The Man Who Got No Whammies (2015)

Sounds like he missed his calling as a politician.

Had he done the same thing in Jeopardy!, by studying the most common categories, figuring out common clue patterns and how they lead into responses, and practicing with a buzzer, he'd be considered a smart player, as opposed to a power-gaming asshole who munchkined his way into money.

In a way, this is very much a story of a classic hack: the victims build a system that they belive to be foolproof without proper proof. The hacker manages to find a weakness through careful analysis and then goes on to exploit it in a spectacular and kind of fun way that isn't all that harmful. I don't think CBS was harmed that much by that amount of price money.

Where do you fall on the Phil Ivey edge sorting incident?

Well, dying at the age of 50 to throat cancer is not exactly on my list of expectations for life.

> tended to rely on illicit schemes that never worked out for him.

I mean, they found one radio one that failed, but almost all the others actually did work out for him?

This seems pretty hard, or at least tedious. Much bigger time investment than a normal 9-5.

"He began to spend every waking minute in front of a television, watching infomercials and game shows, in hopes of identifying some kind of opportunity to get rich quick."

Maybe this is a necessary evil in a day and age when a society is not all on the same page with respect to morals and values. It sure would be nice to have everyone proactively choose to act in a way that matches the "spirit" of the law or rules, and maybe this did used to happen in more homogeneous/authoritarian societies? But without that synchronization it seems to fall to the legislative bodies to codify as much as possible of the various moral behavior which is very hard in practice and easy to exploit.

This is hard to discuss with precision because there is a lot of subjective judgment involved. Cutting lines is not against the law, so should you do it to avoid wasting time waiting? Occasionally a rightmost lane is in practice used mostly for right turns, but marked as both straight and turn. Majority of people seem to understand it's a jerk move to block that lane for the turning traffic, so it's usually empty, but every now and then some greedy SOB takes it to overtake the herd. Personally I find this kind of thing despicable and do what I can to prevent it.

I'm sure there is some evolutionary biology connection to fairness and why we behave/feel this way.

>For example, when playing board or card games, I always try and discover some dominant, completely broken strategy that is definitely not in the "spirit" of the game. (...) isn't this how games are supposed to be played?

IMHO, there are 2 necessary criterion on whether or not a game should be played in a certain manner:

1. Is it fun? 2. Will people continue to play with me if play this way?

The first is obvious, don't do things that aren't fun. The second has to do with exhausting the people who might want to play with you - after all, if no one plays with you it's unlikely you'll be able to keep playing the game.

I don't imagine these criterion are complete, however. A dog might want to "play" by chasing a cat, and the cat might continue to "play" if it fears for its life. This is not a thing I allow. There needs to be some criterion for consent, or for the game being "good" for all parties involved.

In the case of card games, I've been very turned off of them before because of broken strategies. I'm not in principle against discovering new strategies that happen to be much stronger than intended ones, but if the game that comes out of that discovery is no longer fun, then I have no incentive to learn how to play the game.

> I don't think exploiting loopholes is dishonest

What is "dishonest"? It's a word. That's all; just a word. The meaning it has is based solely on the context in which you use it. There is not an ontological reality for the meanings of words. It means what you want it to mean.

We could argue what is and what is not dishonest. We could go back to the etymology of the word. We could see how it came to be. We could see how most people have used it. We could argue what meaning would be least surprising for most people. But in the end, when you utter the word "dishonest", you have a meaning in mind and, for you, the word has that meaning.

In fact, this is just the same as every other game you play. It's just a loophole. It's an advantage you can hold over others. You spoke. It is your meaning. I can misinterpret what you said, but it is forever my fault for not understanding your meaning. I can argue until the cows come home that I don't think it should mean what you want it to mean, but it's useless because the sentence you spoke is meaningless unless it has the meaning you intended it to have.

Most of your post is a tautology - I do not think it is "wrong" because I do not define "wrong" as being this. Discussion is not necessary.

> but I'm sure some would disagree

And this is where life gets interesting. "Some would disagree". Isn't that how games are supposed to be played? With others? Isn't the goal of a game to enhance everyone's well being, not just one "winner". Aren't the rules there to coax the maximum possible extraction of fun for all involved? Wouldn't be an extreme debasement of this concept if we abused the intent of the rules simply because we could?

You can do what you want, but don't be surprised if I have more fun than you even if I don't "win" ;-)

Games should be played so everyone playing has fun. These angry people were right and you were fooling yourself. Think of it as a short-term pleasure instead of long-time winning friends.

I don't know of anyone who got rich by good, honest, hard work without also getting insanely lucky. I know of people who got insanely lucky without being good or honest.