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!
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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!
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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.
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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!
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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!
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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.
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Just wanted to say thanks for the Alpha port!	Alpha AXP was by far the hardest to debug! "Branch later, maybe"
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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!
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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!
^{the below is a reply to the above}
Wow this is eerie. I literally fixed a bug a couple weeks ago that was this specific case.	They can be weird bugs to track down, too!
Tabs or spaces?	Spaces on an indent of 4, tabs set to 8.
How can I open an MS Binder file?	Push down on the metal tabs at the top and bottom of the central spine of the binder. That will release the 3-hole punch claws, and then you can remove your printed file.
"It's now safe to turn off your computer" Why was this splash removed?	I think most current BIOSes can do it on their own by now!
Do you have any insight as to why MS decided to build Windows 95 from the ground up instead of building off of an existing *nix system the way Apple did with OSX? Was it just for backwards compatibility or were there other reasons? Also, had you gone this way, how do you think Windows, and the industry in general, might be different? I'm asking as someone who thinks that WSL is the best thing to happen to Windows in years.	Windows 95 was not built from the ground up, but NT was. The most succinct reason (and just a guess, I'm not a spokesman) is that even though MS had Xenix on hand, there were fundamental problems in the way Unix handled SMP multiprocessor locks and so on at the time. I presume these have long since been solved in Linux, etc, but not without significant work.
	WSL is one of my favorite things too, but for the library of tools and software, it makes available to me, not because of some fundamental architectural superiority, I don't think!
What are your feelings about "Microsoft Bob"?	https://youtu.be/rXHu9OmLd8Y
What did source control look like in the 90's? How did MS keep its code from leaking out to the public? How did you handle versioning and different developers working on the same feature?	We used a tool called SLM, or Source Library Manager. It was sort of available briefly as a product under the name Microsoft Delta.
	It was OK for smaller teams but did not support branching, so just before I left we moved to Source Depot.
Why was Ctrl + Alt + Delete changed to Ctrl + Shift + Escape?	It wasn't! Ctrl-Alt-Delete raises the "Secure Alert Sequence" which triggers the OS to switch to the secure desktop, where you have the ability to click a button which will start task manager upon return to your regular desktop.
	Ctrl-Shift-Esc is a feature built into Winlogon that launches a TaskManager on the current desktop without switching to the secure desktop.
	There are theoretically hacks and exploits that can only be caught by switching to the secure desktop, so if you're ever in doubt, ctrl-alt-del is the more secure way to go.
How did DOS ever get away with just pulling device names like "COM1" out of thin air when it came to output redirection etc..?	That's for compatibility with MS-DOS.
What are you currently working on?	Mostly on LED and Microcontroller projects that I detail on my YouTube channel, and the channel itself takes a fair bit of my time! If you're curious, you can check out my current successes and failure adventures at http://youtube.com/d/davesgarage
Did you work with Kris Hatleid on Super Hacker and the game Evolution?	I worked with Kris on an unreleased title called "Commander Video". That's largely where I learned assembly language, since he did the bulk of the coding, I watched and did level design, etc. 1982 or so I believe!
Got any dev back door mainframe access codes for pinball?	hidden test
Dave, how did you manage to do all that without being able to google everything?	That's one of the craziest things... I got a degree in computer science before you could even look anything up!
	The hardest part was OLE2. Coming form a different platform (the Amiga) it was a monster to wrap my head around, and the book (Inside OLE2) was not the best for introducing devs to OLE. It scared me, and I sure could have used a YouTube tutorial or two!
Hi Dave! So here's a bit of an odd one. I loved your Space Cadet Pinball! I must have spent countless hours on it as a kid, and even now I still occasionally try to find ways to boot it up. A legitimate classic. But lately, the version windows offers just... don't feel the same. They aren't as nice. Is there a game you can name that you would say feels like a worthy successor to Space Cadet Pinball? Or even any more general pinball games you would recommend?	I have a real Black Knight 2000 machine here in the house that I fully restored, so I'm a fan of physcial pinball as well!
	I think the two best video games are (a) arcade Tempest, and (b) XBox Geometry Wars 3.
	GW3 is a classic, or should be!
Woah woah woah, University of Regina?!? Are you from here? Cool to see a UofR grad had such a major impact!	Yup! Check out the regina sub for a recent article
When working on MS-DOS what did you think of alternatives such as 4DOS, NDOS or DR-DOS, were they source of inspiration for new features or not at all ?	No in general, but Norton had NCD. It was a change folder command that could jump around the disk, so if you typed "NCD drivers" from the root, it could go down to "C:\windows\system32\drives". Super handy.
	So I tried to write one for NT, but it meant changing the working directory of the PARENT process (cmd.exe) and I could never figure out a clean and elegant way to do it without modifying CMD itself!
Which is the best version of Windows? (Figuratively speaking).	Windows NT 4.0

The best uses for a deck of cards / Playing games worth playing in these times

It is a horrible time for the world, but a good time for games. As it is an expensive and space consuming hobby, I know many of us don’t have access to everything we’d like to play. Over a few years I researched for myself the best uses of a deck of cards – easily portable, easier to get people to the table (oh yes! I play cards!), usually available. It seems like the right time to share the results.
I’ve organized the below into both frame of mind (I want to Think, I want to Pass Time, I want to Laugh) and player count. Player count is focused on who you have – I didn’t put games necessarily where they are best, but rather “if I have four people, what is my best option?”
A brief calibration: I still have my 1995 first edition of Settlers of Catan. I’ve got roughly 80 games in my basement curated from the last 25 years and know the rules to twice that number. My favorite games are Tigris & Euphrates and Race for the Galaxy. This isn’t boasting (certainly not around here) - it is meant to be context so when I say these are games “worth playing” you have a better sense of what that means.
Links to rules. Hope this is helpful.
When you want to think:
For 2:
· Khmer (2 players): Khmer begins as a math and probability game, but quickly evolves into the psychology space and bluffing as you and your opponent learn the game. It gets better with more play, as it has room for different metagames and strategies, and the winner will be the one who remains one step ahead. In essence, you are trying to move cards between your hand and the table such that your total is MORE than your opponent, but LESS than the table – and you are rarely sure what your opponent is holding. The deck requires six 6’s – we use face cards for the 6’s and A-5 for the 1-5.
· Dibs (2-3 players): This is also a psychological game, where you will win by predicting your opponent and staying one step ahead. The core conceit is simple, you each have an identical deck (1-13), you are bidding on another pool of cards (worth face value), and high cards win. The twist comes because you have to use your entire deck of 1-13 to bid, and you can’t win everything. The game is more commonly known as GOPS or Psychological Jiujitsu, but I feel those names are both bad and inaccurate, so we’ve adopted this name instead.
For 3:
· Fight the Landlord (3 players): This is the best 3-player version of the “Big 2” family of games from East Asia. Big 2, or climbing games, are a race to empty your hand before your opponents. There is wide room in choosing what to play when, and how to break up your hand, meaning you will be making both difficult and important decisions throughout each and every round. Highly addictive, and good hand play will nearly always beat out a lucky deal.
The rules get a bit lengthy when it comes to what cards can be led, so you will either want to make a crib sheet or simplify the rules to mirror Tichu (below). The game will play just as well.
· 99) (2-4 players): Another trick-taking game (see note below) on my list. The mechanism for bidding in this game (in a nutshell, removing three cards from your hand) is simple, but introduces asymmetric, hidden information and requires you to make trade-off choices between your desired hand and your desired bid. This adds a bit of crunch to the model without making the game inaccessible to new or more casual players.
For 4:
· Scotch Bridge (Really 4 players, but can stretch to 3-6): Also known as Oh Hell, Pratt & Whitney, La Podrida, and others. This is a trick taking game, and I nearly universally dislike those (see note below), but it wins me over for two reasons. First, you aren't trying to win the most tricks but rather to value exactly the strength of your hand and then hit that bid - which means you are engaged in every single hand. Secondly, the handsize will range from 1 to 13, and each handsize meaningfully changes the feel of the game. 13 is a pure test of trick taking skill, 1 is a Mexican stand-off with your chips on the table, and 7 in the middle is a wild ride of big bets and lady luck.
As noted, this game has numerous variations. Most make little tweaks to the scoring, max handsize, and order of hands. In general, I prefer a positive form of scoring (10 for hitting your bid, 1 for each trick, penalty for how far you missed your bid, etc.) and playing hands from 1 to 13 and back again.
· Tichu (4 players): In my opinion, the best of the Big 2/climbing games. Same as Fight the Landlord, the goal of the game is to be the first to empty your hand, but it requires skillful play in knowing when to play, when to pass, and what to lead. You can never go on autopilot in this game. Tichu is played in 2 vs. 2 partnership and has elegant rules for scoring, both of which make this one of my favorite games of all time.
A note on the game – It is technically designed and published by a Swiss designer. However, if you research it, he played more the role of an editocurator, (quite masterfully) going through regional variants of Big 2, compiling the best, pulling in some scoring rules from other games, and polishing it all into the glistening pearl it is.
A note on the deck - it requires four jokers. You have three options 1) Find two decks with the same backs and mark up the jokers 2) Equally mix two decks so there is an even mix of two card backs, again including and marking up all four jokers, 3) Removing the jokers and using the four 2’s as the jokers, with a crib sheet in the middle of the table mapping the four suits to the jokers. Or you can buy a Tichu deck.
5-6 Players
· Fossil (4-8 player): This is an auction game using a deck of cards. Winning a bid will net you points but losing a bid will constrain your future options - as well as provide key information to your opponents. These decisions are the core drivers – what to set out for auction and when to throw down on someone else’s auction. In the end, the game is a mixture of psychology, strategy, and luck, leaving room both for clever play and for big moments when everyone groans and laughs around the table.
It can play 4-8, but plays best at 5-6. The first game or two generally feels casual and luck driven, but as the game clicks you may start seeing how you can influence the state of the table by choosing what to auction, or how the timing of your bid can win or lose you the hand. Like Khmer, this game grows on you over the first couple of games.
· Napoleon (5-6 Players): This is a Japanese trick-taking (see note below) game. What makes it stand out is the hidden role. Each player bids individually, then the winner (Napoleon) declares a Secretary card. Whoever is holding this card is secretly on Napoleon’s team, unbeknownst to everyone (including Napoleon). This leads to bluffing and deduction during play, with players uncertain about when to win a trick and when to ditch their low cards. It’s an excellent knife twist in the side or what is too often a rote playing-out-of-hands in standard trick taking, and it creates a social environment ripe for discussion and laughter at the end of each hand.
Napoleon is very similar to Briscola Chiamata, but in my opinion plays better as it removes some unnecessary complications from that latter game. It also draws comparisons to Schafkopf/Sheepshead, but again I think this one does it better.
· Skull & Roses (4-8 players): This is a pure bluffing game – think Poker without hands, only you, your opponents, and your wits. If that doesn’t capture it for you, just accept that this is amazing. You all place cards on the table until someone starts bidding, then it’s a gamble for who thinks they can flip the most cards without revealing a skull. The tension comes because, if you win the bid, you have to flip ALL of your own cards - so if you’ve played a skull, you lose. But, if you play all roses, you’re making it easy on your opponents. Choose wisely when you want to bid to win, and when you want to bid to entrap your opponents.
The game is usually played with coasters, but just as easily you can give each player one face card as their Skull and three numbered cards as their Roses. Or mark up any stack of two sided, identical objects in your house – I’ve heard of people playing with sweetener packets at Denny’s.
1) A note on trick-taking:
I don’t like it. Pure trick-taking – think Vanilla Whist – is not devoid of skill, but it IS quickly masterable and rarely surprising. A set of skilled players will play the same hand the same way every time, can guess the outcome before play even begins, and state it with certainty after 2-3 hands have revealed voids or singletons.
Most trick taking games, therefore, overlay something else to add interest. Things like complex bidding (Bridge, Skat) make the games inaccessible to new players, and turn them into objects of study more than play. Things like small hand sizes (Pitch, Euchre) throw the game into heavy luck, and often throw you into the backseat, passively throwing cards on the table until you are dealt a hand worth playing. This is fine to keep your hands busy while you drink, but isn’t what I look for when Gaming (with a capital G).
Nonetheless, I’ve included four trick-takers. My criteria are straightforward:

