from this game) compared to other online ccgs and compared to paper card games its not even close. To have a meta yugioh deck will often run you $400+ and some formats of Magic are far more expensive than that. The graphics for Gwent are the best I've seen and smaller amounts of RNG make the game far more skillful than competing games.
I hope this little run down helps to make clear how good we really have it with Gwent. No card game is without its flaws but Gwent is easily the most balanced and player friendly game I've been a part of.
tl;dr: Gwent has a couple issues, other games have those issues 10 times worse and then some. Gwent is king.

I Use to think online poker pros were making tons of money, but after seeing some of their total profits for 2020, i now understand why many pros that i grew up railing are not around anymore, and why it's a difficult career.
Some of them would make more money working fast food than playing full time poker. And the money that they posted has not been taxed (depending on country off course) or doesn't include the cost of food , clothing, gas,rent, mortgage, health insurance monthly etc.
Off course there are rare exceptions to this.
I grew up watching online players like Annette_15 (she won the wsop main event and was considered one of the best online players ) she recently released a YouTube video and she says that she stopped playing poker because she just wasn't making any money from it and it was a lot harder.
I remember that Bencb (considered one of the top coaches and players) opened up about his earnings and he breaks down what he made and it was a lot less than i expected.
Brynkenny the top money maker in tournament poker says that the hogh stakes circuit cost 5 million a year to play. Which means many people would need at to win 5million a year just to make more than $1. He said himself (Joey podcast) that he has gone broke or was in make up many times.
Also when the high stakes gg poker cash games became popular last year that many well known regs lost there bankrolls. (Nikita said this in another podcast on youtube)
If you watch the top top high stakes players on twitch who play online (1k $500 5k , 10k , $200) they are spending multiple bullets in each tournament. Sometimes 3 or 4 bullets in 5k and 1k and even 10ks. If they make the final table (top 3) they break even for the day! The majority of online poker twitch streamers make -0 for the day.
I think poker is a great game, but it's definitely tough to make a living. Its a great hobby but if your thinking about doing it as a career, you have been warned.

Who am I?
A hungarian high school math teacher. I got similar training in university as mathematicians do with bachelor's degree. I believe I have a high level, deep understanding of mathematics, and I believe I'm capable to, and would be qualified to build a working MMR system for Dead by Daylight if I would be hired to do it. About my history with DBD, I have 1700+ hours in the game, devotion 6, pretty much all gained in 2020. I play both sides about equally, though recently started to play more survivor, and in general I prefer the survivor role.
This is a pretty long text, so if you are interested in the subject, grab a drink.
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What is MMR and what does it do?
The MMR system consists of two functions. One function assigns a number to every player. The higher the number is, the higher the percieved skill is by the system. Another function can take multiple player's MMR, and calculate the probability distribution of all possible outcomes of the match. For example, let's say we have two players with the same MMR value of 1000, call them A and B. The system should assign the same probability for winning and losing (let's say 30% each), and some chance for a tie if tie exists in the game (if so, that would be 40% in this case). If A had a higher MMR, these probabilities would be different, the system should assign a higher chance to win for A. These systems usually operates under the assumption that every player has a true MMR, and the system is attempting to discover that value by statistical analysis, where the samples are the results of player's matches. If B wins, it changes the samples in a way that the system should now think B has a higher chance to win against other opponents, and A has a less chance to win against other opponents, for obvious reasons.
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First, let me address a few common misconceptions:
I've heard a lot of people in the past months claiming that for several reasons, MMR can not work with dead by daylight. These reasons that comes to mind right now include:

• The game is asymmetrical (1v4):What everyone needs to realize is that there isn't just one MMR system. Any system that fulfills the requirements on the above paragraph is an MMR system, and you don't necessary need a 1v1 game to design such a system. You obviously can't just take chess's system and put it in DBD. For a unique game like dead by daylight, you need a unique system, and it's a difficult problem for sure, but it's not impossible.
• There is a lot of luck involved with maps, loop spawns, and there are a lot of variables you need to account for with luck and initial conditions:This doesn't matter at all and there are zero variables you need to account for. Like I said, MMR is a statistical system by nature, and the sample on that are your matches. In other words, your performance isn't judged by one match, but a large number of matches. In tournaments, this would be an issue, but it's not an issue that concerns an MMR system in a popular online game. The reason for this is the law of large numbers. Luck element evens out in a large number of games. This is why even though poker has a high luck element, there is still a competitive scene for it, and better players consistently bring better results. They have to learn not to be concerned by luck, because over a large number of games, your expected number of unlucky streaks will be equal to the number of lucky streaks. There is no reason why the same concept wouldn't work for DBD.
• Your results are heavily dependent on what items and addons you bring:There is a small grain of truth to this. While I can bring up the law of large numbers to debunk this too, you technically can funnel bloodpoints through different killers. Play Hag with no addons, and buy all iri heads with Huntress. There are two reasons why I'm not concerned about this. First: I don't think there would be an epidemic of this happening, in fact, I think this would be quite rare. Just like how last second swap for survivors are kinda scummy, but that's not common either. This would be a concern to keep an eye on, but not game breaking enough to render the MMR system itself broken. It would still serve it's purposes described in the first paragraph. The second reason why I'm not concerned is that the solution for this is simple. Just make bloodpoints not global. Then the Huntress mains won't have enough bloodpoints to bring iri head combo for every game, and the law of large numbers shall save the day again. You will meet huntresses with stronger than average addons about the same number of times as you meet huntresses with weaker than average addons.
• SWF teams are not the same as solo queue-ers, because they have informational advantage with communication, and there can be a huge skill difference between swf members, making it impossible for mmr to operate:This is probably the harders challenge the designer of the MMR system has to overcome, but I have to say again, it's not impossible. They have plenty of data to analyze how the results are expected to change when SWF's are involved, and they can filter this data by all variables involved: number of people in the party, average skill level, and the spread of their skill level (spread basically describes how far apart the friends are in skill rating). Then you can use this data to incorporate it in the MMR.

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Next, I'll address the elephant in the room. Why MMR instead of an other system?
An MMR system has advantages and disadvantages, and it's debatable whether or not this is the best one. You don't necessarily need MMR to create a successful ranking system or a successful matchmaking system, there are many ways to come up with a system where higher skill will correlate with a higher rating. MMR's advantage is that it's the most accurate system for popular online games that a lot of people play and people play a lot. It's disadvantage is that it's also one of the most complicated systems. However, I am in favor of MMR systems, and I think the downsides are not that bad at all. Everyone will be able to understand that higher MMR = I'm better according to the system. Games like Brawhalla or Overwatch also assign ranks to MMR ranges, making it even easier to swallow.
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What do I think about DBD implementing MMR system?
I just hope they are implementing it correctly. Mess up the math, misinterpret your data, and you create a mess. I believe there are several requirements for an MMR and matchmaking system to improve player experience:

