Triforce! - Triforce! #234 - The Problem Solvers

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Triforce! Episode 234! Canada's threatening independence, Magnus Carlsen is accusing Hans Niemann of cheating at grand master tier chess and floppy disks aren't gonna work soon... but don't worry, Triforce is here to solve EVERY problem ever! Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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hello everyone welcome back to the triforce podcast with me lewis also period flax no and me i'm eating toast lewis imperious period yes uh your your hottest gaming takes and news just yes general guff that we've been up to this week meandering thoughts yeah informed takes yes um mostly by you i just for the record yeah why are you telling them what the podcast is about when they don't know? You're not selling it either. People turn up and they're like... What do people want nowadays? They want exciting...

They want fresh and exciting content when they turn up. They don't want predictable content. They don't want to turn up here and think, these guys are just going to go off on one about getting a boner at a funeral or whatever shit they come up with next. I have noticed other people talk faster than us.

I don't know what it is. Any cool TikTok star. They're all Americans, mate. Americans love to gab. They got that news anchor voice as well, though, eh? Yeah. Well, you know, like it's all's it's kind of hammed up right we're going more for the vibe of three old men sitting in your kitchen just imagine we're

sitting in your kitchen and we're in the middle of a big boiler installation and we're taking a tea break this fucking boiler mate what i wish the boss is so wild to get to the uh the condenser not to mention the dehumidifying rhombone around the back did you see the traffic on the way in oh my god that's some traffic i've never seen traffic like it 69 is all you gotta take the b420 i told you not to take the a69 well the bridge was closed at chep club so i had to come around that way chep club does sound like a british town it does yeah or like um smethic i saw a post this morning from a canadian it made me think of you sips yeah yeah i know all of them by the way what was his name uh i think it was todd. Oh, yeah, Todd.

Yeah, I went to school with Todd. He was in r slash ask UK or whatever. And he was like, so do you guys go camping in the UK? Can I get a caravan? I'm used to camping in Canada where we have like 40 foot long caravans. Maybe not so much in the mainland. Although I'm sure this exists on the mainland. maybe maybe not so much in the mainland although i'm sure this exists on the mainland we we refer to you guys as the mainland uh in jersey there's not

many forests so like uh if you're canadian and you go camping you camp in a forest right uh predominantly i would say you you're you're camping like in the woods i mean it's hard not to be in a forest in Canada, right? Exactly. But my experience with camping over here is that you camp in a field. Same with a caravan. You park up in a field. True that.

And away you go sort of thing. Well, I mean, yeah, it's camping. Well, this guy seemed to have the idea that camping was caravanning, which is not the same. We think of camping as tents and obviously in the uk we don't really have any wilderness left you know it's been permanently populated for the last 12 000 years and as a result every square inch of britain is owned by someone and they're very protective of their thing and everything's grazing land or you know it's the

same you know anytime you want to camp up anywhere you there's a campsite with toilets you know a block usually unless you actually go out properly camping and then you know you have to drink you know tomato soup out of a can and you know try and dig a hole and take a shit but i mean even that is like very like this is like 10 square meters of forest, it feels like. There's not a lot of dedicated wilderness like there is in, I'm sure, Canada. But also, it's a lot fucking colder, I would imagine, in Canada. Well, I mean, in the winter, yeah. In the summer, it's hot as shit. Yeah, it's lovely.

We're going to go to Canada either next year or the year after. Oh, nice. What part are you thinking of visiting? Ontario, so around Ottawa and all around there. lovely yeah we're gonna go to canada next uh either next year or the year after oh nice what uh what part are you thinking of visiting uh ontario so around ottawa and all around there that's what yeah ottawa is we've got family ottawa is uh is not a place that you want to stay for long though like it's not but we're not going to ottawa no yeah we're going to see family ottawa you could do you could pretty much see all the interesting stuff in like a day or two. Yeah, yeah.

You want to like a day or two in Montreal and then Toronto, Toronto a couple of days. You got Niagara Falls and stuff. How far is that away from Ottawa though?

Ottawa, so if you wanted to drive from Ottawa to Toronto, it'd be about six hours. Ottawa to Montreal is about two hours. It's a little bit less on the train. Train's maybe a little bit easier,

more interesting. Or it's like an hour flight or whatever. That's like driving the entire length of the UK. Well, at least driving to the north, isn't it? It's like six hours is a fucking long drive. It's a long one, yeah. I mean, it depends on how fast you go, right?