You have to be able to bid and play whatever hand you get. Games like Spades and Scottish Bridge don’t ask you win as much as you can, but rather to exactly value your hand. Playing a bad hand can be just as engaging and difficult as playing a good hand.
They need a single, straightforward twist to add interest. Napoleon adds a hidden role and uncertain partnerships. 99 asks you to secretly remove cards from the game, manipulating suit length, while trying to deduce what your opponents have removed. Hearts asks you to consider and risk when to win a trick and when to lose. These all give you something to think about throughout the game, sometimes require you to shift tactics midgame, and don’t require a course of study to properly learn (I’m looking at you, Bridge).

I anticipate the comments will contain passionate counter-arguments. So play and make up your own mind. I’ve played a lot and am now offering the best advice I can.
When you want to chat and pass time:
None of these games are chutes and ladders. But they do offer more luck and simpler decisions, for the most part, allowing you to while away hours and spend as much time talking to your opponent as you do thinking about the table.
2 Players
· Cribbage (2-4 players): Cribbage plays out in two acts. You and your opponent(s) lay cards on the table, trying to hit or avoid certain sums, with a few bonuses for creating pairs or runs. Then you look at your hand (and the crib) to make combinations worth points. There’s a bit of a list to remember, for what scores you points, but with that mastered the game settles into an easy rhythm of regular dopamine hits and little pegs on a board. Hitting 15 and hunting for your melds is utterly enjoyable. This is the perfect game to crack open a bottle of something together and seamlessly move back and forth between chat and play.
· Spite & Malice (2-4 players): This game feels like Spit - without the frantic pace, slapped hands, and bent cards. It’s also like multiplayer solitaire, except reverse to how that term is usually used. The rules are built on real solitaire, but you will be very much intertwined with your opponents. Hence the spite, and the resulting malice. I know couples who play this frequently, keeping a running score for the entire year.
3 Players
· Shed / Palace (3-5 players): This game goes by many names, not all of them polite. I was taught it as “Screaming Yoda” and it was over twenty years before I learned that the game was known worldwide by other names.
Anyway, Shed is a race to get rid of all your cards. Instead of a winner, there is one loser (the last one). The rules for playing cards are simple, and sometimes you’ll be forced to pick up 20 cards all at once. But it’s fine, everything’s fine. You’ll get it back.
The game plays out in multiple acts and often swings back and forth, lending it excitement and perpetual hope. Not overly strategic, but engaging and fun from start to end.
4 Players
· Canasta (4 players): The Archetypal Argentinian game. Canasta is an ageless, breezy, push your luck game of set collection and making odd faces at your partner across the table, trying to read their mind without communicating ("May I go out?" "No." "G****n you what a f**** mess why didn't you play your Canasta before.")
It feels a bit like Rummy, as you are drawing and discarding to collect sets of cards with your partner, and trying to out-collect your opponents. However, the team dynamic, the scoring rules, the wild cards, and the end-game make this an entirely different animal.
The game has a frustrating amount of rules – though they are all simple, the sheer number means some time to learn and then time to familiarize/memorize. As is the way with most longstanding, cultural games. Nothing that a crib sheet and a few run-throughs can’t solve.
· Cuarenta (4 players): Now hop over to Ecuador, and this is the national game. The central conceit is much simpler than Canasta – play one card onto the table, trying to capture the cards already on the table by creating matches or runs. But, as with Canasta, there is then a laundry list of footnotes to be memorized with edge cases and scoring.
That said, once digested, the game is simple, breezy, and endlessly entertaining. You’ll do better if you can calculate odds and count cards, but at the same time you can still enjoy yourself (and still win) by just playing your cards and sipping your drink.
· Hearts & Spades (4 players): As mentioned, I’m generally not a fan of trick taking (see note above). I include these because they don’t overinflate themselves. They know they are simple trick-taking games, they add a touch of spice for interest, and just leave it at that. The result in both cases is a pleasant way to pass the time.
For Hearts, the good bit is the shifting winds, trying to decide at each point when you are trying to win and when you are trying to lose. Each hand is a puzzle, how to throw your hearts at other people, how to win those tricks with your high cards at the right time, etc.
For Spades, the central challenge is in correctly valuing your hand, then playing to hit that value. Keep in mind that others may start tanking their own tricks to hit their bid, which makes the ground under your own feet increasingly unstable. Depending on how the cards come out, you may find yourself scrabbling for just one more trick, or suddenly shifting to trying to lose because someone had an unexpected void – it’s that agility that comes from the shifting landscape and the fact that every hand is a chance to play THAT hand that makes Spades a game worth playing.
When you want to Laugh and have fun:
Sometimes you want to laugh more than you want to win. Sometimes you just want to have fun, without taking on any stress. These are those games.
2 Players
· Cabo) (2-4 players): This plays better at 3-4 but is the only one I’ve found for the bucket that does work for 2. At it’s core, it is a bit of memory, luck, and playing the odds – you are swapping facedown cards around the table, but you don’t get to look at all your cards. So you need to figure out what you have, what your opponents have, and choose the moment to strike - when you think you have the lowest hidden total.
Cabo is a relatively modern game, but even so there are a handful of different origin stories and many minor rules variations. Play one set of rules to start and, if you like it, you can check out all the possibilities and stick with your favorite.
3 Players
· Ricochet Poker (3-8 players): It’s a light betting game – can play with quarters or crackers, whatever you like. The game is simple and draws from poker rules. Each round you get one more card and have to decide whether you want to pay to stay in or fold. It’s more accessible than poker, so is easy to “wing it,” but you still get the agony and thrills that come from winning or losing the pot.
· Manipulation Rummy (2-4 players): If you are familiar with Rummikub, this is that game exactly but with two decks of cards (instead of tiles). If you aren’t – this builds on the foundation of Rummy, but all melds are played onto the table. Where it shines is the fact that you can break, reform, and rearrange ALL the cards on the table on your turn, in order to find a place for more cards from your hand. The joy is in hunting for that one opportunity on the table so you can wow everyone when it comes to your turn.
4 Players
· Cockroach Poker (3-6 players): This is properly a game that should be purchased, but in these times you can make a deck using two decks of cards – 8 each of 8 numbers (I recommend A, K, Q, J, 7, 8, 2, 3… it’s a cognitive psychology thing, just humor me). You’ll be passing cards facedown around the table, asserting (truthfully or falsely) what the card is. The game is in correctly guessing when someone is lying or telling the truth, as well as in the politics of not being the last person at the table to receive a card (after everyone else has already seen it). Every time you lose a challenge, the card goes face up in front of you. Collect too many cards, and it’s game over. This one is amazing.
5-6 Players
· Eleusis (4-8 players): I originally learned this as “Delphi,” a streamlined version that is more appropriate for kids. This version has more teeth to it and should delight all ages. One player takes on the role of god (think Zeus) and secretly writes down a law that all cards played must follow. All the other players must then, by trial and error, figure out that law and get rid of their cards. This is harder than it sounds. What makes it work is that Eleusis has a number of scoring rules that put balance into the game – you want the rule to be hard but not too hard, etc.
This game will earn many rounds of play. What is nice is it also has a co-op feel. Yes, you are all trying to be the first to guess and play your cards, but on the other hand you are all in it together trying to decipher the divine law you’ve been given.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Guide] 1000 Ancient Tunnels runs + Comprehensive Guide to High Rune Drop Rates - part 2