• The devs need to define a clear win condition. In chess, you win if your opponent can't prevent capture of king. In League of Legends, you win if you destroy your enemy team's nexus before they destroy yours. What is the win condition on DBD? Some say it revolves around kill count, some say it revolves around hook count (or hook stages), some say it revolves around pips. What if player A and player B have the same true MMR, but they play by different rules? Player A wants to kill as many survivors as possible, Player B wants to go through as many hook stages as possible. Player A therefore thinks hooking two survivors 6 times, and leaving the rest alone, is better than hooking every player twice. Player B will think hooking everyone twice but making everyone survive is better than having 6 hooks but two kills. Whatever system the devs will choose, despite having equal skill, the system will prefer one of these players simply because the other player is unaware of the rules.
• Survivors need to be treated as a team, not as individuals. What I mean by this: If one survivor wins, then every survivor wins, and if one survivor loses, everyone loses. I understand that not everyone in a survivor team will have the same skill. You sometimes have that Nancy on your team that does nothing all game, or sometimes you get carried by an absolute god and you just win by holding M1 or not even that. But unless you are in an SWF (which is, as I've said above, is a solveable problem), you won't keep getting that survivor in a match. It's okay for the game to give you both the same result for one game, because a worse player is expected to lose more games on average against the same opponent. Law of large numbers for the rescue again. Also, not treating survivors like teams would actually encourage selfish gameplay. Let's say, if surviving is all that matters for survivors, than that Claudette waiting in a locker next to hatch while you get killed, instead of fixing that last gen, is actually using a strategy the game rewards. If pips are all that matters, you could argue that sometimes sandbagging your teammates so you can unhook them later is also a strategy the game rewards. Like with bloodpoint funneling, I wouldn't expect an epidemic of this happening, but it would still be a flaw to the system to keep an eye for. The solution of treating survivors as a team is both more simple, and more effective, because then you can truly calculate a team MMR for survivors to compare the killer's MMR to (it's not obvious how you would calculate that btw, this is another thing you would need data available to bhvr for).
• Matches should be 0 sum games. Which means if the killer wins, the survivors lose, and if survivors wins, then killer loses. If it's a tie, then it's a tie for everyone. There are two reasons for this. If you could achieve that everyone wins, then that makes the system subject to exploitation by farming. Meta could become survivors and killers working together to raise their MMR to a value they don't deserve. This would make the system heavily inaccurate. Even besides that, it's hard to imagine how a game, that allows opposing teams to both win, adjust MMR rating. While it's possible that both a survivor and a killer did very well, the game should end with it declaring which player won that particular round. If the game really can't decide, that's clearly a tie.
• Matchmaking should be strict with taking MMR into account. This technically isn't MMR territory, but matchmaking territory. A proper MMR system can handle uneven matchups. If a heavily disadvantaged team loses, they won't lose much MMR, and the winner won't gain much MMR. If a heavily disadvantaged team wins, which is very unlikely, they will gain a lot of MMR, and the winner will lose a lot of MMR. All this keeps the MMR system accurate. However, if the majority of games are uneven, the games will become incredibly unfun. You not suffering a lot of MMR penalty is no consolation when you had to sit through a game that you had next to no chance of winning all along.
• Some sort of rating by the game must be visible. Either display your MMR score itself, some other score that correlates with MMR, your placement on your leaderboard, or a bracket the game puts you in based on the range of MMR. Technically, again, this isn't needed for MMR system to work, but this is a good way for players to compare themselves to friends and others (something which many player desires), and it also gives verifyability to the system. Hiding MMR and giving no indication for it is a bummer at best and shady at worst. If we don't get this, we can't tell if everything else needed for the system to work (besides clearly stated rules) is implemented.

Most of these info will be hidden, but if they tell us the win condition, and give us some indication of your skill level, then I will have faith in the system until I have a reason to doubt it (we will know if the rest of these are true or not if we are given these two things). If BHVR doesn't give us these two things, especially the win condition, then I won't have faith in the system, as I don't think a working system is possible under these circumstances. It needs to be said though: the previous system was not perfect either, and even if this system will also be clearly and completely flawed, it's still up in the air which system will be less bad.
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Why did the old rank/pip/emblem system failed?
Because it didn't do many things that are needed for a good ranked system. While it gave us a clear win condition (although I didn't like it as it was too complicated and didn't necessarily lead to survivors playing in a way that leads to more escapes, and didn't necessarily lead to killers hooking people more), it wasn't a 0 sum game, and it didn't treat survivors as a team. A killer that wins the game with 0-4 hooks were not promoted, and this always baffled me. The game told to a killer that just obliterated a supposedly similarly ranked team, that they are not good enough to face better survivors. Which leads to that killer being matched with the same skill survivors again and obliterating them again. I hope the problem with this is obvious. You may think the killer didn't win the right way, and the killer could've/should've played around with the survivors to get more hooks, but I don't think prolonging the suffering of a clearly inferior opponent is a skillful thing to do. Besides these two rules being broken, the old system suffered (suffers) from another two problems. The weight on actions which leads to pips are arbitrary. A few unhooks and heals will get you iridescent benevolent, but it's far harder to get iridescent rating on other emblems. It also causes problems like survivors who already got iri lightbringer are no longer encouraged to do gens, or a survivor that already got iri benevolent is less encouraged to save teammates, and the game considers it more skillful to look for the hatch instead in that case. To look at killers again, the emblem system is actually biased towards killers like Wraith and Legion, and against killers like Myers and Plague. One-hitting survivors is punished by the system as opposed to two-hitting them. That means that even if it's harder to kill survivors with Wraith than Plague, it's easier to rank up with Wraith than Plague. The other problem similar systems suffer from is the potential overpopulation of rank 20 and rank 1 brackets. If too many people exist at the edges, that may mean matchmaking treats vastly different skilled players the same way, because they are in the same bracket. This never happens with an MMR system btw.
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Why did the previous attempt of implementing MMR fail?
In short: Only BHVR can know, but I have my theories. One guess is that the lack of clear win condition lead to player MMR scores being all over the place, like with my previous example where I described the need for a win condition. We don't know if that MMR system fulfilled the rest of the criteria (mostly because we didn't get any indication of our MMR), so I won't say anything about that. My best guess is that their MMR worked, because they said so that their system is good at predicting the outcome of the match. If this is true, then the conclusion from this is that matchmaking was the culprit of the previous failure. And like I said, a working MMR, the fact that the system knows I'll win/lose heavily, is no consolation of an incredibly one-sided game.
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How would I build an MMR system?
I would need more time to come up with the exact formula on how to come up with MMR values, and such calculations are not the purpose of this post. Let's just assume that the formula I come up with fulfills criteria at the beginning of the post.

• I'd tell the win condition. I have two ideas for this. 1) 0-1 kills is a loss for killer, 2 kills is a tie for killer, 3-4 kills is a win for killer. Anything that is a win for killer is a lose for survivors. Anything that is a lose for killer is a win for all survivors (even the dead ones). Anything that is a tie for killer is a tie for survivors. With this, I would consider the game to suddenly end when there are already three escapes or three deaths. I would count disconnects as deaths, and reduce their MMR and give them the disconnect penalty no matter the result of the match. 2) Second idea is coming up with X and Y numbers, where any number of hooks below X is a loss for killer, and any number of hooks above Y is a win for killer. Between the two values it would be a tie. I would consider ending the match when the result can no longer be reversed, like too many survivors escaping, or reaching enough hooks for the killer to win.
• I'd treat the survivors as teams. The matchmaking should try to create a group of survivors with similar MMR first, that are also close to each other, then calculate their team MMR in some way (would need research using BHVR data to find out how to do this), then find a killer fitting to their team MMR. Adjust for SWF's according to another research done with internal data.
• Create MMR brackets (like, brown, yellow, green, purple, iridescent, and make subtiers, like brown 1-5, yellow 1-5, etc.). Display that bracket to players. Iridescent bracket should have no subtiers, and should just display your leaderboard placement similar to hearthstone legendary rank.

Hopefully this take of mine will create more discussions about the topic of how this will be implemented, and although unlikely, but hopefully through this post or some other way some of these ideas reach devs and will consider them to create the best matchmaking and ranked system they possibly can for the game. Let me know your thoughts!
Edit: Fixed several typos.