I've got a lot of family um in canada all my cousins and my extended family from my dad's side is all up in canada and they're all about my age now and they'll all have kids of their own and all the rest of it and i was thinking it'd be nice for um me and the family and my sister and her fella to go over there and see all the the canadian side of things and meet their kids and they can meet our kids and i was thinking it'd be really nice because yeah you know it's it's not family i see very often but they know i'm sure they'd make us feel very welcome um i just think it would be nice uh so that's the plan and canada is a beautiful country and

it's like america but without the americans in it you know it's a lot more chill yeah it is america love you but chill it is a little bit more chill canada for sure it's a bit it feels a bit more laid back somehow there's a huge american influence there though they still have the mass i would say that america has been hugely influenced by canada oh that's all i know that's uh that's the spin that you put on it. Smart. Yeah. There's, you know, with the whole, like, with the Queen passing and, you know, members of the Commonwealth, some poised to leave the Commonwealth because they were only kind of staying there because of the Queen or whatever. And there's a lot of talk about Canada potentially being one one of them although i'm not sure if it would happen i don't really know the the

the states that canada's in sort of thing but let's let's let's say that uh that that canada uh were to leave the the commonwealth and to sort of like denounce the the the monarchy and no longer take part or whatever basically they still have a i think a constitutional monarchy there yes not um ideal but again the thing is like it's all in principle the idea is that the queen or the king might well have some say but in reality it's not necessarily not necessarily the case yeah but i think that it's a it's a very old idea it's the same in australia and new zealand i believe as well they're sort of saying they'd like to change to a republic and it seems like a sensible sure idea right um but the the influence of america especially with canada

being so close is that without some of these things that are uniquely canadian in that part of the world they just become another america right like there's there's there's not much differentiating like you know like there's there's there's nothing that really sets them apart anymore if they if they drop all this stuff right and then they just become a um you know a western a western country in close proximity to america with you know a high standard of living or whatever but a little bit like nordic countries they are they're smaller in size with with you know a high standard of living or whatever but a little bit like nordic countries they are they're smaller in size with a you know more sort of less less of a messy cultural divide in their population you know yeah the north and south still are very culturally

different places you know and i think that in canada it's at least at least more i'm sure that i'm sure it's such a big country there's going to be a big divide between you know the east and west there already is a little bit of a divide in canada with french canada and non-french canada traditionally yeah well yeah but you know they don't make it easy do they they don't it's true they do not but there you go i think i think i don't know it's i don't know you never hear any um any like super complaints about canada falling apart though do you you know no there was a they had a couple of uh referendums like in the 90s uh where quebec was wanting to separate that they never really they never got anywhere with. I mean, I guess it's a little bit like Scotland in the UK.

I think so. You know, they want to, or well, some people in Scotland want to become independent. Just less than half of them, apparently. They just keep pushing for it. But I think it's, I think that wasn't,

it wasn't even close in Canada. It wasn't like, you know, just slightly less than half or anything like that. I think. So let's imagine, like if you had a referendum in Quebec, you're saying that most of the people in Quebec were like, no, we do not want to leave. And they, well, the, the, the, the, the, the, the big population center in Quebec is, is Montreal is the biggest city in Quebec.

Montreal is very close to the border with Ontario. So Montreal is a French Canadian city, if you like, but there's a lot of English Canadians living there, right? Because of how close it is to the rest of... It's not like deepest, darkest French Canada, right? Right. It's mostly French, but the further north you go in the province of Quebec, the more French it becomes, right?

And, like, to the point where there's some people there that just do not speak any English or will just refuse to speak it. So, was it almost like Brexit and Montreal would be London in that London voted against Brexit? Yeah, probably. And a lot of the rest of the country voted for it. Yeah, I think Montreal was, like, the, like, kind of, like, the big swing. Wow, it was really close. From my understanding. It's like, you know all those polls?

Why are polls like this always so close? It was 58 point, sorry, 50.5% voted no. Wow. They only carried it by about 30,000, actually 50,000 votes. Holy, I didn't realize it was that close, actually. Holy shit. Yeah, so like, all of these things seem to be really close.

Traditionally in Canada, the, like, all of these things seem to be pretty close. Traditionally in Canada, like, the federal government is represented by a French-Canadian. Like, it's pretty rare, like, that, I mean, a lot of the long-standing prime ministers of, you know, days gone were French-Canadian. You know, like, straight up from Quebec or at least from Montreal or whatever. Like, the representation of the Western is not not huge and never has been uh at least in my lifetime so um I don't know it's like it's like an essential part of it but they you know they want to leave or become independent for whatever reason I don't know what that looks like after they achieve independence like what the hell do they do i mean it's a it's a huge province they have a lot of lumber uh they generate a lot of hydro electricity i guess um which is i mean it's all good stuff but like i don't know like it just

seems you seem a lot stronger as a as a full country rather than you know an independent yeah i mean i guess it's kind of a question with with I think with Scotland, wasn't it that they they had like the North Sea oil and gas or whatever that they're saying, well, that would be ours. Yeah. And the rest of the UK was like, well, no, it won't. And that was going to be a big problem. Yeah, because how is well, it's in Scotland, so it's ours. And I think the thing is that England was like, well, no, we don't want that at all because then we don't have any we have to buy oil from scotland and then that would suck i think that was the just yeah well i mean so it's a colonial attitude basically well i guess we're saying you've got oil so we did all this when when you were in the uk if you break away you don't get to keep it yeah i think was this but i'm sure we'll get some a couple of emails about that how dare you claim that