Introduction

Hello all, Initially this post was meant to be a highlight of 1000 Ancient Tunnel runs, which I have completed over the last few months (had a break in between). I wanted to sum it all up somehow and since I am absolutely fascinated by the entire rune concept and their drops, I decided to go a bit deeper and...create a guide with some helpful tips and in-depth analysis.

Purpose

The purpose of this guide is to show the best non-LK way to farm high runes and to highlight how many runs you need to perform before you will see some results, which is what I believe setting this guide apart from other articles I have seen so far. Also, there are at least 3 main sources for rune drop odds, each showing different numbers, so I wanted to confirm that by myself which one is good. Which means digging into text files.
I'm saying non-LK, because nothing beats Lower Kurast chest farming, mathematically it is the fastest but at the same time - the most boring way. You will turn yourself into a human bot, there won't be any experience, any items (besides charms and jewels). I did my fair share (1200 runs) and that's it.
Big shoutout to preppypoof for creating the original guide! I can confirm that vast majority of the information that can be found there is correct.

Who am I?

I am a data analyst, ex semi-pro poker player and a fan of Diablo II of course :) I like numbers and statistics - that is exactly why runes are so fascinating for me.

Definition of a High Rune

Many say it starts from Vex, I would say it starts from Gul, since it is the first rune you can't get from Countess (from her special drop). On the other hand, Ist is rarer than Gul, but then again - it doesn't make sense to transmute two Ists into Gul, especially since Ists are quite valuable for MFing.

A quick recap

For those who don't understand how this rune drop system works, there are essentially 3 main steps that have to be fulfiled before you will see your rune. If you are not interested, feel free to skip to the next paragraph.
>!1. Select the "Good" category Depending on act, difficulty level and monster type (melee, range, wraith, cow, etc.), each monster has its own category, based on which game will decide what items it can choose from upon its death. Most popular will be most likely Act 5 (H) H2H C, which is common for melee monsters in Level 85 areas. There are the following possibilities: - NoDrop 100 - gld 21 - Act 5 (H) Equip C 16 - Act 1 (H) Junk 21

- Act 5 (H) Good 2

sum or probabilities: 160!<
We won't go into any more details, all you need to know is that: a) you want to hit Act 5 (H) Good (2/160 or 1.25%) b) ideally, you want to minimize NoDrop, so that your odds for hitting Act 5 (H) Good will increase (we will get to that later)
2. Selecting Runes 17 from Act 5 (H) Good Welcome inside the Good category.
>!- Jewelry C 60 - Chipped Gem 4 - Flawed Gem 10 - Normal Gem 14 - Flawless Gem 28

- Runes 17 14

sum or probabilities: 130!<
You see that Runes 17? This is what we aim at (14/130 or 10.8%). If you would like to know more details about what Runes 17 is, please visit preppypoof's guide.
3. Selecting rune quality Welcome inside the Runes 17 category. Now it's time to select your prize. Runes are organized in categories, two in each in all categories all the way up to Runes 16 (besides Zod, which is alone in its top tier category called Runes 17), that's why you have 2*16 + 1 = 33 runes in total.
Random number generator will go in a "stairs-like" sequence: - let me try to get you that Zod, 1 in 5171. Oh, we missed? Let's go one step down to Runes 16 (that will happen in 5170 out of 5171 cases) - Welcome in the Runes 16 category. We have 2 offerings, especially for you my friend: Cham and Jah. Every single time the top rune (here it's Cham) will have a probability of 2 and the bottom rune will have a probability of 3 (here it's Jah). The difference will be the last part, which will determine the chance to "step down". At the highest levels, this chance will be huge, but it will gradually go down.
In this example, it's 2941. Add those 2 and 3 and you have 2946 of that probabilites. So, after going down to Runes 16, now your options are: - 2/2946 to get a Cham Rune - 3/2946 to get a Jah Rune - 2941/2946 to step down to Runes 15
The sequencer will go all the way down to Runes 1, where you have El and Eld - unless it will hit something during the process (which is what we want).
>! So in short, we must hit all 3 things at once: - Good category - Runes 17 - our desired rune Multiply all those probabilities and you will get some astronomical numbers, but don't panic yet :)!<

Rune Odds Tables

This one will be almost the same as in the original guide. However, I have found a small error in preppy's calcs. I got the same numbers from Zod till Ohm, but starting from Vex and below your chances of hitting those runes are slightly smaller than in the quoted article. I found the reason: preppy took the remaining probability (if you are looking at the example above - that would be that 2941) as the total sum of probabilities, whereas the total is bigger by 5 (that would be 2946 in our example). This error continues all the way down and most likely throughout the rest of the columns (for Wraiths, Cows, Champions, etc.). I will only provide you with an updated table for Regular monsters and in a moment you will see why.
Rune odds for /players 1

Rune (Others / Regular)	Chance	Chance of ... or better
Zod	3 841 314	3 841 314
Cham	1 471 885	1 064 137
Jah	981 256	510 509
Ber	1 095 823	348 264
Sur	730 549	235 837
Lo	810 410	182 677
Ohm	540 273	136 518
Vex	569 154	110 107
Gul	379 436	85 342
Ist	401 293	70 376
Mal	267 529	55 719
Um	272 924	46 272
Pul	181 950	36 891
Lem	138 358	29 348
Fal	92 238	22 606
Ko	71 100	17 458
Lum	47 400	12 909
Io or Worse	774	758

While it is interesting to note that Ber Rune is rarer than Jah, getting a Cham Rune isn't that much far away, it is just 1.5x rarer than Jah. That "1.5x rarer only" means additional 2100 AT runs though…
It is absolutely shocking how much rarer Zod Rune is from Cham Rune (2.6x rarer). It reminds me of poker hands: AA is just miles and miles away from the 2nd most powerful hand - KK. Then the differences between the next hands get smaller, similar thing can be observed here.

Players X setting vs Rune drops

Remember first point of the sequence? Here is where the players X setting come into play. By increasing the number of players you can decrease the NoDrop value. It goes as per so called NoDropExponent, there is complicated formula behind it, but let's get down to business.
In short: every odd number will increase the player bonus, that's why you want to select players 1/3/5/7, but never 2/4/6/8 (unless you want more experience and you are a super fast killer anyways).
I think this is another mistake that I found in preppy's article. He said that increasing players setting from 1 to 3 will yield you around 30% more runes. Well...it looks like the increase is much bigger than that! Here is a breakdown for numbers up to NDE=4 (which is same as players 7/8 and is max what can be reached in a single player game where there are no party members around you. Higher NDEs are possible on multiplayer).