Disclaimer: All information here is my opinion. If you disagree/have content I have not mentioned, feel free to leave a comment. I will update the list based on other people's suggestions. If many people disagree with what I say, I will change it to reflect the majority. That being said, I am hoping this thread can be a place where people of different skill levels can go to find study material and work on their game.
FOR BEGINNERS:
There is no need to spend any money on content because there are is infinite free content online that will teach you the fundamentals for free.
I have not studied beginner level poker for a long time, so I would love recommendations for more content to put on this list.
Here is a list of free material I think will help beginners:
How not to suck at poker series on youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk0YZUIBe10
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FOR INTERMEDIATE PLAYERS:
At this level, you know all the rules to play the game of poker as well as basic strategy. For stronger intermediate players is when I recommend people to start spending money on content online.
Material to help intermediate players:
CrushLivePoker Youtube Channel - Bart Hanson does many hand history review sessions with clients and explains in-depth why you should play hands in a certain way. https://www.youtube.com/useCrushlivePoker
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Raise Your Edge Youtube Channel (TOURNAMENTS) - Personally, one of my favorites. Bencb does an excellent job of explaining why he plays hands in certain ways. Additionally, he has focused topics (e.g. how to play flush draws, how to play in 3-bet pots)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEN-gXxV3gi049oJFRi63hA
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Jonathan Little Youtube Channel - Jonathan has tons of free valuable content on his youtube channel. He also has focused topics, which help advance certain areas of your game.
https://www.youtube.com/useFloatTheTurn
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Jonathan's Pokercoaching.com (FREE) - Jonathan's website has different levels of membership (From free to premium) that gives you access to different levels of content. He has many courses (cash game master class and tournament masterclass are two of his most popular) that teach you the game of poker. He has other pros have webinars (classes) on his website and it is nice to have different perspectives.
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FOR ADVANCED PLAYERS:
In order to get better at a consistent rate at this level, you will most likely need to pay for some paid content. What do I consider an advanced player? You are an advanced player if you have at least one of the following (I choose to keep it based on results because it is the easiest way to make skills tangible):
- Can consistently beat $2/$5 live
- Can consistently beat $.50/$1 online
- Have a positive ROI in live tournaments with buy-ins of $100+
-Have a positive ROI in online tournaments with buy-ins of $50+
Material to help advanced players:
Flopzilla (PAID) - "Flopzilla is a poker calculator that has been designed to let you quickly and easily figure out how a range hits a board."
https://www.flopzilla.com/
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ICMIZER (TOURNAMENT) (PAID) - "In the span of a few seconds, the ICMIZER 3 software will show you the most profitable push/fold solutions, depending on the current situation at your table"
https://www.icmpoker.com/
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PokerCruncher (PAID) - Pokercruncher lets you analyze the equity your hand has against their specific range.
https://www.pokercruncher.com/index.html
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Raise Your Edge Tournament Masterclass (PAID) - IMO the best way to become a tournament crusher. Ben's teaching style is amazing and can help you really bring your game to the next level.
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*Really Advanced Only* SOLVERS - Solvers allow you to analyze the GTO thing to do with every hand in your range in every situation. This is mainly for players who already have been studying poker for years and want to fix small leaks in their game. A couple of solvers: https://monkerware.com/solver.html
https://www.piosolver.com/
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NEVER SPEND A PENNY ON:
- Daniel Negreanu's masterclass (too basic, all information can be found for free online)
-Phil Ivey's masterclass (too basic, all information can be found for free online)
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Honorable Mentions:
- Brad Owen Poker Vlog
- Andrew Neeme Poker Vlog
- Johnnievibes Poker Vlog
All of these vlogs are fun to watch, but you will not learn as much as you will learn from other material.
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Let me know what you think! I'm sure I missed a ton.

Hi,
I have been a professional poker player for the past 3.5 years and have been following poker and the community for the past 8 years. Also, I am a current ADA holder. After learning about the blockchain, I saw the benefits that could be obtained by running a poker site on one. I think a well done poker website on a blockchain could kill every other kind of poker site and would love to see this come to fruition. However, to create a huge poker site that rivals the likes of PokerStars requires a ton of money, experience and a huge team. Therefore, I am a bit lost at how to proceed. I guess hopefully this post catches the eyes of someone that is looking for an idea and has the expertise, team, and capabilities to pull it off.
Below I have listed the current problems that plague the poker industry, all which can be fixed by the blockchain. After, I list the challenges that would be faced if someone tried this endeavor.
Problems with Current Poker Industry:
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• High Rake: The percentage of money the casino operator takes from each hand, known as rake, is ridiculous across all major poker sites. At the lowest stakes, the games are close to unbeatable because the operator is taking such a large percentage of the money off the table each hand. Additionally, tournaments charge registration fees of up to 10% per tournament!
• Trust: From companies being caught with backdoor super user accounts to companies not being able to play out player to trusting whether or not the RNG is rigged, there is an inherit lack of trust in the online poker community. Especially in the US in states where poker is not legal, there are now many off-shore poker sites that operate a ton of money, yet are not regulated at all by the government. It is only a matter of time before this all goes bad in my opinion.
• Community at odds with Operators: For the last 10 years that I have been in the poker community, there has always been a rivalry and tension between the players and the poker site operators, mainly PokerStars. Essentially, some time paces and PokerStars raises the rake. The players complain, try to boycott and take other measures, all to no avail. Especially 5 years ago, PokerStars had a strangle hold on the industry. Recently, some other big sites like GG Poker, Party Poker, and Run It Once have gained market share. Despite the increased competition, rake is high across all sites and the players feel like the companies only care about profit. With a decentralized poker site, the community can now come together and run the poker site using Voltaire (I think) to create the first ever poker site for the players, something the community is longing for badly in my opinion.

Challenges:
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• Building the site: For a site to truly steal market share and compete, the software has to be elite. Run It Once is a recently launched poker operator, and they built their software by scratch and it took multiple years, overshooting all their deadlines and they still have only realized maybe 25% of what they plan to release. I am not sure how to solve this problem.
• USA Market: Poker is not legal in the US except in a handful of states.
• Licenses and Regulation: Would need many licenses to operate and would take a lot of time and money I assume
• Bots: Players using software in real time and/or using bots that actually play for them is one of the biggest issues facing the poker industry today. If somehow Cardano could alleviate this problem in any way that would be huge. But if not, then a decent amount of money and effort would need to be allocated toward security of the site regarding bots. Who would pay for this now and moving forward? Treasury? Seems like this is the biggest expense that would be tough to manage as a decentralized community. Especially with new companies like Poker King coming out that are using their security team against bots as their competitive advantage.
• A lot of competition: It seems like in the last 5 years, many new companies have gained market share. Additionally, there are some other blockchain based poker companies already in the works for a while now (Virtue Poker https://virtue.poke).

If anyone wants to run with this idea it is all yours and would be glad to help. I have been working relentlessly at poker the last 3.5 years to become one of the best in the world. In the process, I know what the players and community desires and lacks. I would love to have a strategic role in a site like this and really just want to solve the problems that I face everyday as a professional poker player.

Disclaimer: Before I start, I am not demeaning the efforts of top competitors. Their sheer commitments to become masters are more than apparent through their inclusion of eating healthy, exercising, and countless hours of game study. It indeed is a respectable commitment. This will not be a subjective look at this topic like most of the debates are. As an ex-gamer, I do have a personal bias towards chess to tell the truth. When first drafting this argument, I actually tried to formulate why chess is a sport and video games weren't. Then I realised that they both weren't and shouldn't be considered as conventional. Do I still think most people say video games are sports to justify their gaming addiction? Yes. Do I think it's unfair for Esports to be compared as equal to Basketball? Absolutely. However, like I said, this is an objective comparison of the ever expanding world of competitive entertainment. And, as the rules say, I am open to discussion about changes
There are two popular definitions for "sport" that have been used for this topic. The first one from is from dictionary.com:
an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature
Using this definition, we can automatically draw the line. Many pro-Esports people in this topic use chess as an comparison, saying if chess is a sport by this definition, then competitive video games can also be considered as one. However, while it does note that it can involve physical prowess or skill, neither activity is athletic by definition, which means physically strong, fit, and active. A Esports player may take up an exercise program to better their play, but it does not make them an athlete. It is not required for a person to be athletic to compete in Esports, chess or poker. The participants can not be called athletes, because the activity is not athletic. Therefore, by the definition found on dictionary.com, the argument that these activities can be considered sports is over.
So now, we can move to the more ambiguous definition found in Oxford dictionary, which identifies a sport:
an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or a team competes against another or others for entertainment
So here, there is room for argument. Exertion simply means effort, so by this definition an activity such as Esports can be considered sport or sport like. After all, the word comes from disport which means in the sense of recreation or entertainment. However, this does not mean that they should be considered as conventional sports at all, far from it. Conventional sports are athletic, and have these identical seven attributes to be considered as such.

