SWP player breaking cover

cool · Post by **cool** » Tue Nov 13, 2012 10:36 pm

he will be suppplementing his dole money by dropping the odd tenner the way things are going.

Roll_With_It_Russ · Post by **Roll_With_It_Russ** » Tue Nov 13, 2012 11:11 pm

he has sold the story to the Wail, london paper and the sun.... if he was making any money there would be absolutely no need to go to the papers for a few hundred quid.

Student so would of been financed by loans, parents, grants etc. over the years.

the figures reported are simply those calculated by the journo to dervive some headline figures.

Just because I could go to a paper and say I made a few k over a few days, that does not mean they should make the article state earns £1/2million a year.

Any where over the last few years i've been its been very rare to find a happy quizzer, perhaps 1in15 are big prize ready, 1in10 not good for anything more than a 1 or 2 quid win. The not ready units simply cancel out the wins on ready units.

What would be a compleatly different story is if you could achieve games without the credits being used...still take a few hours to realise £50-60, not that an hour.

cp999 · Post by **cp999** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 12:48 am

cool wrote:Nobody has been able to answer the question.Why is it if he was making all this money he wasnt rumbled and the game altered or removed long ago.The machines have long been able to show the input/payout in a prescribed period per individual game and remember with a choice of at least ten games a terminal often more , the game would be in the negative for much of the time.He had routes according to the article and so didnt play each terminal once.I do believe the guy is making a good living but is bigging himself up for the media (although from experience they will do it themselves and make up quotes) and talking quite a lot of bollocks.

He's doing COM, taking 20, then moving to next terminal, over a very wide geographical area, repeating the process over a several month rotation period. Hence it's not noticeable. He told me he'd done 400 the previous day (albeit an all day session) and he was good enough for that to be credible. Now I agree there are some things that don't add up within the interviews, and I completely disagree with what he's doing, but he IS capable of such earnings.

cp999 · Post by **cp999** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 1:00 am

And, good heavens, there's so much more I'd like to say, but unlike some, I know when to keep my gob shut.

bubbles · Post by **bubbles** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 6:21 am

mmm quizzing could be the way forward. do you own them/ get access to software etc? £5 float required and zero stress, unlike when you only make the same £60 on a perf after 2 cashpots and the 25 that you could have made in 1 minute if only that fucking 5 first board had won!

cp999 · Post by **cp999** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 9:48 am

The articles are misleading in the sense that they give the impression he was winning big money from the start. As has been observed, no-one, no matter how good their general knowledge, starts from the position of having a good knowledge of blocking questions. The amount of effort and single-mindedness required to get to the level where the player is in control of what's going on would blow your mind. Making a substantial income on SWPs is a world apart from one-off things like Connect4; it's probably why so few people are either capable of doing so or put in the effort to get to the required level.

Topical2009 · Post by **Topical2009** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 10:39 am

If anyone wants to hear his radio appearance on Listen Again, it's just before and after the midnight news on yesterday's Tony Livesey show (starts at 1:26:45 on iPlayer). As already observed above, the quoted winnings/earnings had dropped from £60,000 to the somewhat more credible £40,000. If you just want the summary, his basic line was that he's bored with the lifestyle (understandable), and too many of his machines are being replaced by non-quiz games (also true). As you'd expect, it was a bit of fun on a late-night talk show, not a grilling by Paxman on Newsnight, so he wasn't challenged on the less certain claims i.e. he won a jackpot with literally his first pound in the machine, and leapt straight to making £150-£200 a day without any apparent learning process taking place.

While it would probably be better if he didn't say anything at all, I suppose it's better that he makes punters think that anybody can do what he did after a couple of days' practice, rather than revealing quite how tough it is to get to that level of expertise. Myself, I've always gone along with the old poker saying that it's a hard way to make an easy living...

cp999 · Post by **cp999** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 11:04 am

Topical2009 wrote:If anyone wants to hear his radio appearance on Listen Again, it's just before and after the midnight news on yesterday's Tony Livesey show (starts at 1:26:45 on iPlayer).

Thanks for that. Sounds like quiz player's menopause! Of course it's boring - so are most jobs.

cool · Post by **cool** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 11:40 am

Odd that he is 40years old and nobody had ever heard of him until now.Most quizzers start youngish.I was twenty-two when I started and I would have been younger if I had not been there from the very beginning (now age 50).Does anyone know if he plays anything else......

cp999 · Post by **cp999** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 11:45 am

cool wrote:Does anyone know if he plays anything else......

On the basis of what he said to me, DOND before COM. Nothing else.

cool · Post by **cool** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 1:04 pm

I was too knackered last night after doing athletic training with the club (16 X 300m reps) last night! (any other running quizzers out there?) to hear the interview but I was told that apparently he said he was wasting his 1st class chemistry degree on pressing buttons and was giving up playing.Oddly as he's 40 for somebody 'that' intelligent it took him a long time citing his age to wake up to that fact.Its odd how some players have a condescending and sneering attitude to quiz machines, biting the hands that feeds them.I have a geography degree (not a 1st) so f****n what? I play them for enjoyment and income and appreciate the life theyve given me .

paragoon · Post by **paragoon** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 1:53 pm

I'm unsure why people think you get paid for letting papers write human interest stories about you. Ok if you're spilling the beans on shagging a celeb or if you have info you can auction to the highest bidder you'll get some cash but "Do you want to cobble together a few quotes from an interview I did in Time Out?" is unlikely to make him rich.
I didn't expect Paxman, but it would have been nice if someone asked him what he did plan to do! I'd imagine - seeing as he's got no shame and is immune to embarrassment - he could do what some of my mates are always suggesting "Ooh, you should write a book about it!" - then bingo he's a modern day Fred Housego and can endorse Pub Quiz books from his villa by the Med.

Lastly, I do see the possibility that this publicity blitz might get punters back on the machines. they should take a leaf out of the fruits - instead of sticking a big cardboard sign with WIN £70 on top they could have WIN £40k p.a! emblazoned on the machines.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 3:28 pm

Like cp999, I objected to the suggestion, surely false, that he began winning sizeable sums of money immediately. Even the best general quizzer would take a while to get to the stage on a game where he was able to make serious sums, as cp999 says because of the need to learn spoilers and get into the SWP mindset. Quite why he feels the need to embellish his story like that I don't know - why not just say that it took an awful lot of effort and hard work to get to the stage where he could expect £20 a cabinet from CoM?

He was at university as recently as 2009 (see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/press_office/bu ... le11.shtml), so, given he is now 40, it does appear that he came late to higher education. I also note his team were very mediocre (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University ... ge_2009-10) so it would not appear to me that he is quite the all-round quiz genius that he suggests he is.

Fair enough to reach that kind of level on a title and be prepared to do the travelling etc. to exploit it in full, but I question why he feels the need to talk up his general abilities so much.

QuizMaster · Post by **QuizMaster** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 9:39 pm

There are much better stories about pro quizzers out there than this one. It's quite pathetic actually.

What about the first guy to crack Millionaires? or the two guys who lived in the back of a camper van for about 5 years travelling around Britain's coast. The Albanian guy who ended up with his head on the train tracks? Derby Jack, Coventry John, The Black Fingernail, Mad John McInytyre and Alan Gilliver? Suri and the North London circuit? The Sheffield boy who won £27,000 in a week? Better, better stories all of them.

I should write a book. I probably will one day.

QM

wires74 · Post by **wires74** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 9:49 pm

met gilliver a few times monopoly deluxe mad he was seen his handle browsing on here as well whether its him or not i dont know ?