NoDropExponent	1 (players 1)	2 (players 3)	3 (players 5)	4 (players 7)
New NoDrop	100	38.46	19.38	10.8
Prob "Good"	1.25%	2.03%	2.52%	2.82%
Hitting Runes 17	0.135%	0.219%	0.271%	0.304%
% increase	-	62.48%	24.03%	12.11%

It means that you should farm runes on at least /players 3 setting, because I am almost sure you won't take more than 62.48% time to kill them. After that point is where the fun begins. Going from p3 to p5 is still doable, but from p5 to p7 is a tricky one.
Interpretation: if your current clear speed on p5 is 5 mins, then you should clear p7 in a time no longer than 5.6 mins (5 mins 36 seconds). In other words: increasing players difficulty setting, which will increase monsters hit points from 300% to 400% (+33.3%) cannot take you more than additional 36 seconds to clear, otherwise you're better off on p5.
Tip: players X settings does have an effect on popables (chests, urns, etc.). It is possible to first clear the area on a lower settings and then after that changing it to p7/8 and then popping the chests/urns. Whether you consider that strategy as cheesy or not I will leave that up to you. Personally I find it troublesome to constantly switch between the settings.

Expected Value - introduction

This is my favorite part and what I think sets this guide apart from the others - the expected value. Well almost, there is something similar in an absolutely great guide about LK vs Travincal vs Cows, where one guy has even used some serious high-level math (calculus etc.), but the results are still close enough so that we can use our basic approach.
So, what is that expected value? Basically I will try to answer a very frequent question: how many runs you need to complete before you will get that Jah Rune. I will give you the exact number, with one small "but": you need to understand that because of the RNG (Random Number Generator) nothing is certain for 100%. It's the same as with rolling a dice. If you want to roll a "6", you have 1 in 6 chances to hit it. Your expected value after 6 rolls is 1 (1/6 / 6 = 1), meaning that after 6 rolls you expect to hit that 6 once. However, it is totally possible that you will hit that 6 in a first roll or that you won't hit it in your 12th roll. Same with runes. Below are your chances (or if you will: confidentiality levels) per each EV (these values are similar to almost every drop in Diablo II):

# of EVs	Confidentiality Level
1	63.212%
2	86.466%
3	95.021%
4	98.168%
5	99.326%
6	99.752%
7	99.909%
8	99.966%
9	99.988%
10	99.995%

The way I calculated the EV includes normalizing everything to a regular monster (for which we already know the rune drop odds). We need to do this first before coming back to the EV.

Normalization

I will Ancient Tunnels as an example. What you need to do is to calculate how many "regular kills" you can get per one full clear (full clears are better if you are looking for runes). That means, you need to translate every champion/unique, every urn, every chest, every boss and what not - into a regular monster. How to do that?
For champs and bosses you can use drop calculators, even though they show incorrect values (way too high, in reality your chances are better), but the proportions are maintained. I will use preppy's tables since I have confirmed them so I know they are good to use. Small note: this is a third and last mistake that I found in preppy's guide. He claimed that players settings increase will have a very small effect on rune drop odds for champions and bosses. The answer is: it doesn't have any effect (just like your Magic Find %), since there is no NoDrop value, so there is nothing to be decreased. I will use a Zod Rune as an example, but you can use any rune that you want.

Regular p1	Regular p7	Champ	Champ p1 proportions	Champ p7 proportions	Unique	Unique p1 proportions	Unique p7 proportions
3 841 314	1 700 319	1 600 548	2.4	1.07	744 255	5.16	2.29

As you can see, if you play on p1, then killing a champ or a boss makes a massive difference in terms of runes. Once you switch to p7, there is almost no difference between a regular and a champ. I measured the average number of bosses and champions over the course of ~~ 30 runs. Same for regulars and urns. Last thing that might be coming to your mind: how the heck can you know what are the drop odds for urns and chests?!
There is another great guide made by Urlik. It was for 1.10, when rune drop odds were less optimistic, so I can't rely on exact numbers, but...I can rely on proportions. In his guide, Urlik has found out the mean number of runes produced per kill at p8 (which is same as p7). Like I said, we cannot take these numbers directly, but we can copy/paste them into Excel and then get our proportions. Our baseline will be the first line: Melee/Cast/Missile. Let me present you the rest of the important proportions.

	vs Regular
Special Chest	16.64
Special Chest - Locked	22.29
Sparkly Chest	37.60
Type IV (like Urns, Jars, Baskets)	1.16
Type III (like Rat Nests, Goo Piles, Jugs)	5.55
Type I (regular chests) - Locked	11.09
Type I & II	4.16

There is way more than that, but these are the objects that you will mostly encounter. As you can see, Sparkly chests and special chests (like those in LK or behind Mephisto or in River of Flame) = are your best friends. So essentially: popping one special chest is the same as killing 16.64 or 22.29 regular monsters, depending whether a chest is locked or now (no wonders people like LK chests, although their dropped is bugged). There is a table for that too. In AT, chance for a chest to be locked is 16.5%.

Total regular kills and kills per minute

We are almost there. Now we are at the most crucial point of this article - calculating total kills normalized to a regular. You can do the same for your own map (The Pit, Chaos, you name it). Here is how it looks like for my Ancient Tunnels at p7. What you are looking at are the average numbers of monsters/urns/whatever I have encountered over the course of 15-30 measured runs, it is time taking, you need to count it and then write it all down somewhere. Kind of self data collection. Remember: each map seed is different and my AT map won't be the same as yours. Map rolling is actually another interesting topic, AT holds few secrets which I will reveal later.

	Nominal	Normalized
Regular (x1.0)	86.7	86.7
Champ (x1.07)	3.5	3.73
Unique	5.2	11.92
Sparkly (x37.6)	1	37.6
Type IV (Urns) (x1.16)	38	44.25
Type III (x5.55)	3	16.64
Type I	1	5.3
TOTAL		206.13
Average time per full clear		3.6
P7 kills per minute		57.26

The way I derived that 5.3: = (0.165 * 11.09) + (1-0.165) * (4.16) = 5.3
Okay folks, the number required here is 206.13 and 57.26. Remember, that's on p7. You can do the same for p5 and compare your results with p7, but one important thing: first you will need to translate all p7 kills into p5 kills. One regular p7 kill is worth 1.12 regular p5. So in my example, that 86.7 would translate to 97.2 p5 kills. Don't forget that player bonus doesn't apply on champs/bosses, it's just the proportions will be different.
Kills per minute is in my opinion your main metric you should be monitoring in order to gauge your progress and make a decision whether to step up the players settings or not. Going from p5 to p7 will of course bring you some more runes, but it can decrease your normalized kills per minute. Make sure to maximize kills per minute by: - choosing the right players settings (As a rule of thumb, if you can already one shot everything on a current setting, then it's usually good idea to increase players X) - equip your max killing gear (MF doesn't matter, although it's still good to have some! I have 182)

Expected Value - # of runs required per rune

Time for the final results you've been waiting for :) Just some small remark: all objects "kills" in Act 2 can be calculated towards your final result up to Lo Rune, because Lo is max what these objects can drop in Act 2 (Act 1: Vex, Act 2: Lo, Act 3: Ber, Act 4: Cham, Act 5: Zod). In my case, they make for the ~~ 50% of the total "kills" which is both good and bad.
Good, because there is no there is almost no way you can kill 11 monsters faster than you can pop 10 urns (if you can, then most likely AT is not for you anyways, Cows will be faster).
Bad, because that means AT is not that great of a place to hunt for Sur+ runes, you will see what I mean when I will compare it against Chaos Sanctuary.
Assumptions: - p7 - One AT run # of regular kills up to Lo: 206.13 - One AT run # of regular kills up to Zod: 102.35 (substract all objects from the total result) - Number of AT runs: 1000

Rune	EV	Actually found	# of AT runs to realize one EV
Zod	0.060		16 613
Cham	0.157	1	6 366
Jah	0.236	1	4 244
Ber	0.211		4 739
Sur	0.317		3 159
Lo	0.574		1 740
Ohm	0.862	1	1 160
Vex	0.818		1 222
Gul	1.227	1	815
Ist	1.160	1	862
Mal	1.741	4	574
Um	1.706	1	586
Pul	2.559	5	391
Lem	3.366	4	297
Fal	5.049	3	198
Ko	6.55	10-12+
Lum	9.82	10+
Io or Worse	601.83

And there you have it :) How to interpret these results? I think it went quite well. Clearly, Cham Rune destroyed everything in this run! Normally, there is a 63.2% chance to find it within one EV (6366 runs), but the lucky run was run #571 :) Jah Rune was found in Drifters Cavern, so technically it wasn't in AT, but I since I did that run kind of "in between" and for fun, I decided to include it anyways. That was before run #546.
Fact: I got plenty of runes from the urns/chests/jugs: Gul, Um, Mal, Pul, Lem and countless Ko, Io, etc.
Q: Ok, so you are saying that after 1000 runs I am guaranteed to get an Ist Rune (EV: 1.16), right? A: Not quite, you are guaranteed to fulfil your EV for an Ist Rune after 1000 AT runs (1.16 runes after 1000 runs or 1 rune after 862 runs to be precise), which gives you 63.2% confidence to get it. Wanna 86.5% confidence? Do 2000 runs. Wanna 95% confidence? Do 3000 runs. Wanna 99.995% confidence? Do 10000 runs.