i just i don't i don't understand like the the expectation in some ways like anywhere else in the world for example if you were in the mafia and you left to come back to a staple of the podcast yeah you left and you're like yeah i'm just gonna keep all my whorehouses uh are you like that you know it doesn't work like that does it i mean in fact tony i uh i got a real world it just doesn't i want to i want to retire and i want to take my numbers game my racketeering the the the trash i want to take my union job i want all my pizza paers all the whores all the whores and the pizza's coming with me is that okay i'm also taking all the oil rigs and the oil and gas not the fracking though you can't take the fracking tony the fracking's what it's all about

there's no gas reserves left in that bitch it's about the frack no you can take the whores you can take the numbers the racketeering you can take the trash all of it um fracking stays with the family i mean another thing as well like you think uh wales and scotland and stuff these these places became part of the United Kingdom a long-ass time ago, probably before they would have ever had any international lines drawn or anything, right? Like, I mean, I guess there must be maps that say this is all rightfully part of Scotland or whatever. I don't know if that's the main thrust of why they want to leave.

It's like they're not rubbing their hands together thinking, oh, we're going to get this oil. No, no, but people were asking how they were going to fucking... Because I believe the argument was that Scotland is essentially a net loss in terms of what they contribute to the United Kingdom economy. Right. Because essentially most places that aren't London are, right? Like, because we jammed so much so it's dependent on us and so

what they'll fall into massive poverty without us whether that is true or not i don't know i'm sure that uh alex salmon and uh no he's uh he's he's gone now isn't he yeah but he was a big proponent of it's uh what's her face um nicola sturgeon she's still nic well look i i'm a big fan of the idea of independence of everyone i think they should be able to self-govern themselves within where does it end but i know but but also like like you said it's a very good point if if a country is dependent or has built an infrastructure that is dependent on elements of it you know like you know it will one of them prosper and the other one fall into poverty as a result of this that is dependent on elements of it you know like you know it will one of them prosper and the other one fall into poverty as a result of this that is no good it's like a divorce

if you are a country and you're part of another country like wales like scotland if you then say i want to divorce we're so close like i think if we just talk about this for like five more minutes we can really crack it you know we can solve it just like just five more minutes we're so close guys holy shit we're gonna solve the problem oh man tell them tell them i believe i believe hello nicola yeah it's period from the triforce podcast look me and the lads have been cooking something up here uh we've got an idea uh and we're just gonna pitch it to you it's about it's about the independence referendum okay go right ahead laddy i've got nothing else on to do today because scotland's just a barren wasteland we're now in it apart from the aisle reserves which you'll no get over my dead body all right nicola well the point is we think we've figured it out you know referendum would be a lot like a divorce

maybe don't do it fuck well a good point well made problem solved let's move on let's be the story this week i don't know if you heard really had told me this about um chess grandmaster oh yeah this is oh i haven't uh i i heard whispers of this, but I'm not familiar with any of the details. So what happened was, OK, this is a guy who's 19 years old. As far as I know, I haven't really looked into it too much. But this is what I understand. He played a chess game against Magnus Carlsen. Right.

He's been accused of cheating before. He has cheated. He admitted that, that he cheated in the past. um he's been accused of cheating before he has cheated he admitted that that he cheated in the past yeah and he's cheated before but so so so he beat magnus carlson um but i think carlson did what basically carlson cousin did a thing where he basically had to do at least one move and so he just did that one move and then left so yeah which is a tournament that he walked away yeah yeah so he played one move and resigned again. He was just like, I'm done my move. I know that this is like the big clincher. There's no coming back from this one. No, no, no.

I'm going to get a sandwich. No, no, no, no, no. As in, the game started, Niemann moved Queen's Pawn forward two squares. Magnus moved his knight one, like one move and then resigned the game yeah and so basically i think again he was he was i mean he he's only 19 and obviously he was accused of cheating he admitted to cheating when he was 12 yeah on chess.com not in a live game or anything like this but now he's obviously you know an established chess player but people don't know how he's cheating they shoo me is and they shoo me is because magnus was was did an opening that he never ever does against him or someone did an opening that he never ever does

and he responded like like not immediately but like perfectly to that even though it's something that magnus has never like a style that magnus has never played before right so magnus was like almost doing a test on him because if he'd prepped which a lot of grandmasters do, they prep against their opponent and they know what their opponent's likely to play. And the first series of moves in the tournament are always very established because both players know what styles they want to play and what they think they can beat the other way. Also, there is a hard limit on the openings. I watch a lot of chess channels.