• They occur in a physically, tangible environment
• They require physical prowess, experience or exertion.
• They require some sort of mental exertion and strategy
• They are, by nature, competitive and have some sort of objective
• They are pertain to being designated for entertainment of others, or have entertaining aspects
• There is regular participants and competition that is self sustaining
• There is a relatively high occurrence or probability for injury

These are what all athletic sports have in common, and can hold the present definition of a common or "regular" sport. Nonetheless, the Esports, chess and even bizarre activities such as dog boarding and outhouse racing meet many requirements on this list. I will refer to these as unconventional sports, even though chess and competitive video games are recognised for their sports like properties by the International Olympic Committee. They both get really close to qualifying as Olympic Sports, while those are different from sports played annually. According these overall requirements to be an athletic and annual sport, these fall closer to the definition of competition, which is the state or activity of competing. Additionally, this category can be split even further between physical competitions, or unconventional sports, and virtual competitions, or virtual sports.
Physical competitions, such as chess and poker, meet six out of seven of the requirements above. Chess is notorious for its requirement of mental prowess, not unlike athletic sports are for their brute physicality. Physical exertion is present by moving the pieces or chips, and take place in a tangible environment where players can touch and interact physically with what they are doing. The objective for a chess player is to trap the king with his or her pieces, called checkmate. There is a definite competitive aspect, and self sustaining competition is conspicuous. Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE), or the World Chess Federation, has over 170,00 active members, with the United States Chess Federation holding about 93,000. Chess.com alone has over 20,000,000 registered users. Poker has a huge following and world championships occurring annually since 2004. The place it falls short is the lack of consistent or common injury of the players. The risks of athleticism are generally associated with conventional sports. The thing that ties these unconventional sports together is the presence of a physical and tangible environment during play.
Virtual competitions, namely Esports, but also online versions of trading card games and E-chess, meet five out of seven qualities that conventional sports have. They do indeed include a great deal of mental concentration, prowess and overall development. Video games, thanks to a release of dopamine, do have mentally relieving benefits that are best showcased when played in moderation. Physical exertion of pressing keys or buttons on a controller is present as well. Physical and mental integration shown in top level events are astounding, with muscle memories and reaction times that are impressive to say the least. Competitive gaming is most known for its explosive popularity and ever expanding competition. Even twelve year olds are able to compete in these events. This is mostly due to video games being, let's face it, extremely entertaining to watch and play. Nonetheless, it does not by any means have a consistent injuring possibility, except for maybe a few cases of carpal tunnel here and there. What makes it set apart from the other unconventional sport is that it's strictly virtual. Gamers can not physically interact with the game they are playing. Virtual reality and the use of controllers is still not tangible. They experience only a fabricated world. And, in a gamer's mind, are they pressing buttons on a controller or are they playing a game? The use of controllers act as a medium of communication to the virtual world they are interacting with. Physically, competitive gamers have no connection with video games.
Reiterating the beginning clarification, I do not demean unconventional sports, whether they are virtual competitions or physical. Many get offended at the generalising of their favourite competitive activity as a competition, which is why I used the word unconventional. Also note that the dedication to these unconventional sports can be as demanding as some physical sports are. Chess can be a lifetime commitment for many, and as I can confirm, many, many, many hours are committed to studying tatics and theory of the openings. In the same way, taking the relatively new fighting game Smash Brothers Ultimate as an example, many hours are devoted by top players into studying match-ups, labbing true combos with their main character, and studying frames data and the interaction between them in detail.
The last thing I will address is the overall stereotypical attitude towards these unconventional sports. Many regard chess as a game for hopeless nerds, competitive video games for unemployed delinquents, and poker for financially unstable people. I won't deny these stereotypes as wrong, but as they're incomplete. Yes there have been World Chess champions that died penniless, and yes some Esports players are hot for a season and just vanish and are back to regular jobs. However, they don't consider the different, more positive aspects of these events. How excited these communities get over tournaments and announcements. The connections that are shared, the relationships that are built. How there is a general hype in these communities, and most importantly, how people's life stories are changed for ever. It is really easy for society to avert their attention from these moments. But the one thing to remember that everyone possesses on the Earth, and is born with, is a choice. A choice to live life how they please. Yes there will be consequences for every action, but no one can judge another individual's choices. Yes, society loves pointing fingers, but in reality, we are just as flawed as the people we condemn. It's just not right to tell a kid that they'll never make it in the NBA, NFL or whatever. And it is especially wrong to force it upon a person who dreams of becoming a competitive gamer that they will waste their time. If someone eventually falls out of being a top player, but still perceives it as an enjoyable experience, then it generally can't be classified as a waste of time. Imagine if a white collar person who reprimanded their son or daughter for wanting to be a competitor in Esports, saying they'll never amount to anything doing that, encountered a successful entrepreneur the next day who told them, "Office jobs are for soul-less people who chase money, and they won't ever make a mark on the world." That might wake them up from their corporate slavery, but some people might inherently enjoy their work. It's a really malicious punch to the gut. It doesn't matter if you think, or even know, someone is making a wrong decision for their life. At the end of the day, you have no control over the descions , even in parenting. Parents can do their best to influence children, and even have dominion over what they do and should be doing at a young age. After they grow older, there comes a point of life where they can't be ordered around anymore. Treat others how you would want to be treated.

Just wondering if anybody watches RampagePoker's videos / has any opinions of them?
Disclaimer: I'm not hating on the guy at all because he's clearly a winning live player and honestly, winning the huge WSOP bracelet tournament is the poker dream. Absolute Moneymaker effect at its best. His videos are also brilliantly edited and entertaining and he seems like a great guy. So, yeah, don't take what I say next as hating on the guy in any way because I have never binked a tournament even a 20th of the size of his and I wish him the best.
That being said, are 2/5 games in America really this soft generally? Because I currently play 1/2 live in London and am in an ongoing process of building a nice bankroll and the games play 10x harder than the 2/5 I see on his channel / Brad Owen / Andrew Neeme's channels when they play these stakes.
The guy plays genuinely illogical LAG poker with a lot of flawed logic, no understanding of standard c-bet sizes, range nuances etc. and seems to clean up on the tables generally. Obviously, live sample size could be a factor but I've seen far better players on average in 5/10c fastforward on party poker when I used to grind it and would be genuinely shocked if he wouldn't be losing >5bbs at very low stakes zoom etc. online?
Want to re-iterate that I love his content, think the tournament he won is basically the Poker dream and wish the best for the guy as I enjoy the videos he takes the time to make.
That being said, opinions on his gameplay and my 2/5 american question?

Bovada Sportsbook:

Bovada is an online sportsbook and casino established in 2011. The platform offers betting on most major US sports leagues and horse racing. It has slots, table games, blackjack, and a variety of other casino games. Plus, Bovada offers live online poker tournaments with players from around the world.
What you will need to do is sign up through my referral link. Make a deposit, and pm me with the deposit amount, and bet through your deposit one time and I'll receive 200% of your deposit up to $100. (You can easily hedge your $100 bet on another Sportsbook to churn through your 1× bet through. Feel free to ask me questions if you have any.) I will receive 200% of your deposit up to $100. Example, if you deposit $50, I'll receive $100 and send you $25 back. Minimum deposit is $20 and max payout from me is $25. Note that you can't withdraw your funds right away or I will lose my referral bonus. After 24 hours, to ensure you don't just withdraw and I lose my bonus, I'll send the money. STEPS: *Comment $bid
*I'll send you link to my referral to sign up or you can use the link below.
*Sign up and deposit $20 or more to receive your payment back from me.

• I'll send out payment via Cashapp, Venmo, PayPal or Chime.

Link:# #https://www.bovada.lv/welcome/P455B02E/join?extcmpid=rafcopy

https://www.bovada.lv/terms-of-service

Sportbetting.ag Sportsbook:

SportsBetting is a one-stop-shop for nearly every popular type of gambling – legal sports betting, casino gaming, horse racing betting, and poker. Headquartered in Panama, the site initially launched in 1999 but was acquired by BetOnline in 2012. Since the acquisition, SportsBetting has become one of the top legal betting sites for players from the United States. It is one of the few legal betting sites that remained in the US market after Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act (UIGEA) of 2006. The federal law has no impact on the legality of online sports betting, but is essentially a banking restriction on unregulated payment processors. SportsBetting is well aware of this law and they have created ways to make sure that bettors can still safely and efficiently receive their winnings. SportsBetting has remained committed to U.S. players and is today one of the best betting sites that accept residents of all 50 states.
SportsBetting offers the complete package for every type of player in the US, and you will find that the site truly outshines the competition in certain areas. Huge bonuses and promotions, the latest betting odds, quick registration, and reliable banking are just some of the strong points of this particular betting site. The overall variety, whether it be the selection of sports or the catalog of casino games, is quite impressive at the online gambling site. In our legal SportsBetting review for US players, we will go into detail on these topics and more.
What you will need to do is sign up through my referral link. Make a deposit, and pm me with the deposit amount. Bet through your deposit one time and I'll receive 200% of your deposit up to $200. (You can easily hedge your $100 bet on another Sportsbook to churn through your 1× bet through. Feel free to ask me questions if you have any.) Example, if you deposit $100, I'll receive $200 and send you $50 back. Minimum deposit is $25 and max payout from me is $50. Note that you can't withdraw your funds right away or I will lose my referral bonus. After 24 hours, to ensure you don't just withdraw and I lose my bonus, I'll send the money.
STEPS:
*Comment $bid
*I'll send you link to my referral to sign up or you can use the link below.
*Sign up and deposit $25 or more and bet through your deposit once to receive your payment back from me.