Ancient Tunnels vs Countess

For runes up to Ist, Countess is your best source. I will use the results from 1000 Countess Runs done by dbrunski125, who has inspired me to my own Human Bot Project (love that name!). Worth noting is the fact that it is possible to do one Countess run in 30-40 seconds, so you will complete 1000 Countess runs ~~ 6x faster.

	1000 Ancient Tunnels	1000 Countess Runs
Zod
Cham	1
Jah	1
Ber
Sur
Lo
Ohm	1
Vex
Gul	1	1
Ist	1	0
Mal	4	6
Um	1	8
Pul	5	10
Lem	4	9

That shouldn't be a surprise, after all - this guide is about high runes especially, but that is just out of curiousity ;) But then again, it's kind of robotic, just killing one single boss on p1, almost no items, no challenge.
In AT, I can constantly challenge myself, tweak with the gear, keep on improving my run times, get those elusive ethereal items, find mythical TC87 items and then also find some runes. Pure Diablo experience at its finest.

Ancient Tunnels vs Chaos Sanctuary

Assumptions: - players 7
- One CS run # of regular kills up to Zod: 408.91
- 1000 runs

Rune	EV AT	EV CS	CS/AT	# of AT runs to realize one EV	# of CS runs to realize one EV
Zod	0.060	0.229	3.81	16 613	4 361
Cham	0.157	0.628	4.00	6 366	1 593
Jah	0.236	0.941	4.00	4 244	1 062
Ber	0.211	0.843	4.00	4 739	1 186
Sur	0.317	1.264	4.00	3 159	791
Lo	0.574	1.14	1.98	1 740	877
Ohm	0.862	1.71	1.98	1 160	585
Vex	0.818	1.623	1.98	1 222	616
Gul	1.227	2.435	1.98	815	411
Ist	1.160	2.302	1.98	862	434
Mal	1.741	3.453	1.98	574	290
Um	1.706	3.385	1.98	586	295
Pul	2.559	5.077	1.98	391	197
Lem	3.366	6.677	1.98	297	150
Fal	5.049	10.015	1.98	198	100

As you can see, on average CS will provide you 2x more runes up to Lo (or same number but 2x faster), but I am not really sure you can run it in a time no longer than 2x AT time. You can try to compare it against p5 CS, which will be definitely faster and will yield only ~~ 12% less runes. Very interesting :)
However, from Sur onwards CS is clearly better. CS collects additional points for a high monster density (roughly 200, out of which around 60-65 are wraiths, which have 3.5x the chance compared to a regular).
I am currently 59 runs into CS. For now, I will stick to AT, until I will find ethereal Colossus Blade for runeword Death (the EV for finding that thing is ~~ 1477 runs). Once done, I will switch to CS, since I need Lo, but specifically Sur for runeword Pride for my merc (it required Cham as well, which I already have).

Farming Lo Runes - time efficiency

I will take Lo as an example to illustrate. I will assume that you want that Lo Rune at all costs to the point that you sacrifice each Ohm, Vex, Gul. I will calculate each Ohm as 1/2 of a Lo, Vex as 1/4 of a Lo and Gul as 1/8 of a Lo - this isn't a fully correct approach, but I don't feel like doing calculus :)
My EV for Lo (farmed directly or cubed up) is: = 1 * 0.574 + 0.5 * 0.86 + 0.25 * 0.82 + 0.125 * 1.23 = 1.363 or after 733 runs
Currently, my average run takes 3.6 mins (massive improvement compared to like 7-8 minutes on p3/p5 back in the days). This translates into 44h or AT running. How does that compare vs LK / Travincal / Cows? I'm going to quote numbers from this great article:
Area: LK p7/8 Average runs to cube/farm Lo: ~1433 runs Average run-time and time needed to farm Lo: 25s: ~9.9h 21s: ~8.4h 18s: ~7.2h
Area: Travincal p3 Character: sorceress - for barbarian 55% hork divide numbers of runs by 1.597, and for 56% hork divide by 1.608 Average runs to cube/farm Lo: ~1725 runs Average run-time and time needed to farm Lo: 26s: ~12.5h 22s: ~10.5h 18s: ~8.8h
Area: Cows p5 Cows killed per run estimate: ~400 Average runs to cube/farm Lo: ~281 runs Average run-time and time needed to farm Lo: 4m 30s: ~21.1h 3m 30s: ~16.4h 2m 30s: ~11.7h
And now AT p7: Average runs to cube/farm Lo: ~733 runs
3m 36s: ~ 44.0h
If you are ready to become a human bot, then clearly there are better options out there :)

Why AT/CS and not LK?

LK is too robotic and mind numbing. Plus, finding a Sur Rune or Ohm Rune is like: oh, okay, cool. Finding Mal/Um in AT is like: wow! Finding Ist+ is like: OMG !!!! Much much more excitement :)
Experience, socketables and TC87 items. Pretty much everything that contributes to Diablo being Diablo. Turning yourself into a human bot can be the fastest way, but in my opinion brings no joy and can only lead to getting burned out and bored with this game.
Travincal is a much better choice, at least there is some fight involved, though it's a short one (if you can't clear the council and get back to act 4 in like 30-35s with a non-hork character then I am not sure it's worth it). You also need a very high-end gear, p3 Trav council can apply some serious punch, especially under nasty mods/auras. They drop from TC84, so forget about TC87 items.
Cows can be good for a fast killer, but in my opinion they are also quite boring and irritating (moo moo, moooo!).

Is it worth to cube up?

Generally yes, but not when you cube up two more popular runes to get one rarer rune. Examples: 2 Ber into Jah, 2 Lo into Sur, 2 Vex into Ohm, 2 Ist into Gul, 2 Um into Mal = my advise is: don't do that, unless you desperately need that Lo Rune and if you think you won't need those Vex Runes anymore.
Also, I wouldn't care much about runes below like Sol or Io - it will take you ages to cube up to Pul, it takes a lot of time to collect these runes and then stash them, you need to return to the stash more frequently = massive time loss. Also, you need lots of chipped gems, which are very hard to find on Hell difficulty. I personally had tons of Amn runes and no Chipped Amethysts, which are necessary if you want to cube up to Sol Rune, you Amn was kind of "choke point". Actually, I would seriously question collecting charms as well, since upgrading your damage from +2 to +3 won't really change a lot if you already have good charms, but might hurt your run times. The odds for hitting a skiller+life or re-rolling it are similar to hitting a high rune.

Best non-LK areas for rune farming

Sur+ runes = Chaos Sanctuary and possibly Worldstone Keep, since after Lo Rune AT loses its primary weapon, urns. WSK can be very dangerous though. Cows if you are a fast killer.
Up to Lo = AT might be better than Chaos, unless you can clear Chaos in no longer than 2x the AT time.
Chaos has one big advantage: high amount of Wraiths, which can be killed over the ground vast majority of the time (in comparison to Arcane Sanctuary, where it's not possible).
Chaos sucks for socketables and for items too (especially TC87) for the very same reason, since a decent part of monsters are Wraiths which won't drop any items actually.
Chaos runs will provide more experience because of Diablo (there won't be any exp penalty). WSK is worse, it takes way longer to get to Baal, CS wins.
AT is a great balance for everything: lots of TC87 stuff, good chance for runes up to Lo, easy monsters, no cold immunes, no Lord de Seis/Archer-like monsters that can one or two-shot you, fast clear time.
CS won't provide as many TC87 (Wraiths drop nothing, Diablo and his 3 seal bosses drop up to TC84), though it provides a good chance for any rune up to Zod, monsters are tougher though, Decrepify curse is a pain and you need to watch out for Lord De Seis - one wrong move + bad combination (fanaticism + Extra Strong + Extra Fast + AMP curse) = and your life bubble can reach the bottom in like 0.2s.
Cows will be probably even better for socketables than AT, but they totally suck for magic items, chances for TC87 items are like 15x smaller.
Cows require more hassle: go to Tristram, get that leg, get tome of TP, clear a huge, wide open area. Whereas AT/CS are much more "restricted" by walls and objects = easier crowd control and navigation.

Q: What about the Pits? A: Haven't run them a lot, but I think they will be worse than AT. Hardly any popables, that can drop max up to Vex. Lots of monsters though, yes, but archers who can one/two-shot you are a pain. Entrance is also located way further from the waypoint in comparison to AT (if you get a good map, mine has trap door super close to WP, 2 teleports away).