There's a guy called a Gatmantor who does these reviews. Yes. He's very good. He's the guy called a Gadmantor who does these reviews. Yes. He's very good. He's the guy who says, and then captures, captures Bishop moves to Rook for, and then basically we have a brand new game. So the point is that chess is like a huge tree and the opening,

like 10 moves have all been done across a shitload of other games, but then someone will make a move that essentially generates, at that point, a new game of chess that has never been seen before from that point on. So it's like this exact combination of moves has this is the first time that we believe this has happened. So anyway, the reason this is news is because someone on Reddit or someone somewhere

said, I know how he's cheating. He's putting vibrating anal beads up his ass yeah right and this is apparently the news story um everyone has now accused the public has now accused this guy of putting anal beads in his ass and cheating using vibration signals or whatever right now of course there's no evidence for this it's just basically slaughtering this poor guy and it's now popular the internet is is now just assumes this is the truth okay to the point where um you know there's like webcam sites sending him offering like a million dollars to play nude and stuff like this right it's it basically embarrassing this guy into into the ground with no evidence now obviously we think

he's cheating but again no evidence um and like it it's it's it's it's mental okay but i mean the thing is chess obviously these days computers are just better yeah so you could very easily cheat right you could just have you could just be told what you are people it's just a fact so it's not that it's not that it's impossible to cheat it's just that it's in fact it's easy but it's harder to do it in real life without signals i don't need a computer to beat that guy um just just let me adam 1v1 i'll take you on let me just put my vibrating anal 1v1 that would that would be a change for chess normally it's 1v1 me

seeing all this news happen and be like oh isn't this a funny story but part of me is like why is the internet just bullying this guy and maybe he deserves it because maybe he is cheating but I feel like until isn't he like a top top chess player yeah but I assume he's playing Magnus Carlsen so he must be decent

he is grandmaster but the problem is magnus is so good that no one can beat him right essentially he's just the greatest probably of all time he's unbelievably good at chess right right plays it fast he plays it slow he can do it all he's he's insane yes of course he loses games from time to time but he is a ridiculously good a godlike chess player right and this guy although he's very very good it's i think the argument is it's a bit like someone who is a weightlifter suddenly lifting 100 kilograms more than the guy who is the world record holder it's like that where you think yes this other guy is extremely strong but where did he suddenly get this extra 100 kilos lift from like that where you think yes this other guy is extremely strong but where did he suddenly

get this extra 100 kilos lift from like that's ridiculous yeah so i think the argument is for him to beat magnus carlson for a start to a lot of people that's unheard of but what did not help the situation and really didn't help this guy in my opinion and i'm a big magnus carlson fan and i'm sure i will get some hate for this from some chess fans but i think he's handled it very poorly in two ways first of all he came out after the tournament and he tweeted when he'd been beaten by this guy neiman he tweeted the the marino uh post-match interview where marino said if i say anything i'll be in big trouble so i'm going to keep my mouth shut that was his post-match interview magnus carson tweeted that and everyone like, what's wrong with Magnus? What's going on here?

And of course it then comes out that everybody thinks Neiman was cheating. For him to, at the next tournament when he plays Neiman, the game where he conceded, Magnus Carlsen owns that organization that was running that chess tournament. So for him to do this is like setting up this, it's like inviting someone over to play Monopoly and then the moment they roll the dice, you just flip the board and storm off.'s like if you want to say something come out

and state it don't be a baby it's childish the way he's acting in my opinion it's unbecoming of the great chess master that he is i think it's pretty disgusting that that we've just jumped to the idea that this guy's using anal beads and everyone's reporting it as normal this guy's he's 19 right who hasn't when they were 19 shoved a vibrating anal bead up their ass that's all i'm saying i've got one up there right now to be a chess tournament i'm not even if you did it i'm not 19 but i'm enjoying myself here it's this is awesome i love this yeah those beads are telling ships what to say on the triforce podcast that's what's happening. I'm just, I don't know. For some reason, that really annoyed me.

Like, and that was, I just didn't want to dive in. I'm sure a lot of creators and other content creators are loving this and doubling down. Oh, it's made a ton of vids. Just feels like bullying to me, man. I'm just not cool with it. So when's your video expected to come out? Is it dropping today? Are you dropping your big reaction video today?

I think it's partly because we've just suspended our fucking cruelty in the face of the Queen's funeral, right? No one loves the royal family, but everyone's been quite respectful. Every fucker on the whole planet, Pringles and the fucking Emoji Movie, like the British porn channels paused all of their fucking content. and the fucking emoji movie like the british porn channels paused all of their fucking content you know everyone's been fucking bending over backwards to put a black board around everything for the sake of the queen you know the pringles i'm kind of sick of it um pringles printed cans where the little guy's mustache is upside down like he's sad really no they didn't but that

would have been fucking holy shit man you got me there i was like really they did that no i would have been that would have been hilarious holy shit i'm not look you know as as i just i just think that there's some where it's people seem to have this very selective idea of when to be respectful um and only if it fucking benefits them you know they're respectful when it benefits them they're disrespectful when it benefits them and they're disrespectful when it benefits them. People love to jump on a bandwagon, whether it's a good, sad bandwagon or a fucking abuse bandwagon. It's fucking awful.