• I'll send out payment via Cashapp, Venmo, PayPal or Chime.

I have been playing at SportsBetting. Join today and get a 75% bonus to bet on sports... https://sportsbetting.ag/?RAF=AD4XWFF3&product=SPO
I also have other offers on my profile posted for other Sportsbook that can guarantee yourself a few hundred dollars if you sign up before Super bowl. Please feel free to contact me regarding those offers.

Bovada Sportsbook:

Bovada is an online sportsbook and casino established in 2011. The platform offers betting on most major US sports leagues and horse racing. It has slots, table games, blackjack, and a variety of other casino games. Plus, Bovada offers live online poker tournaments with players from around the world.
What you will need to do is sign up through my referral link. Make a deposit, and pm me with the deposit amount, and bet through your deposit one time and I'll receive 200% of your deposit up to $100. (You can easily hedge your $100 bet on another Sportsbook to churn through your 1× bet through. Feel free to ask me questions if you have any.) I will receive 200% of your deposit up to $100. Example, if you deposit $50, I'll receive $100 and send you $25 back. Minimum deposit is $20 and max payout from me is $25. Note that you can't withdraw your funds right away or I will lose my referral bonus. After 24 hours, to ensure you don't just withdraw and I lose my bonus, I'll send the money. STEPS: *Comment $bid
*I'll send you link to my referral to sign up or you can use the link below.
*Sign up and deposit $20 or more to receive your payment back from me.

• I'll send out payment via Cashapp, Venmo, PayPal or Chime.

Link:# #https://www.bovada.lv/welcome/P455B02E/join?extcmpid=rafcopy

https://www.bovada.lv/terms-of-service

Sportbetting.ag Sportsbook:

SportsBetting is a one-stop-shop for nearly every popular type of gambling – legal sports betting, casino gaming, horse racing betting, and poker. Headquartered in Panama, the site initially launched in 1999 but was acquired by BetOnline in 2012. Since the acquisition, SportsBetting has become one of the top legal betting sites for players from the United States. It is one of the few legal betting sites that remained in the US market after Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act (UIGEA) of 2006. The federal law has no impact on the legality of online sports betting, but is essentially a banking restriction on unregulated payment processors. SportsBetting is well aware of this law and they have created ways to make sure that bettors can still safely and efficiently receive their winnings. SportsBetting has remained committed to U.S. players and is today one of the best betting sites that accept residents of all 50 states.
SportsBetting offers the complete package for every type of player in the US, and you will find that the site truly outshines the competition in certain areas. Huge bonuses and promotions, the latest betting odds, quick registration, and reliable banking are just some of the strong points of this particular betting site. The overall variety, whether it be the selection of sports or the catalog of casino games, is quite impressive at the online gambling site. In our legal SportsBetting review for US players, we will go into detail on these topics and more.
What you will need to do is sign up through my referral link. Make a deposit, and pm me with the deposit amount. Bet through your deposit one time and I'll receive 200% of your deposit up to $200. (You can easily hedge your $100 bet on another Sportsbook to churn through your 1× bet through. Feel free to ask me questions if you have any.) Example, if you deposit $100, I'll receive $200 and send you $50 back. Minimum deposit is $25 and max payout from me is $50. Note that you can't withdraw your funds right away or I will lose my referral bonus. After 24 hours, to ensure you don't just withdraw and I lose my bonus, I'll send the money.
STEPS:
*Comment $bid
*I'll send you link to my referral to sign up or you can use the link below.
*Sign up and deposit $25 or more and bet through your deposit once to receive your payment back from me.

• I'll send out payment via Cashapp, Venmo, PayPal or Chime.

I have been playing at SportsBetting. Join today and get a 75% bonus to bet on sports... https://sportsbetting.ag/?RAF=AD4XWFF3&product=SPO
I also have other offers on my profile posted for other Sportsbook that can guarantee yourself a few hundred dollars if you sign up before Super bowl. Please feel free to contact me regarding those offers.

So basically I started playing poker in mid-July after seeing some popular videos on YouTube, and after a few weeks I got to understand the rules, some lingo and what hands are good.
I played for a couple months and never really improved my knowledge of the game, even after putting in some serious hours I never felt like I’d gotten better at the game since those first few weeks. I’d go deep in small online tournaments but lose concentration once pressure situations came around, and due to work I took a few months away from poker since I didn’t have the time anymore.
Now I’m back playing again but I find myself exactly where I left off. I don’t really know how to further my skillset (what little I have) and generally feel as though I’m being outclassed by other players. Obviously, I’m playing micro stakes here so I’m not coming up against the best around but it’s a little frustrating nonetheless.
Do you guys have any advice on how to improve? Sorry if this sort of thing isn’t allowed.

Hi,
So this is probably going to be a stupid set of questions but I hope you can help me understand and I am genuinely trying to get my head around it..
I'm interested in taking part in the bigger online tournaments for example the daily marathons on poker stars, at the moment I have played microstakes and small pots but I am learning and so I'm studying and trying to improve my game. My questions are as follows,

1. I understand there are some good books, in particular Peter Clarke grinders manual for 6 max tables and poker maths etc.. But these focus on micro games.. Is there value in understanding these and learning the poker or should I be learning from different sources? I'm trying to work out how best to grow my knowledge with the intention I have..

Also are there any recommendations on books to read? Places to pick up tips and research? People to follow on Instagram?
I've been doing a lot of reading and learning but it'd hard as I don't have the experience or understanding of whether what I am doing is right or not.

1. I've read a lot about poker maths, do you all use this in your games?
   
2. What is your biggest learnings or mistakes you made?
   
3. What are the better tournaments and online sites to play poker?
   

6.is there a way to find people with a love of poker close to where I live?
TIA

Bovada is an online sportsbook and casino established in 2011. The platform offers betting on most major US sports leagues and horse racing. It has slots, table games, blackjack, and a variety of other casino games. Plus, Bovada offers live online poker tournaments with players from around the world.
What you will need to do is sign up through my referral link. Make a deposit, and pm me with the deposit amount, and bet through your deposit one time and I'll receive 200% of your deposit up to $100. (You can easily hedge your $100 bet on another Sportsbook to churn through your 1× bet through. Feel free to ask me questions if you have any.) I will receive 200% of your deposit up to $100. Example, if you deposit $50, I'll receive $100 and send you $25 back. Minimum deposit is $20 and max payout from me is $25. Note that you can't withdraw your funds right away or I will lose my referral bonus. After 24 hours, to ensure you don't just withdraw and I lose my bonus, I'll send the money. STEPS: *Comment $bid
*I'll send you link to my referral to sign up or you can use the link below.
*Sign up and deposit $20 or more to receive your payment back from me.

• I'll send out payment via Cashapp, Venmo, PayPal or Chime.

Link:# #https://www.bovada.lv/welcome/P455B02E/join?extcmpid=rafcopy

https://www.bovada.lv/terms-of-service
SportsBetting is a one-stop-shop for nearly every popular type of gambling – legal sports betting, casino gaming, horse racing betting, and poker. Headquartered in Panama, the site initially launched in 1999 but was acquired by BetOnline in 2012. Since the acquisition, SportsBetting has become one of the top legal betting sites for players from the United States. It is one of the few legal betting sites that remained in the US market after Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act (UIGEA) of 2006. The federal law has no impact on the legality of online sports betting, but is essentially a banking restriction on unregulated payment processors. SportsBetting is well aware of this law and they have created ways to make sure that bettors can still safely and efficiently receive their winnings. SportsBetting has remained committed to U.S. players and is today one of the best betting sites that accept residents of all 50 states.
SportsBetting offers the complete package for every type of player in the US, and you will find that the site truly outshines the competition in certain areas. Huge bonuses and promotions, the latest betting odds, quick registration, and reliable banking are just some of the strong points of this particular betting site. The overall variety, whether it be the selection of sports or the catalog of casino games, is quite impressive at the online gambling site. In our legal SportsBetting review for US players, we will go into detail on these topics and more.
What you will need to do is sign up through my referral link. Make a deposit, and pm me with the deposit amount. Bet through your deposit one time and I'll receive 200% of your deposit up to $200. (You can easily hedge your $100 bet on another Sportsbook to churn through your 1× bet through. Feel free to ask me questions if you have any.) Example, if you deposit $100, I'll receive $200 and send you $50 back. Minimum deposit is $25 and max payout from me is $50. Note that you can't withdraw your funds right away or I will lose my referral bonus. After 24 hours, to ensure you don't just withdraw and I lose my bonus, I'll send the money.
STEPS:
*Comment $bid
*I'll send you link to my referral to sign up or you can use the link below.
*Sign up and deposit $25 or more and bet through your deposit once to receive your payment back from me.