Final Verdict

Best rune farming area is the one that will provide the highest kills per minute. Which area is this precisely will depend on your character, build, map you got and your personal preferences.
My answer for my Frenzy barb? Ancient Tunnels wins in almost every single category :)

1000 Ancient Tunnel runs

Oh, I almost forgot about my project :) You already know what kind of runes I acquired, so here are the items: 001-100: barb skiller charm, Natalya's Mark, Gore Rider 101-200: Immortal King's boots from a chest, Thundergod's Vigor 201-300: Mara's, Dragonscale
301-400: Dracul's Grasp, Kira's Guardian, great small charm (+3 max dmg, 20 AR, 16 Life), Bartuc's Cut-Throat, IK Ogre Maul, Carrion Wind 401-500: Rainbow Facet, Tal Rasha's armor
501-600: Arreat's Face - my personal holy grail :) , Tomb Reaver, Templar's Might 601-700: ethereal Berserker Axe, Crown of Ages 701-800: Lightsabre, Amazon skiller +36 life, Reaper's Toll 801-900: Tal Rasha's Lidless Eye, almost perfect Annihilus (19 all stats, 16 all res, +10% exp) 901-1000: Ormus Robes with Blizzard, Death's Web (the rarest drop by far!), 2nd Dragonscale and 6 runs before the end of the project...last piece of IK set - IK Soul Cage :)
I wish you all good luck. May the EV be with you!

https://preview.redd.it/syx7g8ukn6y41.png?width=802&format=png&auto=webp&s=2abcb25b71ff2e7c08f1c349f72ff52ec87fb30c