I think companies and people are very, very scared to do anything that isn't as a group. And I mean, you could say traditionally that's been the case, but the problem is if you come out and say something that people generally disagree with, um, or you don't tow the line, if you're a company in particular, if you don't tow the line that all the other companies and everything, all they're all doing it, all the, you know, this is canceled, that's canceled, we're going to out of a sign of respect, like they're all copying each other's language because no one wants to march out of step. everybody wants to just be homogenous so that you can't discern

one company's behavior from another that way it's the worst thing about numbers if everybody else is doing it we better do it too that's it i think the worst thing is when these companies are doing something that they can try and fucking spin to be respectful to the queen or when it's when it's clearly not like making a pop figure for the queen in her casket or some shit you know i mean and they're like this is in memory of queen elizabeth it's like not really you're just clearly cashing in a really scummy way but you've spun it into a way that is like what those little bobblehead things a bobblehead queen whatever the i've got one in my kitchen like uh it's like a solar powered one of the queen yeah my kids bought it one time

in town i think and it's just it's on my ledge in my in my kitchen like uh i i see it every day it's hilarious so it makes me very respectful i think yeah i like the queen just sure whatever i'm just saying that like so many people aren't sure it's like aren't sure what they're doing to the point where it's like borderline effective and this is the way youtube and twitch and all these things always work right if you if you're pushing something right to that borderline of acceptance it's going to get so much more interest and this is why we see big successes among and it's frustrating but we just revisit this over and over again right with like twitch's policy on banning people or youtube's policy on banning people and those people that get banned come back with twice as many views a week later you know um and it's and it's kind of it's it's always

going to be the case right you can't have everything going but there's always gonna be a line and who polices that line it has to be one guy you know there's this there's this lot of fuss on youtube where some creators are playing these games like the mortuary assistant and some of them are being you know adult flagged and others aren't you know and it's like well it's like where are the standards yeah who's who's policing this you know and it's also like so close to the line of like there's like the scene in the mortuary assistant in the game at the end where there's like a hanging right and obviously all the big youtubers have

played it fine you know they're all non-ad age restricted nothing like this you know not even not even no one's blinked an eye at it at all you know whereas obviously logan paul going to the hanging and you know that everyone on the internet has this terrible outcry and he gets demonized and whatever you know and i'm not saying i'm on his side or not i'm not saying i'm on the youtuber side or not but like this is a tricky thing right like kids are watching these youtubers and experiencing these pretty awful things wasn't the thing with him that he went to that but he went to that forest absolutely it's context related to i mean his blasé attitude to it like lol look at that guy is is very different to you know someone playing the game and condemning it as they go through it or talking about it in

a rational way but you know i'm sure these things are very hard to uh police right there's no the hard and fast rules don't work it's it's based on some human having to look at it right you know and and say well this is probably not okay you know i i feel like these games do have age restrictions on them anyway you know but then again you could be doing like some rp in gta which is totally fine you you're not they're not shooting anyone or doing any strippers does that get age restricted just because it's in a gta which is an 18 game you know well minecraft you know if you're doing some weird sex fucking spider-man elsa roleplay shit in minecraft does that not get age restricted because it's in minecraft judged where are the rules i got a question for you guys because we're talking about no no we're talking

about chess we're talking about games uh another thing that's been happening on twitch this week is about gambling streams. Yeah. Yeah. This has been controversial. I came out. I did have a hot take about it that some people agree with and some people didn't. And the gambling industry, they refer to what they do as gaming. Yeah.

They consider their they're like, you know, you guys come to our casinos and play games. It's gaming. Gaming table is a gaming table. They've always said that it's gaming. And I think that that has allowed them to infiltrate a little bit into, you know. Right. So here's my problem is,

and I want to first of all set the scene. I am not someone who is massively pro gambling. I think there's no harm in people having a flutter now and then, and even putting a few quid in a slot machine if they want, or if you're at a casino, dropping 20 or 30 quid on a blackjack if you want to have a bit of fun. It is fun. I get it. You know, you get to feel like James Bond or whatever. The problem is a lot of people obviously take it too far. A lot of people have a serious problem. And these gambling companies come up with all kinds of inventive ways of getting money out of people who very often can't afford to lose this money now here's

the thing that's the difficulty right because i went through this when i was at uni it the difference is is that when you're in a brick and mortar casino and you're dealing with real people and you're you know actually having to put money down or you're doing something like in a bookies where you have to wait you know you you bet on a horseies where you have to wait. You know, you bet on a horse race and then you have to wait and watch it happen. That's very different to an online casino where your bank account is connected to the account. You can get tilted and angry or drunk or frustrated or depressed. And you can put in far too much money very, very easily. And you really lose it all very quickly.

That's what's happened. That's what the revolution has been in gambling. And that is incredibly addictive. And yeah, like you said, it hooks you in. Yeah. In a way that the classic gambling forms have put little physical barriers on, right? Mm-hmm. Go on, carry on.

So my only concern was that if we ban gambling streams what would that mean for poker and my argument was and unfortunately this is not backed up by british law there was a case for anyone that remembers the gutshot card room in london uh from about 20 years ago i think it ran for a good five or six years during the poker boom it's over in clark and well i think you could go there i played there you could play in tournaments there were from about 20 years ago. I think it ran for a good five or six years. During the poker boom, it's over in Clerkenwell, I think. You could go there. I played there. You could play in tournaments.

There were cash games. They had a court case where the British courts found that poker is gambling. That was their opinion. Yeah, but that's a tournament, though. This is a closed tournament. This isn't like...