• I'll send out payment via Cashapp, Venmo, PayPal or Chime.

I have been playing at SportsBetting. Join today and get a 75% bonus to bet on sports... https://sportsbetting.ag/?RAF=AD4XWFF3&product=SPO

I recently started to use Equilab in an attempt to understand my range construction better after the flop and how certain ranges hit certain flops. I am also trying to use this to determine if I should fold, call, or raise my opponent based on what I believe their range is and what my perceived range is. I have a hand review that I need some help with for determining whether or not to call, raise, or fold and how I should use Equilab to build a range based on the MDF and Pot Odds of the spot.

20/40 No Limit Hold'em Online Tournament $1 Buy in

It is the early phases of the tournament and the stacks of the players in the hand are +- 200 of the current average of 1,500.
Pre Flop: (60) Hero is BTN with Ah 9s
UTG Calls, Fold to hero, Hero Calls, SB calls, BB checks.
Flop: (160) 3c Jc Ad (4 Players)
SB checks, BB checks, Villain bets 120, Hero calls, 2 folds
Turn: (400) Jd (2 Players)
Villain bets 300, Hero folds

Thought Process

Pre Flop
I think my first mistake in this hand is over limping instead of raising. I figured that over limping here with a weak-marginal hand on the button with 2 players behind, who are likely to over limp as well, is not a bad play even though it is not optimal.
Flop
When the villain bets 3/4 pot I put him on a range of:
33, A9s-A2s, KJs, QJs, J7s+, KcQc, KcTc, QcTc, Kc9c, Qc9c, Tc9c, Qc8c, 9c8c, ATo-A2o, KJo, QJo, J9o+
I believe calling is the correct move here rather than raising. I don't think raising does much as the villain will most likely continue with Ax, Jx and will essentially just build the pot. I choose to call to keep some pot control. However, when writing this I was asking myself if raising would be a better line to play. After seeing the range I put the villain on I am essentially saying that he cannot have a better ace than the one that I have so raising may get him off of Jx allowing me to take down the pot with a marginal hand. One thing that I did not consider when making this call instead of raising is the two players behind me left in the hand.
Turn
The villain again bets 3/4 pot. I fold. My main reason being there were too many Jx in his range based off of his preflop and flop actions. This is where I am getting stuck with Equilab in trying to define a range of hands where I would fold, call, or raise.
MDF tells me that the villain needs me to fold more than ~43% for this to be a profitable play. When using Equilab I have been trying to construct a range for raising as a bluff, or calling. I am trying to take into consideration my starting range based off what my perceived range is due to my preflop and post flop actions and the hands that would be raised for value that would not fall into the calling range.
Pot odds tell me that I need to have at least 30% equity in my current holdings to make a profitable call. After going through the hand I see that I probably have the equity to call against the range that I put my opponent on. If the turn were to come a brick and I were to still face a bet, whether it be a value bet or polarizing bet then I am most likely beat and can let it go.
My questions are:

1. How do you construct ranges after the flop and what do you take into consideration when constructing these ranges with Equilab or other software?
2. What percent of my range should be calling on the turn vs raising?
3. Do you think folding here was the right play?

I am a complete beginner when it comes to the math aspect of poker and doing it on the fly. I am trying to understand the concept of determining my equity vs the range of my opponents hands and how that should influence my bet size to make +EV plays. If you have any advice for the best ways to use poker software to help improve I'd love to know about it.

I’ve been watching and loving basketball for a long time. My first word was ball, and my parents have a picture of me making my first basket on a little tykes hoop around age two. Until I was in 7th grade, I truly figured I would make the NBA because I was better at basketball than my friends. I told everyone I'd be like a 9th man kind of guy. Matt Bonner perhaps. Middle School crushed that dream. I’m not so old, but it’s been about 20 years of obsessive NBA fandom. From an early love of the 2000 New York Knicks, to an obsession with Gilbert Arenas, and nerding out over everything from Marc Gasol pick and roll defense to LeBron James handshakes, this has been my life.
I’m also a big reader. I’ve loved reading since I was a kid as it was one of my parents big priorities (my mother briefly worked for a bookstore). I love Non-Fiction, and am a major proponent of novels (fiction is generally not nearly emphasized properly around the world these days. Bring Back Fiction). When I was younger I wrote the first two pages of a novel about Latrell Sprewell saving the world by choking out a bad guy. In my book, he was losing air or something. It was an objectively dumb idea. I got bored of writing it after like 2 pages. Turns out I hate writing. Though I still have an idea for an anthropomorphized Toaster that toasts people alive and yells hibachi. If anyone wants to run with that, feel free.
As you can imagine, I’ve read quite a few books about basketball in my day. Novels, Biographies, Topic specific pieces, exposes. Even a random Jordan hit piece or two. I wanted to share my love for basketball books combined with my obsession with ranking shit, so I am making this post to give a quick ranking of my favorite basketball books in 3 separate categories that I find particularly compelling. If you are of any age and want to read some great books, you can use this as a good place to start.
I’m going to make 3 short lists.
*Topic Specific Books*. The books will pick a subject and delve into it. Think The Dream Team. These will be judged on topic, writing, story, interesting info, and the level of new information we got in the book.
*Young Adult Novels* I adore young adult novels AND I’ve re read most of them since my initial reading. So for all the 10-14 year olds on here, these books are amazing and can help you get into reading if that’s something you’re struggling with. And if the book is on this list, it means I think it holds up and adults/pseudo-adults/folks masquerading as adults will enjoy reading it as well.
*More General Basketball Books* Think The Book of Basketball. This category will be about more foundational books that don’t cover any singular topic.
One category I did not include here that is really prevalent in the basketball book world: Books about coaching, both technical and abstract. There’s tons of good ones, but it’s just not my forte so I’m passing on it. I've done a bit of (INSANELY LOW LEVEL) coaching and a couple of these were fascinating for that, but a bit less generally interesting.
Reminder: I’ve read a bunch of books, but also I haven’t read a bunch of books, and am excited for folks to comment on this with disagreements and favorites that I haven’t read! You’ll never read them all.
**Last disclaimer: I’m a person. I have bias. There are authors I gravitate to because I love their style who are disproportionately represented here. Just wanted to name it. Looking at you Jack McCallum and John Feinstein.**
**THE FIVE BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVELS ABOUT BASKETBALL:**
Honorable Mentions: Summer Ball- Mike Lupica, On the Devil's Court - Carl Deuker

1. Hoop City - Scott Blumenthal

This novel is the one with the youngest targeted audience on this list. It follows Tony and Mike Hope, two brothers from Harlem, who play point guard and shooting guard and have plans to go to college, and make the NBA. Everything changes when a shooting at a party paralyzes Mike from the waist down. The story follows Tony’s journey as he tries to make the NBA and his struggle with his brother’s tragedy and making his mother proud. Absolutely excellent spotlight on street ball and the many parks in NYC that are hotbeds of the game. The author is excellent at touching on some really serious emotions of imposter syndrome, disability, and adversity. Not to mention violence.

1. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian - Sherman Alexie

This is the only one of this list that isn’t strictly a basketball book, but wow it’s really damn good. It’s by Indigenous American author Sherman Alexie about a high schooler who lives on a reservation, and instead of going to the local high school, he attends the off-reservation rival public school. He ends up making the varsity basketball team. It’s an excellent spotlight on Indigenous reservations, modern Native American life and its intersection with basketball. This is a beautiful display of representation and a strong story. I’d recommend it for your high school students/middle schoolers as the beginning age boundary.

1. Slam - Walter Dean Myers

Walter Dean Myers could’ve had like 5 books on this list but this is, in my opinion, his best. It follows a high school player named Greg "Slam" Harris, and his best friend Ice, and explores basketball, blackness, race and systemic racism, New York city diversity programs packaged in an excellent high school story that questioned our conceptions of talent and the racially charged nature of the criticism’s around showboating. It also does a phenomenal job of asking where friendships need to draw a line, drugs, personal life and personal expression. Also this book celebrates dunking for a bunch of it, which is always a plus in my book (pun unintended but welcomed).