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

This is not mine, the creator of this is u/enderpiet

Since the Diamond Casino update, I have seen a large number of 12-year-olds posting Blackjack memes on this sub. As a parent, this has me very worried.
On top of that, I have seen some of the most trustworthy GTA Youtubers giving flawed gambling advice, which can have damaging impact on their gullible audiences.
So that's why I decided to write this up, to educate everyone on the subject, so there will be no more misunderstandings.
(2020 Update down at the bottom.)
If you're one of those Youtubers that wants to use this information in a video, feel free to do so. The more people (especially kids) that become educated about gambling, the better.
But then also please go back and review your own work, and delete or edit the videos that are giving out the wrong advice, like where you're saying you have "a good strategy for making money with roulette", or some other nonsense that I've heard this week. Delete that please.
Before I get into the individual games, I need to discuss a few concepts first, that will make understanding the rest a lot easier.
Expected return and variance
A game like Roulette or Slots has a fixed expected return on your bets. This is a percentage that you have no way of influencing. Say you are flipping a coin against a friend, and you both put up $1. The winner gets the pot. Since the odds are even at 50%, in the long run, you will expect to break even. Your expected return is 100% of your bet.
But imagine if you would play this coin flipping game in a casino against the house. On the "house rules" listed at the table they would probably say that you would only get 95 cents back for every win, while you are forfeiting a dollar on every loss. Would you still play?
Sounds stupid to do so, but still, everybody does it. Every bet they place on Roulette, every coin they put into a Slot machine, is based on the same concept.
Those few cents they take on every bet are their profit margin, and has paid for all the Vegas lights, the Mirage volcanoes, and the Bellagio fountains. Make no mistake - casino gambling games are not designed to make you lose, because sure, you can get lucky on a single night, but they are designed to make them win. That's the beauty of it. They can both exist at the same time.
Too many people that don't see how this works, are just destined for disaster. Just because you went on a lucky streak and won 8 games out of 10, does not mean that flipping coins is a profitable game, or that choosing tails is a winning strategy. Always be aware of the house edge, your true chances of winning, and just realize that you got lucky. There is no such thing as a strategy in flipping a coin that will give you a higher expected return, so it's just pure gambling, just like Slots and Roulette.
Most casino games are made in such a way, that your expected return is a little under 100%. This means that from every dollar bet at the tables, the casino expects to keep a few cents. For individual players, results may vary. Some will win, most will lose. But for the house, it doesn't matter. They take millions of bets each day, so for them, the expected average works out a lot sooner. In short: the house always wins.
When looking at the house edge, we're talking about the expected long-term result, based on the game's house rules. But for a player, it can take literally tens of thousands of hands or spins before you also reach this average number. Until that time, you can experience huge upswings and downswings, that are the result of nothing but short-term luck, which is called variance.
Some games and some bets have a much higher variance than others, which means your actual results will differ enormously from what you're expected to be at.
Take for example betting on red/black at the Roulette table. This is a low-variance proposition, because it has a high percentage chance of occurring, and a low payout.
Contrast this with betting single numbers in Roulette, which only win once every 38 spins on average. This bet has a much higher variance, meaning you can easily hit a dry spell, and not hit anything for 200 bets in a row, or you can see a single number hit three times in five consecutive spins. This is not a freak occurrence in high-variance bets.
Even though the expected return in both these bets is exactly the same, there's a huge difference in variance, causing massive differences in short-term results, which can go both ways. You need to be aware of this, before you decide what types of bets you are comfortable with placing.
Gamblers' Fallacy
Another thing to realize, is that each individual game, hand, or spin, is completely independent from the one(s) before it, and after it.
Gamblers tend to believe, that the chance of a certain outcome is increased, based on previous results.
The most famous example comes from the Casino de Monte Carlo, where the Roulette wheel managed to land on black 26 times in a row. Gamblers lost many millions during that streak, all frantically betting on red, believing that the odds were in favor of the wheel coming out on red, after producing so many blacks. This is not true. Each round is completely independent, and the odds are exactly the same.
You will hear people say things like a Blackjack table being "hot" or "cold", which is completely superstitious, and should be ignored. The exception was when Blackjack was being dealt from a shoe. It made card counting possible. But with the introduction of shuffle machines, and continuous shuffling like is being used in GTA, this no longer exists.
This is also why "chasing your losses" is a very bad idea. After being on a losing streak for some time, many gamblers believe that now it's their turn to start winning. So they will often increase their bet size, believing that when their predicted winning streak comes around, they will win back their losses, and more.
The reality of it, more often than not, is that people will indeed start playing higher and higher limits, until they are completely broke. Nobody is ever "due for a win". There is never a guarantee that you're about to start winning. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true. You are, after all, in a casino.
Betting systems
Some people like to think that they have a fool-proof betting system, like the Martingale system. Simply increase or even double your bet when you lose, and keep doing that until you win. In theory, this system will always win. So that's why table limits were introduced, and where the system fails.
If you start at the Roulette table, playing red/black, with a small 750 chip wager, and just double your bet every time you lose, you only have to lose 6 times in a row, before you will be betting the table limit of 48,000, just to get that 750 chip profit.
Sure, you can go on all evening without this happening, winning 750 chips each time, but this losing streak only has to happen once, and you're bust. Any betting system like this is ill-advised, because you are hugely increasing your so-called "risk of ruin", and that's what we were trying to avoid.
And even if your starting bet is only 100 chips, after only nine straight losses, and nine doubled bets, you are betting the table limit at 50,000 chips. If you lose that bet, you're 100,000 chips in the hole, with no way to recover that with your 100 chip base wager.
So don't believe anyone that says this is the perfect system to always win in the casino. Sooner or later they will understand why they were wrong, when they're asking you for a loan.
Set your limits BEFORE you start playing
One final point before we get into the games, a general tip for people that head out to play: money management.
Just like in real life, before you go to the casino, decide on a maximum amount that you are WILLING TO LOSE.
Bet small enough, so that amount can last you through the entire evening, and you will not be tempted to run to the ATM to continue playing.
Considering GTA money, some people will be comfortable losing 1% of their GTA bank balance, some people will be comfortable with gambling away 5% of their total GTA savings. It's up to you what you can handle. Decide for yourself where it will start to hurt, and don't cross that line.
But whatever number you decide on, as soon as you lost that amount, get up and walk away. Don't chase your losses, stick to your limits, and accept that this has not been your day. There is always another game tomorrow. Always agree with yourself on a simple stop-loss rule, how much you would want to lose at most, and simply stop playing when you get there.
Same goes for winning. You can decide on a number, how much profit you would like to take away from the casino. You can go on a hot streak and be up half a million in a short period of time, but if you would continue to play longer, looking for more, chances are that you're going to lose it all back.
Most people are happy with doubling their daily casino budget, for example. Others are looking for 10 bets profit in Blackjack. Whatever you choose, when you hit that number, you can stop playing and bank your profits, or you can continue playing if you're still enjoying the games, but then only just play minimum bet sizes. Then you're just playing for fun, not for money. You've already made your profit, so simply keep it in your pocket, and don't risk losing it again.
Either way, decide on what your money management strategy will be, and STICK TO IT.
Casino games in GTA Online
Now, I'm going to dive into the games that you can find at the Diamond casino, ordered from worst to best.
6) Slots
Generally the rule is this: the less strategy a game has, the worse it is for the player. And with slots, this is definitely the case.
The only influence you have, is choosing what type of machine you're going to play. Basically, there are two types of slot machines:
-high frequency, low payout slots
-low frequency, high payout slots
In the first type, there is no huge (progressive) jackpot on offer, just your average selection of prizes that don't go up to crazy amounts.
This will result in a player having many more spins resulting in a win. The amounts that you win on the bigger prizes, will be smaller, but they do come around more often. This type of slot machine has a lower variance, which means that your money should last you longer, winning many smaller prizes along the way to keep you going.
The second type of slot machine lures you in with the temptation of a huge jackpot prize. Even though the long-term expected return on these machines is the same as the previous type, the prize distribution is hugely different. The large jackpot prize weighs heavily on the scale of expected return, but the chance of it hitting is extremely small. This results in a much higher variance on this type of machine. Usually your money will go down very fast, because the smaller prizes are less rewarding than on the other type of machine.
At the Diamond, the info screen says the player return at slots is set at 98.7%. This means that, on average, for every maximum bet of 2,500 chips, you expect to lose 32.5 chips.
This might not seem like a lot, but the danger of slots is that the game is extremely fast. You can spin about once every 6 seconds, which would result in an expected LOSS of about 20,000 chips per hour of playing.
But again, in this long-term expected number, the large jackpot awards are also factored in, and as long as you don't hit those big prizes, you'll see your money go down a lot faster.
In any case, thank heavens the max bet is only set at 2,500, or else we would see more players go bankrupt at alarming rates.
Optimal strategy for slots:
There is none. Because after betting, you have no more influence over the outcome. The only choices you have, is what type of machine you want to play at, and how much money you are going to risk. And those are all personal preference. As long as you stick to your loss limits, as discussed above, there's no harm in having a go every once in a while, hoping to get a lucky hit. Just realize that you don't have a high chance of scoring a big win, so as soon as you do, get up and walk away.
5) Roulette
Roulette is also a game where you have no influence over the outcome. There is zero skill involved. You place your bet, and that's it.
In traditional French roulette, a table has only the single-zero, but of course, for American casinos that wasn't enough of a house edge, so they simply doubled their profits by adding a second zero. The house edge was increased from 1/37 to 1/19, which is huge.
This makes playing on a double-zero roulette table by definition a sucker's play.
The payouts scale evenly, which means that a bet on a single number, and a bet on half of the numbers, and everything in between, yields the same expected return. The only difference, again, being the variance that you are willing to subject yourself to.
The player return for double-zero Roulette for all bets is 94.74%.
Except for the 5-number bet, which can only be made by placing a bet on the two top rows that contain 0, 00, 1, 2 and 3. The expected return on this bet is lower: 92.1%. This is because it only pays out 6-1. Why? Well, the number 36 isn't divisible by 5, so the greedy people that came up with double-zero Roulette had to round it off someway, and as expected, it wasn't going to be in the players' favor.Just remember that that 5-number bet is the worst bet at the table, and should be avoided. All other possible bets have the same expected return.
So it really doesn't matter how you spread your bets, if you bet only one chip, or if you litter the entire table with a bucketload of chips. Each chip you put out there, has the same expected return, so there is no strategy that will improve your long-term results.
Assuming that you're betting the maximum table amount of 50,000 chips, you will be looking at an expected loss of about 2,630 chips per spin. Considering that a round takes about 45 seconds to complete, your expected LOSS at the GTA Roulette tables will be around 200,000 chips per hour of playing.
Optimal strategy for double-zero roulette:
Stay away. Stay far away.
4) Three Card Poker
With Three Card Poker, we come across the first game where there is actually some strategy involved. You get to look at your cards, and then decide if you want to fold, and surrender your ante, or double your bet.
Additionally, you can choose to place a side bet on "Pair Plus", which offers progressive payouts.
There are some websites out there that ran all the numbers with computer simulations, and even though I would like to quote the source here, these websites are understandably littered to the max with online casino ads, so that's why I have decided against doing that.
Optimal strategy for Three Card Poker:
For this game you only have to remember one strategy rule: Always bet on any high card queen-six-four or better, and fold any high card queen-six-three or lower. That's it. Just don't forget to double check if you're not folding a straight or a flush, and you'll be fine.
This strategy will result in an expected return of 96.63%.
The Pair Plus sidebet, with the payout table that is used at the Diamond casino, gives you an expected return of 97.68%, which is actually a bit better than the main ante bet.
So by playing both wagers, you're reducing your expected losses per bet, but since you're betting more, you're also increasing your expected loss per hour.
My advice would obviously be to not play this game at all, but if you do, put as much of your bet as possible on the Pair Plus, while making our Ante bet as small as you can.
To be able to compare it to the other games at the Diamond, let's stay on that 50,000 maximum wager, meaning making your ante bet 35,000, and your pair plus bet 15,000, if the table would allow it.