Well, yeah, but people do also play cash games. Yeah, sure. But if you're broadcasting a closed tournament for cash, but it happens to be poker, I wouldn't say that that's actually gambling, is it? Well, you're essentially staking money based on how you think you're going to do. And you stand to win more or lose your stake. Yeah, I guess. So the issue is that how do you define gambling? And some people have said,

oh, should we ban loot boxes as well? And other people are like, well, yes, we would love that because we think loot boxes are gambling. And that's been a big thing in the EU and the arguments about that. There's some countries in the EU that have fully banned them.

That have literally banned them, exactly. People love buying loot boxes because they think they might get money from it. They might win something, exactly. That's really only, that's a big influence. Like, man, I could get a Pokemon card that's worth, you know, it's like even opening Pokemon boxes is kind of gambling.

That's how they work, right? I think poker, like you said, is two-pronged, right? It's got the cash games, which you could lose a lot of money very quickly. You could, yeah. And it's got the tournament where you put your stake in and you'll usually be sat there for an hour after putting 10 bucks in and i don't i don't mind that as much right i think that is a slower uh drain of money yeah i think you can't lose almost like if you put a tournament in you've invested a certain amount that you know you're investing yeah it's a fixed amount you're getting x amount of gameplay back and sure it's gambling it is gambling but it's it's not as potentially

poisonous as so so you know re-upping yourself at a cash game for another 200 quid i agree but here's my point is i don't think personally and i know people will disagree with me i don't think that poker is gambling in anything like the same way that most other things are and here's why i think it's an exception i'm not saying it's an exception just because I fucking love poker, right? I'm being honest with you I don't think that it's gambling in anything like the same way for example, you can be a professional poker player

for your whole life and you can make money doing so because you are better than the other players that you're playing against now if you are a horse racing expert, I know people who are horse racing experts and they have good years and they have bad years and maybe they finish up. But the point is, the more likely something is to happen, the shorter the odds. In poker, I can make my own odds,

for example, by outplaying my opponent. I can win a pot that I have no right to win by bluffing, which is the big element of skill in poker. But so is reading people's ranges, noticing their habits. If it's live poker, picking up on tells, things like that. There are elements of skill that, for me, don't exist in any other game that you could play in a casino or at a bookmakers. You can influence the result in a way that you can't in anything else would you agree that magic the gathering also has elements of bluffing and well this was a big this was a big question this was a big question that people asked is

well then would magic the gathering count as gambling because some of the tournaments in magic the gathering have a cash payout and you might even have to pay a fee to play i don't know but even if you don't essentially you're playing a game with a deck of cards hoping to draw certain things and hoping to have a better run of things than your opponent and in a sense you're having to buy the cards in the first place to take play so you're gambling that you're gonna get the card but you are also investing your time in learning the game and practicing the game that costs you money you know effectively so you know is that gambling i think honestly elements of gambling exist in all of our lives

you know you take a risk you take risks when you take your university course on or you you know you you right open a new business but there's i mean there are elements of taking a chance and a risk and then there's what we would define as gambling. And I think that the issue is, is poker gambling, given that it is, in my opinion, a lot of people's opinion, a game of skill? Because I could sit and play slot machines all day, and there's no skill to slot machines. You just pull the lever and you hope you win. Now, the argument against it is there are some professional slot machine players who look for progressive jackpots time it just right but again you're hoping that other people have dumped money in that they haven't collected and and they've lost it and you then turn up and reap the benefits that's not really the same as poker poker you're sitting down with your hand you're playing against other top players

and you're trying to outplay them and be better than them and a consistent number of players who are very very good rise to the top of a lot of tournaments every year. And they win in cash games and they make money. If that wasn't possible, that would be gambling. I feel like the fact that they can do that year after year

means it is a game of skill. And if it's a game of skill, even if it involves gambling, I think it deserves a special category. But that's just my opinion. I think where's the line, though, between the game of skill and the game of chance right like because how little skill do you need to make it you know get not gambling so you know you can play perfectly in poker

fairly skill based yeah but there's there's elements of luck in pinball because it's sometimes it just goes right down the middle is snap gambling if you play it for money is it gambling I think that's the question is is

anything it's pretty it's a pretty shit game snap it's pretty bad with not much skill

I prefer go fish go fish what about like what about like snakes and ladders that is pure chance no I'm trying to think of like a

really shit board game. Monopoly. Pure chance. Cluedo. Monopoly. There's a skill in Monopoly in there. Maybe if it's got a world championships of it, then it's not gambling. You could imagine a world championships of Scrabble and Monopoly and Catan and poker,

but you couldn't imagine a world championships of roulette. I think if you could consistently divine who is the best at something by having a competition then there would have to be a skill gap and therefore it would have to be a game of skill not just chance. I think we've solved it.

We've done it again. We've done it again. We're just fucking dusting off problems. Bring've done it again. We've done it again. We're just fucking gusting off problems. Bring us the next one. Mail us your problems right now. I reckon we could get

loads more done in this podcast. Lads, I do have a problem that I can only solve in one way. I need the toilet. Right, okay. Go let loose. I'll tell you what, come up with a problem for me and I need the toilet. Right, okay. Oh, well, go. Go let loose. I'll tell you what, come up with a problem for me and I'll solve it. If there was a problem, Flax will solve it.

