Apparently, I played with a bunch of "cheaters"

[AlphaDummy]

No - not this group.

And no - we weren't cheating.

Many of you may remember NTN's "Million Dollar Match" from a few years back. For those of you who are not familiar with the game: It was played similarly to Countdown, but with a twist: A score was flashed on the screen at the beginning of the game (and at the end of each break). The object of the game was not to get the most points, but rather to match the score exactly. Every exact match put the player into a drawing; at the end of the promotion, ten players were randomly selected for a free trip to the finals and a chance to win a million dollars.

Anyhow...Yesterday I was idly surfing the Web for whatever popped into my mind at the moment. And one such moment had me wondering whatever became of the M$M game. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my home location had been accused of cheating at the time by several players around the country.

A bit more background here: One of the players at our location discovered a perfectly legitimate technique to help maximize a player's chance of matching a score exactly. This method - which I will not cover in depth here but which was openly discussed at the time on at least one NTN message board - gave a player three to four times as many chances to match a score on a given game than a player who did not use the technique. Although it was apparently not a secret to the online NTN community, we kept it to ourselves as 1) we saw we were doing quite well and 2) since none of us apparently read the NTN boards, we thought that we were on to some magical secret that only a very few knew. Actually, I think we had a hunch that others around the country had it figured out as well - but we weren't seeing anybody else with the kind of success we were having.

And, apparently, others were noticing as well. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry at what I was reading. Some posters compared us to the "borg" teams; one accused us of somehow interrupting the feed; another was told by somebody (who, AFAIK, never even set foot in our location) that we were logging on to two feeds at once...the conspiracy theories were running wild.

Just for the record: We knew how to play, and we were pretty damn good at it. We had several players who knew how to time when to punch in an answer and who knew that they had multiple opportunities to do so on nearly every question once a threshhold was reached. And we generally sat together; if there were any hanky-panky by any of the other players I would have seen it.

No...what we had there was a statistical anomaly - two excellent M$M players and one phenomenal one, all in the same house. Nothing more than that.

I will be bringing a printout of what I found down to the waterhole tomorrow, though. This ought to be good for a laugh or two...

[Ritterskoop]

When we play games, if we do not do something that another player does not have the opportunity to do, it is not cheating.

Good game play is about more than knowing the answers.

[AlphaDummy]

When we play games, if we do not do something that another player does not have the opportunity to do, it is not cheating.

Good game play is about more than knowing the answers.

Exactly. And maybe this whole flap is somehow parallel to what we see so often in sports - if somebody is doing exceptionally well, they must be cheating, right?

That said, I have no concrete explanation as to what happened other than the statistical thing I cited in the OP (a concentration of good players in one location). We were clearly not the only ones to realize that there were several points where you could punch in on a given question rather than one, if you completely understood how the game was played. Exactly why we did so well compared to everybody else, though...I have nothing else to offer.

But I do not have my blinders on; I could see how this might generate suspicion in some circles. And, in fact, NTN discontinued M$M after that series and never did bring it back. It was an enjoyable game (obvious factors aside), and I was sad to see it go...doubly so, now.

[Ritterskoop]

But I do not have my blinders on; I could see how this might generate suspicion in some circles.

There may be a similar explanation for some of the Sploofus scores we see. It is our nature to be jealous, or at least to want an explanation, when we get beat fairly often. There is one person who wins a ton of Who Am I?s, and I wonder about face recognition software. I even tried to find some of my own. But that took some of the fun out of it, so I dropped it. The fun is in interpreting the clues in the photo: when might it have been taken, what clothing cues are there, haircuts, etc.

[ulysses5019]

No - not this group.

And no - we weren't cheating.

Many of you may remember NTN's "Million Dollar Match" from a few years back. For those of you who are not familiar with the game: It was played similarly to Countdown, but with a twist: A score was flashed on the screen at the beginning of the game (and at the end of each break). The object of the game was not to get the most points, but rather to match the score exactly. Every exact match put the player into a drawing; at the end of the promotion, ten players were randomly selected for a free trip to the finals and a chance to win a million dollars.

Anyhow...Yesterday I was idly surfing the Web for whatever popped into my mind at the moment. And one such moment had me wondering whatever became of the M$M game. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my home location had been accused of cheating at the time by several players around the country.

A bit more background here: One of the players at our location discovered a perfectly legitimate technique to help maximize a player's chance of matching a score exactly. This method - which I will not cover in depth here but which was openly discussed at the time on at least one NTN message board - gave a player three to four times as many chances to match a score on a given game than a player who did not use the technique. Although it was apparently not a secret to the online NTN community, we kept it to ourselves as 1) we saw we were doing quite well and 2) since none of us apparently read the NTN boards, we thought that we were on to some magical secret that only a very few knew. Actually, I think we had a hunch that others around the country had it figured out as well - but we weren't seeing anybody else with the kind of success we were having.

And, apparently, others were noticing as well. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry at what I was reading. Some posters compared us to the "borg" teams; one accused us of somehow interrupting the feed; another was told by somebody (who, AFAIK, never even set foot in our location) that we were logging on to two feeds at once...the conspiracy theories were running wild.

Just for the record: We knew how to play, and we were pretty damn good at it. We had several players who knew how to time when to punch in an answer and who knew that they had multiple opportunities to do so on nearly every question once a threshhold was reached. And we generally sat together; if there were any hanky-panky by any of the other players I would have seen it.