1. The Last Shot - John Feinstein

Feinstein’s first young adult novel was a hit. It follows two young teen aspiring basketball journalists who win a trip to the Final Four, and stumble upon the story of a century. The characters are incredibly endearing, if a bit cheesy, and Feinstein gets the ok from a myriad of real figures, from the “hated” Coach K, to Tony Kornheiser, to a myriad of others to be featured as characters in the book. He pokes fun at all of them. Seriously, there's like, a whole scene where Tony Kornheiser is demanding a hotel suite and asking the bellhop “Do you know who I am??” This book secretly teaches the reader a hell of a lot of college basketball history, packaged in a terrific young adult thriller, and engages with gambling and extortion. It helps ask the question, what part of this is actually amateur?

1. Travel Team- Mike Lupica

The Gold Standard. One of Lupica’s two best young adult sports books (Heat I can’t recommend enough), Travel Team follows young, undersized point guard Danny Walker, son of an alcoholic ex-NBA father, and an awesome single mother, and his friends and bully’s. The characters are middle schoolers, and are the overwhelming strength of this book that is great for 5th graders and up, but honestly is excellent at all ages. I read it all in a day this past weekend. The characters, both protagonists and antagonists are beautifully written, and the story is heart warming while having real mistakes and high stakes. If you’ve ever rooted for the lovable underdog, this is for you.
**THE 7 BEST TOPIC SPECIFIC BOOKS ABOUT BASKETBALL - Non Fiction**
Honorable Mentions: 7 Seconds or Less - Jack McCallum. (A year with the 05/06 Suns.) The Legends Club - John Feinstein (A Look at the Rivalry between Dean Smith, Jimmy V, and Coach K and the Three North Carolina Powerhouses) A Season on the Brink- John Feinstein (Following Bob Knight and the 85/86 Hoosiers) Tuff Juice: My Journey from the Streets to the NBA -Caron Butler and Steve Springer (Caron’s autobiography. If you don’t know his story, it’s... wild.)

1. Shooting Stars - Buzz Bissinger and LeBron James

This book isn’t quite as good as the others, but holy hell is it fascinating in content. The book, which functions as a LeBron Biography follows him from birth until he arrived in the NBA. LeBron, who's entire life and career is pretty much Oscar bait, gives insight after insight. The book focused in particular on his high school years (The movie, More than a Game was based on this. And, unrelated, The Drake song Forever’s music video which was for this movie was based on that book as well. Also, go watch the music video for Forever, because 1. It’s an amazing song where 4 elite rappers absolutely snap, particularly Eminem who had been criticized for not going on posse tracks with other elite rappers, and came back from the dead to steal the show, and 2. LeBron is playing online poker at the beginning of the video. I’m still not sure why and it makes me laugh every time. Is the implication that he has enough money to play online poker? Is that an effective flex? What's happening here??) and his Saint Vincent Saint Mary squad. Everyone should read the chapter on LeBron’s decision to spurn the typical high school choice and go with his childhood friends to the nearby private school. It’s absolutely fascinating as it foreshadows his move to the Heat which happened a year after this book's release. The thought process can be clearly traced to this moment. Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights, does a fantastic job.

1. Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four - Feinstein

An absolutely wonderful deep dive into the Final Four and March Madness, it’s history, it’s present, endless stories and anecdotes you haven’t heard, excellent access, and a phenomenal scatterbrained style typical of Feinstein. You want to learn about the NCAA Tournament? This is the book for you. This book was released in 2005, when Marvin Williams put back such a sick dunk that the PG needy Hawks were like, "Nah who needs Deron Williams or Chris Paul, this dude's a monster". But more notably, the next years tournament is the George Mason year, and the "Afterward" of the book is a lovely short spotlight on Mason's run which is still so damn magical.

1. Hoop Dreams - Ben Javorsky

The book version of the famous documentary, it follows two high end Chicago Area high school prospects in Will Gates and Arthur Agee as they navigate going to a school outside the inner city where they grow up, and the challenges and toxicity facing high end high school basketball recruits. There’s also one insanely fascinating passage about teen pregnancy, which is so damn interesting that I won't spoil for you. This story is crazy famous and worthwhile reading for anyone with interest in high school basketball.

1. The Jordan Rules - Sam Smith

If you watched The Last Dance, which I hope you did, you know about this expose/hit piece that rocked the basketball world, and many say pushed Jordan away from the media for good in terms of a lack of trust. I’ll leave it at that since this one is famous as well, and is on this list as much for importance as it is for quality. But that 90-91 Bulls season is a damn whirlwind.

1. When the Game was Ours - Jackie MacMullan

Get to know Larry Bird and Magic Johnson and their rivalry like you never have before. Their battles, friendship, stories and anecdotes are beautiful and written in such an absolutely engrossing manner. It’s impossible to put it down and makes you fall in love with the two of them all over again. Plus, if you don’t already know, Larry Bird is the number one player of all time in the category of “How cool are the stories opponents and teammates tell about him, because Christ, that dude is so damn good and talks so much shit.”

1. Let Me Tell You a Story - Feinstein

John Feinstein gets invited to weekly lunches with Red Auerbach and the man tells stories about Auerbach and the Boston Celtics that are like nothing you’ve ever heard before. When you read it, you feel like you’re sitting in the room with Red and you never want to leave. It’s like if you were sitting with your grandfather and just let him go off on every topic imaginable, except your grandfather was the foundational coach at the NBA. A highlight is his telling of the Bill Russell trade.

1. The Dream Team- Jack McCallum

What else? Endless anecdotes, endless drama, endless characters. Jack gets Jordan, Charles, and the rest of them absolutely perfectly. The Dream Team was larger than life, and Jack waited to write this book until he was able to secure interviews from everyone needed, including Bird who rarely gives interviews like these. An extraordinary collection of stories and some of the best writing about the famous greatest game ever played, the scrimmage in the days before the Olympics began. Also, Charles Barkley’s chapter is incredible, both stories wise, as well as the reverence the other players had for prime chuck.
**THE THREE BEST BASKETBALL BIG PICTURE BOOKS**
Honorable Mention: Basketball (and Other Things)- Shea Serrano. He’s the most entertaining writer in the business, the illustration by Arturro Torres is exceptional and the book is absolute nonsense.

1. Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior - by Hugh Delehanty and Phil Jackson

I like to say it’s barely a basketball book in any way. It’s Phil Jackson, intentionality and a way of life. Phil waxes on mindfulness and meaning, while drawing on his experience as maybe the most successful basketball coach in the history of the game. He also manages to only seem like, kind of pretentious which is a huge win for Phil. Some really incredible insight on life from Phil. It’s about basketball and about coaching, but it’s really about life.

1. The Book of Basketball - Bill Simmons

Maybe a controversial pick, but once upon a time, Bill Simmons really did follow basketball. Sure he’s an annoying homer, but he’s a damn good writer, an entertaining personality, and this book boils down to every discussion you’ve ever had with your friends about basketball given the attention they deserve. It’s extremely influential (even if some of it hasn’t aged so well) and absolutely a fantastic read. The Hall of Fame pyramid concept has stood the test of time. And if you can get over the fact that he hates Wilt Chamberlain, this book can be an extraordinary transition for casual fans who want to take it to the next level, or nerds wanting to learn more.

1. FreeDarko Presents: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac: Styles, Stats, and Stars in Today's Game

This book is the foundation of what I believe about basketball. Written in 2008, and derived from the Basketball internet nerd Famous FreeDarko blog, it celebrated players uniqueness, argued that winning isn’t the only thing that matter, treasured style, and blended pop culture and informal writing into basketball paving the way for the Zach Lowe’s and Shea Serrano’s that have come since.
I can’t say enough about this book. If you believe that the NBA is more than stats, players, winning, but is instead all of those things combined with humanity, style, beauty, drama, hilarity, and a cast of characters that rivals any other institution on earth, this book should be required reading.
Alright,
That’s all I got. I wish I could’ve written about 30 more books that I had to leave out. I’m sorry for forcing John Feinstein and Jack McCallum on you. Hopefully you’ve found at least one book that you are going to check out from your local library (SUPPORT LIBRARIES!).
And would love to hear everyone else’s favorites as well!