Lewis, can I ask you what video games you've been playing recently? I'm curious to know. There is a new Monkey Island. I just got sent the, it's called Return to Monkey Island. It's published by Devolver. I was playing it yesterday. It's good.

It's okay. I love Monkey Island. It makes me want to go back and play the old ones. I got sent a game I haven't played yet called Isonzo World War II Italian Front. Oh, that looks good, actually. The graphics look stunning in that one.

They've made loads of them these guys um but actually what i've mostly been doing this last week is reaching out for jingle jam oh i've reached out to about a thousand people wow um and zero replies i've had about i'd say nobody wants to know 50 replies about everyone is jammed out every conceivable reply as well like oh can we talk on the phone oh i you know oh that's way too many copies to give away or like we don't support charity i've had like any man people actually just say straight up that they don't support charity yeah yeah yeah well a lot of them want to do their fair enough like any reason that anyone replies is fair enough right because i

don't know what's going on with them i don't know if they have like a prior relationship like we've never had a games workshop game in the bundle in the collection games collection sorry anytime and it's because games workshop have licensing agreements and it makes it difficult right so there's obviously some issue there that i can never overcome that I don't know. And I don't want to cause, don't over-rock the boat, right? And other people like to run their own charity initiatives in the name of time or whatever, or they've got some other prior promotion going on, or they don't own their game anymore. God knows, you know, like it's all, you never know what's going on with people.

So I'm never like judgmental about it. But I guess I hate it more when people don't reply because that's like did they do they did they just not get my email i usually pester them yeah you gotta pester sometimes like i know if you're anything like me you don't respond to things like ever or straight away you know unless you're pestered if somebody pesters me there's a good chance i'll probably respond to them but if somebody just sends me one email and expects a reply i'm lazy i never get around to it you know like it's tell me it's not like um i'm exactly the same i wish i was better but um i've got a news article here about floppy disks right right um apparently all the floppy disks are about to sort of start losing their magnetic um whatever charge this they start they're starting to go right yeah and people have obviously stopped making more and there's you

it's starting to become like a an ancient technology right well so what what do i do with my collection of floppy disks then how do i keep them safe well i don't know like you you might have to like start putting them onto other stuff i don't know i don't want to i want to keep them i have an old computer that i've kept around just so that i can access my vast library of floppy disks like what about the ones with that have like the the metal protector thing that, like, are those ones okay? Okay, what's the problem? Maybe they're okay. Floppy disks are losing their magnet.

Are floppy disks losing their charge, or are they all right? No, they do. They're losing their juice. They do lose it. They do lose it over time. Yeah, why? Well, because, like, so many people still use floppy disks for, like, the flippid air force and fucking... used floppy disks for like the flippid air force and so they they will lose it over time i believe that the the material on the disk will degrade which is why they use magnetic tape for very

long-term storage a lot of big banks and big organizations still use magnetic tape because it lasts a long time and it doesn't fail so you just have to hope it's all backed up maybe that's the uh you solved another one well you say i've solved that i'm certain i'm wrong because the problem with yeah but you sound like you're right so that's good because i think i am right but the problem is i'm so frequently corrected that i've got fact based this i've got factual dysfunction right it's like erectile dysfunction, but for facts. So you say something and you doubt yourself because somebody goes, actually! So you just don't know.

So I'm almost certainly wrong, but carry on. But who's out there fact-checking the well-actuallys, though? That's the thing. Well, when they do, that's what's always interesting. Just because somebody says well-actually, it doesn't mean that they're right. I know. And my favorite kind of well- actually, actually is when a well, actually is well, actually, that's as good as it gets.

That's fair. You can't hope for more, really. Yeah. Man. I think a lot. I read recently that Japan had this new minister who had like never used. He was like the head of like, like digital business or whatever. The Japanese minister.

I have never used a computer and I am proud of it. That's what he said, yeah. Oh my God, I was joking. He actually said that. And it was one of these moments where it was like, he said, you know, if I ever need anything doing, I ask one of my many assistants to do it. I just, you know, I'm too important to have to use a computer.

Sounds like a man for the job to be honest uh but no he's i think he's trying to like modernize um because even now like talking to nintendo we have to fax them things and it's like the fuck what year is this you know um and text floppy disks are still very prevalent there but obviously there's only one company still making the fucking things apparently jesus um i don't even have a fax if a company turned to me and said fax it i would just say why don't you fax off i'm not uh dealing with you ever again yeah that's the one i'm going with why don't you when i when i go fax yourself uh fax yourself? Go fax yourself. Fax off. Fax off. For Mrs. F's bonus one year at one of the companies she was working at,

they didn't have any money to give away as a bonus. So they treated us to a meal at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant in Chelsea. And this was like... Did it not cost any money? Huge deal. No, no, no. That's such a good point. we had to do the washing up no I mean basically they couldn't afford like a full bonus so her boss

said look just go to the restaurant and I'll pay for it that was what he laid on a meal he laid on his meal for you yeah so yeah you're right it did cost money but it was like off the books if you like it was like off the books. If you like,

it was like the boss treated us rather than an official bonus. Fair enough. Anyway, to make a reservation, you had to put down a deposit and you had to fax them. And I thought, why would you fucking have to fax it? Who has a fax machine?