This results in an expected loss of about 1,525 chips per hand, and with a round taking about 45 seconds, this adds up to an expected LOSS of around 120,000 chips per hour of playing. In comparison, if you would only play the ante bet for 50,000 per hand, you expect to lose 1,685 chips per hand, which means an expected LOSS of about 135,000 chips per hour. So the more out of that 50,000 wager you can put on the "Pair Plus" sidebet, the better.
Even though it may be fun to try out this game for a bit, since there's only one simple strategy rule to follow, you'll soon find yourself robotically grinding down your bankroll until it has vaporized. You're not missing out on anything if you skip these tables, there is no real challenge.
Just like with Roulette and Slots, if you want to try it out nonetheless, you can just bet the minimum amounts and only play for fun, so it won't matter if you win or lose.
3) Blackjack
Blackjack is the most complicated game by far. Simply because the player has to make a series of decisions, which will largely decide the outcome. Luckily, there is such a thing as an optimal strategy, which will be outlined below.
However, the strategy is also dependent on the house rules. These not only affect your expected return, but in some places also your decisions.
Here are the house rules at the Diamond casino:
-The game uses 4 standard decks, and a continuous shuffle.
-Blackjack pays 3 to 2, dealer checks for early blackjack.
-No insurance offered, no surrender.
-Dealer stands on soft 17.
-Double down on any two cards.
-Player can split only once, but doubling after split is allowed.
-Seven-Card Charlie.
Under these rules, and following the "basic strategy" chart, your expected return at Blackjack is a shade under 99.6%, which is extremely good for a casino game, that's why Blackjack should be your table game of choice.
But it comes at a price: you are going to have to memorize the relatively complicated strategy chart, or at least stick it to your monitor until you have it in your head. But in case you ever stumble into a real-life casino, you won't regret having this table memorized, so I would definitely advise you to work on that.
The strategy chart might look complicated at first, but you will be able to notice certain patterns. Your decisions are mainly based on the dealer's upcard, which is basically divided into a weak card (2 to 6), and a strong card (7 to ace).
When a dealer shows a strong card, you will be hitting more often with the risk of going bust, but when a dealer shows a weak card, you're not taking that risk, and you will be standing more, but also doubling and splitting more. You want to increase your bets when the odds are in your favor, and get out cheap when they're not.
But it also helps to take some time to think about why a certain advice is given. For example, why does it say that you always have to split two eights, even against an ace. Well, that's because two eights equals 16, which is the worst total you can have. It's better to split them up, and give yourself a chance of finding a 17, 18 or 19 with the next card. Once you see the logic in that, you'll have one less thing to memorize.
The playing advice in the basic strategy chart is a result of computer simulations that ran all possible outcomes against each other, and produced the most profitable decision for each situation. So you can't go wrong following it.
Optimal strategy for Blackjack with Seven-Card Charlie
The added house rule of Seven-Card Charlie, adds a small advantage for the player, and it does influence a few strategy decisions. For example, you might have a 14 with 6 cards, against the dealer's 5 upcard.
Normally this would be an automatic stand, but if you're only one card away from the Seven-Card Charlie, meaning an instant win for the player, regardless of the dealer's hand, it turns it into a hit.
Here's the most optimal strategy chart to follow for the Diamond Casino house rules:https://prnt.sc/olct6g
You'll see that two fives are missing from the chart, and that's because you never split them. You treat them as a regular 10. You also never split tens. Just stand on 20.
If you follow this strategy religiously, even with a maximum wager of 50,000 chips, you only expect to lose about 215 chips per hand, and with rounds taking about 30 seconds, that amounts to an expected LOSS of 26,000 chips per hour, which is only half a bet. A small price to pay for an hour of entertainment.
But since the expected return is so extremely close to 100%, you will see more positive short-term results than with other games. But obviously it can also swing the other way. Again, this is supposed to be the game where your money lasts you the longest, but always set your loss and win limits before you sit down. That rule simply always applies.
Still, even with optimal strategies applied, all these games are expected to lose you money in the long run. So betting any kind of large amounts is not advised. If you simply want to enjoy playing these games, there's nothing wrong with betting a minimal amount. Playing these games for a longer period of time will already cost you money anyway, since your daily property fees will still be charged while you're playing in the GTA casino. As long as you can play for fun, there's nothing wrong, but when you see yourself betting insane chunks of your entire bank balance to try to recoup some unfortunate losses, you're doing it wrong.
As the commercials in Britain all correctly say: when the fun stops, stop.
2) Virtual Horse Racing
Now onto the good stuff. I ran some numbers, and I believe Rockstar has made a mistake with the horse racing game. Because as it stands, and if I read the numbers correctly, this game is actually profitable for the player. You can actually make money with this, at least, until Rockstar figures out their mistake and patches it.
If anyone wants to jump into the math and double check this to make sure, please do so. I will add any corrections to this post. This is one of those "to good to be true" things, so I keep thinking that I might have overlooked something. So please verify it if you can.
The setup is this. There is a pool of 100 horses, each with their own attached payout. These are divided into 3 groups, ranked by their odds. From each group, 2 horses are randomly selected to provide a pool of six runners for you to bet on.
Now it's not an actual race you're looking at. You are looking at a raffle. This is important to realize.
Each horse gets awarded a certain number of raffle tickets. The favorites get awarded more tickets than the underdogs, and therefore, have a higher chance of winning.
If this distribution works like it does in the real-life casinos, then the raffle tickets are awarded according to the betting odds.
Example 1: imagine a race with 3 runners, all have 2/1 odds, representing a 33.3% chance of winning. (Because 2/1 means 2 AGAINST 1, so 3 total.) In this case, each horse gets one third of the raffle tickets, giving them an equal chance to win.
Example 2: imagine a race with 3 runners, one has 1/1 odds (or EVENS), representing a 50% chance of winning, and the other two horses are marked up as 3/1, with a 25% chance of winning. The favorite gets half the tickets, the other two get a quarter of the tickets each.
A ticket is drawn, and you'll have a winner.
It doesn't matter in this game which horse you bet on, because the expected return is always the same: 100% or break-even, for the above examples.
Now, what happens if the percentages don't exactly add up to 100%?
They must add up to 100%, because there will always be a winner. And only one winner.
So when this is the case, the actual winning chances of the horses are adjusted to meet the 100% requirement, using their payout odds to determine the scale.
So, if the represented percentages add up to more than 100%, the actual winning chances of the runners will be DECREASED, resulting in all bets becoming losing propositions for the players.
Example: In a 6-horse race, all runners are listed at 4/1, representing a 20% chance. Only with six runners that amounts to 120%. So all chances are scaled down by 1/6th, to end up at 100%.
This means your horse's chances are reduced from 20% to 16.67%, turning it into a losing bet: 5 times you will lose your bet, and 1 time you will win, but only get 4 bets back in this instance, instead of 5. A losing bet in the long run.
This is the type of odds that you find in regular casinos, with fields as large as 15 runners to bet on, where the assumed winning chances always add up to more than 100%, therefore are decreased for all runners, resulting in a house edge.
But in GTA Online's Inside Track, there are other scenarios, because of the small field, and the way that they are put together.
In some cases, the represented percentages when added up, are LESS than 100%, meaning that the actual winning chances of all runners, are INCREASED.
This creates profitable bets for the players, because in the long run, you're expecting to win more money than you lose. This is a gambler's dream, pure and simple.
So, according to the in-game information, the three groups of horses are divided as follows:
-Favorites: EVENS to 5-1
-Outsiders: 6-1 to 15-1
-Underdogs: 16-1 to 30-1
Let's take the two most extreme examples to show what's happening.
The worst possible field to bet on: two runners at EVENS, two runners at 6-1, and two runners at 16-1.
EVENS represents a 50% chance, 6-1 is 14.29%, and 16-1 is 5.88%. Add those up and you land on a total of 140.34%.
This means that the actual winning chances of the horses are decreased by 28.75% (to get that 140% down to 100%), which makes betting on this field extremely unwise.
A horse at EVENS will only come in as a winner 35.63% of the time, instead of 50%,
a horse at 6-1 will only win 10.18% of the time,
and an underdog at 16-1 will only win 4.19% of the time.
The expected return on a bet on any of the horses in this field is only 71.26%, so a maximum bet of 10,000 chips on any of these horses holds an expected LOSS of 2,875 chips.
These returns are the same, because the winning chances are scaled equally, according to the payout numbers. So it really doesn't matter which horse you bet on, in the long run, you expect the same results.
But as explained before, it does influence variance, and therefore your short-term result, which can swing both ways.
But now, the best possible field to bet on: two runners at 5-1, two runners at 15-1, and two runners at 30-1.
Odds at 5-1 represents a winning chance of 16.67%, 15-1 odds means 6.25% chance, and 30-1 odds means a 3.23% chance of winning. Add these six horses together, and you only get 52.285%.
This means that, to get from 52% to 100%, the actual winning chances of these horses will be almost doubled! Multiplied by 1.91 to be exact.
So the 5-1 favorites will now win 31.88% of the time, instead of 16.67%,
the 15-1 runners will win 11.95% of the time,
and the underdogs at 30-1 odds will still win 6.17% of the time.
When betting on this field, the expected return on your bet is 191.25%!
This means that a max bet of 10,000 chips will result in an expected PROFIT of 9,125 chips.
This is printing money, if there ever was such a thing.
Optimal strategy for Virtual Horse racing
So all you have to do, is only bet high on the games where you have an expected positive return, and bet the absolute minimum on the games where your expected return is negative. Or back out of the racing game to refresh the field.
If you don't have a way to quickly add up all the percentages, and until somebody shows up here with a neatly formatted table, just use a few general rules of thumb:
-Always bet the maximum on a race with favorites at 2/1 and 3/1 or higher in it.
-Simply skip all races with two favorites at EVENS in it, and at EVENS and 2/1. Or bet the minimum, if you can't skip or refresh the field.
-To decide if you should play races with other favorite combinations EVENS and 3/1, EVENS and 4/1, EVENS and 5/1, or two favorites at 2/1, the payouts on the other four runners determine whether or not it's profitable to play them. The results of betting on these fields vary from an expected 1,330 chip loss (worst-case) to an expected 1,680 chip win (best-case), with a max bet of 10,000 chips.
But if you're not looking for another strategy chart, you might just want to skip these borderline cases, and just cherry pick the best ones, which are easy to recognize, and with which you can never go wrong.
It's difficult to put a number on an expected win-rate, because it all depends on which fields you get presented with, but it's not unreasonable to state that you can maintain a steady win-rate of around 200,000 chips per hour, with about 50 seconds per race.
Remember, you're not trying to win every race. You're trying to win the most money per hour. So don't sweat it when you bet on a 4/1 favorite, and lose a couple of races in a row. It will still be more profitable in the long run. You have the math on your side.
To reduce negative variance, always bet on the favorite, when betting on profitable fields. We're not gambling anymore, we're grinding out a steady profit. We want to keep the swings to a minimum.
I contacted Rockstar support to verify if this is indeed how it works, but the only reply I got after 6 weeks is that they were "looking into it".
User u/Garsant made a useful Excel-worksheet, available for you to download, where you can quickly type in the payouts on the horses, to see if it produces a profitable bet or not. You can find it in his post here: https://www.reddit.com/gtaonline/comments/ekp8na/gta_online_inside_track_odd_calculato
1) Wheel of Fortune
The number one profitable casino game in GTA Online is obviously the Wheel of Fortune, because it costs you nothing to play.
Unfortunately, you only get one free spin per day, but it holds great value, so make sure you do it.
With a chance to win a super car, vehicle discounts, expensive mystery prizes (which also can be vehicles), and a lot of cash and chips, the expected return on a single spin is around $100,000 in value.
So don't forget your daily spin, it's definitely worth your time.
2020 Update:
As of the Diamond Casino Heist update, the Inside Track horse racing is confirmed to still be as profitable as outlined above.The only thing that seems to be changed, is that you can't refresh the field anymore by backing out of the screen. This does affect your hourly rate in a negative way, but does not change the fact that this game has a huge positive expected return, and should be your go-to when you're trying to take money from the house, without having Lester's nagging voice in your ear. That should also be worth something.
And with that, I conclude my 5,000 word essay on gambling in GTA. Questions, comments, feel free to add your input to this guide.
Cliffs:
-Gambling games should only be played for fun, not for big money. You should expect to lose in the long run. The house always wins.
-A casino game doesn't have a memory, and betting systems don't work.
-Set your limits before you start, how much you are willing to lose or win, and then walk away when you get there.
-Don't play slots, roulette, or three card poker.
-Only play blackjack following a basic strategy chart (https://prnt.sc/olct6g).
-Inside Track betting can be played profitably, if you only bet on fields WITHOUT a heavy favorite.
-Wheel of Fortune is always your best bet, because it's a free bet.

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[Guide] 1000 Ancient Tunnels runs + Comprehensive Guide to High Rune Drop Rates - part 2

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A quick recap

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Players X setting vs Rune drops

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Normalization

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