No...what we had there was a statistical anomaly - two excellent M$M players and one phenomenal one, all in the same house. Nothing more than that.

I will be bringing a printout of what I found down to the waterhole tomorrow, though. This ought to be good for a laugh or two...

I vaguely remember playing this. I was still playing at Shannons and the Shannons team was aware of this. I would not consider it "cheating" at all.

[Weyoun]

I actually wasn't aware it was possible to "cheat" at M$M - the idea was to screw around and get a certain number, anyway. It was less a trivia game than a lottery, one I was not good at.

I do know that one of the reasons I have stopped playing NTN, aside from being so darn busy, is that some bars prefer to use computers to look up answers, and that took the spirit of competition out of games that were actually about knowing the answers. A bar in Texas pretty much can only win this way, and it stunk finishing second or third to them regularly. It also hasn't helped that NTN has crapped all over its major game, Countdown.

I suppose it could be worse; some of my friends have scaled back playing because one of the regulars smells like cat urine. I didn't believe it, but then I showed up in town last week and, sure enough - cat urine.

[NellyLunatic1980]

I suppose it could be worse; some of my friends have scaled back playing because one of the regulars smells like cat urine. I didn't believe it, but then I showed up in town last week and, sure enough - cat urine.

Actually, it could be worse: KittySandwich could be in town at the same time.

[AlphaDummy]

I actually wasn't aware it was possible to "cheat" at M$M - the idea was to screw around and get a certain number, anyway. It was less a trivia game than a lottery, one I was not good at.

DINGDINGDING!! And the sense I got was that those who were making the accusations felt we were using methods beyond legitimate gameplay (hacking, etc) to maximize our score.

I do know that one of the reasons I have stopped playing NTN, aside from being so darn busy, is that some bars prefer to use computers to look up answers, and that took the spirit of competition out of games that were actually about knowing the answers. A bar in Texas pretty much can only win this way, and it stunk finishing second or third to them regularly.

That is a sore spot up here as well. Given what is known to go on at some locations on Tuesday nights, things can get pretty discouraging. <brag> Our location finished in the top 15 last week, which was probably the best we ever did for Showdown</brag>; if I can finish in the top 100 individuals, I consider it an accomplishment. Of course, that is not to say that all of the top scorers cheat by any means. Obviously, there are all kinds of players and locations out there, and to say that all (or even most) of the big dogs cheat would be wrong on so many levels. It is just the actions of a small percentage that casts a suspicion on all of the good honest players that are out there.

It also hasn't helped that NTN has crapped all over its major game, Countdown.

Hear, hear. I am not at all fond of the 15-minute/10-question Buzztime format, although I am sure there are those who enjoy it. A couple of the short games here and there would be one thing...but I think they really screwed up when they de-emphasized Countdown the way they did.

I suppose it could be worse; some of my friends have scaled back playing because one of the regulars smells like cat urine. I didn't believe it, but then I showed up in town last week and, sure enough - cat urine.

Eeeesh. (That is all.)

[ulysses5019]

I actually wasn't aware it was possible to "cheat" at M$M - the idea was to screw around and get a certain number, anyway. It was less a trivia game than a lottery, one I was not good at.

I do know that one of the reasons I have stopped playing NTN, aside from being so darn busy, is that some bars prefer to use computers to look up answers, and that took the spirit of competition out of games that were actually about knowing the answers. A bar in Texas pretty much can only win this way, and it stunk finishing second or third to them regularly. It also hasn't helped that NTN has crapped all over its major game, Countdown.

I suppose it could be worse; some of my friends have scaled back playing because one of the regulars smells like cat urine. I didn't believe it, but then I showed up in town last week and, sure enough - cat urine.

LOL. I agree about the "borg" bars. It's frustrating knowing that there are bars like that. Can I assume that the Texas bar is Houston?

[Weyoun]

Actually the Borg bar is in Dallas, and I am told they are quite proud of what they do. Personally I would be bored by it. The cat urine is in Houston, and it is a shame since I am not sure how they are going to deal with it.

[SportsFan68]

. . .

I suppose it could be worse; some of my friends have scaled back playing because one of the regulars smells like cat urine. I didn't believe it, but then I showed up in town last week and, sure enough - cat urine.

If this is a recent development, the person is probably ill, mentally or physically. Mentally, there could be a cat who sprays everything, and the person doesn't deal with it.

Physically, the person could have ketosis, which people get when they go on those liquid or protein-only diets and lose all that weight. It's a symptom of other stuff too, I don't know what all.

[Bob Juch]

I actually wasn't aware it was possible to "cheat" at M$M - the idea was to screw around and get a certain number, anyway. It was less a trivia game than a lottery, one I was not good at.

I do know that one of the reasons I have stopped playing NTN, aside from being so darn busy, is that some bars prefer to use computers to look up answers, and that took the spirit of competition out of games that were actually about knowing the answers. A bar in Texas pretty much can only win this way, and it stunk finishing second or third to them regularly. It also hasn't helped that NTN has crapped all over its major game, Countdown.

I suppose it could be worse; some of my friends have scaled back playing because one of the regulars smells like cat urine. I didn't believe it, but then I showed up in town last week and, sure enough - cat urine.

Yes, my team came in 2nd to them in the summer competition a year and a half ago. That was before they admitted using laptops. The rules don't prohibit that though, and NTN won't do anything about it.