If you are new to online casino then I suggest that you should go for iOffer I Dough, otherwise known as IDNPoker. The website is very user-friendly, has an interface that is pleasant to use, and has a great jackpot which updates in real time. Eight deposit choices include US dollars. Is iOffer I Do the real deal and why is it the second largest online poker website in the world? This article will try to answer these questions and more. Read on for more information.iOffer is a top poker website which is famous all over the world because of the poker tournaments which it hosts regularly. The poker rooms on the website are mainly based in Europe (where most of the international players come from), but some rooms also have players from Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia and China. Players from Asia seem to be quite happy with iOffer, as they receive great tips from successful players about their moves. Most importantly, they are able to win real cash/ prize money and thus can earn enough to live on for a while (or at least make enough to cover living expenses).Another unique feature of iOffer I Dough is that it allows its players to participate in live chat with other members of the website. Players can chat about everything from tips to strategies, tournaments and everything in between - something which most online poker sites do not allow. The live chat also gives those players who join iOffer a chance to meet other poker players from different parts of the globe and thus build better contacts and relationships.The most important thing about idNPoker and one of the reasons why it is considered to be the best option by many players is the progressive jackpots it offers. If you want to play online poker in Asia, then you should definitely try out the progressive jackpots offered by iOffer. Here is a brief rundown of what these promotions entail:- If you are a beginner or if you want to improve your gaming skills, then iOffer can surely help you. This poker network offers a variety of games and prizes especially designed for new players and for players who do not yet have the experience with online poker. All the games supported by iOffer are completely free to play. - The website also offers a variety of free games that are suitable for players from all over Asia.- If you are on the lookout for a real deal and not just some hype about the progressive jackpots, then you should definitely check out the Daily Double option. Daily Double is a multi-table tournament that offers players the opportunity to win real cash. This is a lower end option compared to the other options of iOffer like the VIP and Single options. You can earn up to $10 weekly just by playing some of the most popular Rng games like iOffer Blackjack and Ultimate Bet.

If you are new to online casino then I suggest that you should go for iOffer I Dough, otherwise known as IDNPoker. The website is very user-friendly, has an interface that is pleasant to use, and has a great jackpot which updates in real time. Eight deposit choices include US dollars. Is iOffer I Do the real deal and why is it the second largest online poker website in the world? This article will try to answer these questions and more. Read on for more information.iOffer is a top poker website which is famous all over the world because of the poker tournaments which it hosts regularly. The poker rooms on the website are mainly based in Europe (where most of the international players come from), but some rooms also have players from Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia and China. Players from Asia seem to be quite happy with iOffer, as they receive great tips from successful players about their moves. Most importantly, they are able to win real cash/ prize money and thus can earn enough to live on for a while (or at least make enough to cover living expenses).Another unique feature of iOffer I Dough is that it allows its players to participate in live chat with other members of the website. Players can chat about everything from tips to strategies, tournaments and everything in between - something which most online poker sites do not allow. The live chat also gives those players who join iOffer a chance to meet other poker players from different parts of the globe and thus build better contacts and relationships.The most important thing about idNPoker and one of the reasons why it is considered to be the best option by many players is the progressive jackpots it offers. If you want to play online poker in Asia, then you should definitely try out the progressive jackpots offered by iOffer. Here is a brief rundown of what these promotions entail:- If you are a beginner or if you want to improve your gaming skills, then iOffer can surely help you. This poker network offers a variety of games and prizes especially designed for new players and for players who do not yet have the experience with online poker. All the games supported by iOffer are completely free to play. - The website also offers a variety of free games that are suitable for players from all over Asia.- If you are on the lookout for a real deal and not just some hype about the progressive jackpots, then you should definitely check out the Daily Double option. Daily Double is a multi-table tournament that offers players the opportunity to win real cash. This is a lower end option compared to the other options of iOffer like the VIP and Single options. You can earn up to $10 weekly just by playing some of the most popular Rng games like iOffer Blackjack and Ultimate Bet.

To determine your net cash flow and compare it to that of your peer group, many people will use a method known as Cash Math. Cash Math is also calling ExpfinX or Expfin. It was devised by Bill Henderson, who has used the method to determine capital expenses for his small business for almost 20 years. I am going to explain what Cash Math is, how it works and how you can make money using it in your net cash flow analysis for your small business. Cash Math is an online program that you can download to your computer and follow steps as they are provided to calculate your net cash flow and other factors such as capital expenses, operating costs, net income, balance sheet and much more. You simply enter your data and the program estimates the amount of cash-on-cash return that you could expect over time based on your current level of debt and interest along with future capital expenses and operating costs. This process is done for free and is very easy to do with the step by step instructions.Most programs are designed to be used by small businesses as they are simple to use and calculate. However, if you have a larger business or more complex data, you may want to consider a slightly more robust program. One such robust program is that of Netbackup, which will automatically calculate your net cash flow based on your past and anticipated cash-on-cash return for a specific period of time. It will then warn you if you are exceeding your required returns or not.Another common question is how to change from a direct debit to a cash-on-cash return. Some programs allow you to make this adjustment without re-entering your data. There are several different ways to do this depending on the type of financing that you are using. You can choose to debit the funds that are being used for capital expenses and use the funds as the repayment for the existing loan, or you can use the cash-on-cash return method to repay the loan and reduce your capital expenses. Either way, the cash-on-cash return calculation is the same for all types of financing. Cash game math is used in many poker rooms as well as other cardrooms where players bet real money. It can be a big advantage when playing against skilled opponents because it gives you a statistical advantage. The best part is that it takes very little effort to learn and implement. A good place to find some cash games is the Internet because there are literally hundreds of online sites that offer games like these.If you want to play cash games, be sure that you practice as much as possible. Most of the best tournament math players learn by trial and error and by being exposed to as many different types of players as possible. The more you play, the better you will get. Remember to never give up and keep at it. In addition, it is also important that you have a good understanding of the strategies involved. If you think you are ready to start using cash game math, now is the time to go out and play some games.

Before I get started I want to make it clear that I like the game and only want to see it improve. This isn’t a post/thread to bash the game in anyway. My goal is to be as constructive as possible and maybe provide some possible solutions.
The Important:

• Connectivity. I still struggle to complete any of the PCC events due to losing connection to tournaments. My last attempt resulted in receiving no earned stars and all of my hole cards at the final table becoming blank. This is the most important game breaking issue as far as I am concerned at the moment.
  
• Camera placement. Specifically during showdowns. I’m not sure why it was decided that zooming in in the board was the best angle. Zoom the camera out just a bit so we can see the hands turned over as well. Mucked hands need to be placed better as well.
  
• Rebuys and Top offs during cash games. This is an important part of cash games. Players need to be able to rebuy/top off their stack between hands. This isn’t a “feature” so much as an integral part of the game of Poker. We are not currently playing a real cash game, but a sort of “freeze out” essentially.
  

Quality of Life.

• Complete overhaul of custom game search/creation. The current method of creating or finding games is just grossly unacceptable. Just create a top down sortable table of available games and then add a filter option or create new option.
  
• Scheduled tournament events. Building a stack on this game is not too difficult. Let’s have some events for real club bragging rights.
  
• Table waiting lists. Eliminate the need for half the bots currently in use. A table with 3 bots at it should never be “full” to real players. The bot with the lowest table time should always get kicked at the end of a hand to accommodate anyone that wants to join.
  
• Chat...text/voice...something. It’s rather unacceptable that there is close to zero social interaction in an online multiplayer game...let alone a poker game. The reliance on 3rd party apps like Discord or Xbox party chat just sets a stage for encouraging collusion.
  

Trivial stuff.

• The button. It is practically invisible. It needs to be larger and white like every other dealer puck on Earth.
  
• I can’t read bet amounts across the table. The text needs to be scaled for distance.
  
• Player model customization. I have to look at a stupid close up of every player that wins a hand, but they look awful and pretty much all the same. It’s like you are showcasing just how awful and limited character design is.
  
• Table items. Many of them are too big. Lava lamps are ridiculous. Most card rooms at Casinos don’t allow smoking anymore.
  
• Clothing/accessories. You guys should reach out to designers and labels to do some authentic in game threads and swag.
  
• Just let me fold. Whenever I want. I know it is free to check...sometimes I don’t care.
  
• keep working on increasing the pace of play. Don’t hold up the action to watch stupid reaction close ups at the end of hands. We are more interested in being able to plainly see which hands won and lost than anything else.
  

Things I’m not addressing at this time. Bots and simulation of PCC MTT’s.
Let me know what you think the game currently needs.

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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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
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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?
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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.
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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!
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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