I realize it's to keep the riff raff out in there because if you live, to mouth relatively poor and you're going to nip in, shove Gordon Ramsay's food down your face and then run out. You ain't got access to a fax machine. If you're someone who's like got an office job or an office or, you know, is a lawyer or whatever. Yeah. Or a doctor. You've got a fucking fax machine. Man, he should Kitchen Nightmare's his own fucking restaurant and bring up the point about the fax machine knocking about. He should Kitchen Nightmare his own fucking restaurant and bring up the point

about the fax machine, you know, because that wouldn't fly. If he went to like Jimmy and Jane's pizzeria in New Jersey or whatever and they were taking

bookings by fax machine, he would go into conniptions live on TV. He would give them the fax. But then in the meantime he's fucking doing it himself at at ramsay's uh restaurant chelsea it worked though because it was packed and it was it was a really good meal so it must have been weird to think you're sitting in a restaurant and every one of those people had a fax machine or access to a fax

machine what year was this in oh this would have been like 2005 i mean there were still there are still fax machines kicking around in 2005 to be fair it's almost like making it a little challenge you know for people to sort of maybe that's why nintendo still do it it's almost like just like you said to keep the riffraff out you know only only people of a certain size or only true oh geez people who are really willing to make an effort actually get into contact with them and they're the sort of people you want to work with because you don't it sort of stops all the spam emails like a lot of the time i'm reaching out for jingle jam right and a lot of people just have their contact information posted you know

publicly um and then obviously it gets spammed to death and they never reply to it but if they if they've got it like a lot of people have it hidden somehow, like either through, like, a capture, or you have to fill out, like, a web form, or they've got it, like, contact in brackets, AT, close brackets, so then I have to type the fucking thing out. Right. You know, it's like every different one that you've ever experienced. Some people, even, like, big studios,

don't have a public way for you to contact them at all. And I have to like go through some weird backdoor. I have to join their Discord. I have to send a message to a mod saying, oh, have you got a way I can contact the guy? You know, I have to like do all this like detective work for some stupid, you know, three quid platform game. You know, he won't even put it in the collection anyway. It's such a lot of like a hassle yeah um i think that's the big turnoff for me is any hassle you know like um yeah even like sometimes

like with the sponsorship or whatever if they're really like particular about something or specific i'm just like oh why did i even say yes to this you know like like if you if if you want to sponsor me for something let me stream it for like two hours when i would normally stream or whatever and just let it let me do it my way and and see what happens you know what i mean like uh i don't need to be micromanaged or do things like at some crazy hour to fit in with demographics and stuff you know what i mean like it's it's all all the extras and i'm just like oh geez just i don't even want to do it now just leave me alone you know like i know it's money but like at the same time like it's it's just a lot i did some work during the year you know what i want to ask a question for any company owners or anything out there listening

to this which would be about three people. If you invoice... Well, it's at least two already. All right, if you invoice someone and you're a company, especially the bigger the company, how quickly would you expect to be paid? Fairly quickly. Within 30 days of receipt is generally it.

Yeah. So how come I'll do work for an organization, even some fairly big ones, and it's like three or four months before i get paid one time sodie erickson didn't pay me for two years for a thing i did at minecon 2011 yeah i don't get they've got the fucking money pay i think the bigger they are the the longer it takes i don't know if they do have the money though i think sometimes it's a chain of money right so that it has to come in but it still shouldn't take that long i don't think like it's a chain of money, right? So it has to come in. But it still shouldn't take that long, I don't think.

Some people you work with have... I don't know how much I can talk about this because of NDAs, but I can insinuate. You didn't sign a non-insinuation agreement. Yeah, there's a popular thing, show going on. Oh, God, I should be careful. Anyway, imagine you were doing a brand deal where you were promoting a universe, but you couldn't promote other universes, right?

Right. So imagine you were playing, let's say, The Witcher or whatever, and you couldn't talk about any other properties. You couldn't talk about Doctor Who or Game of Thrones or anything. They were like you know you but which is kind of weird to me right because that's almost never a stipulation mostly they're like oh just have fun showing off our thing play our thing do our thing you know maybe maybe shout it out and be nice about it and don't talk shit about it you know that's like the

thing they're most concerned about is that but some people have had the most ludicrously long requirements so say for example i was playing the witcher right which are three yeah and they but this is not the case it's just an example um and they said you can't talk anything about the witcher 2 you can't talk about gerald you can't talk about siri yeah you can't compare or anything yeah you can't say anything about anything that happened in the new witch even though this one has gerald in you can't say that you know you can't talk about things that gerald did before you can't you you shouldn't really you know mention him because you know he's so by a different company and it it's so restrictive oh my god but the more restrictive it is i feel like you end up being like uh you ever see keeping

up appearances you know hyacinth's neighbor elizabeth you know she's just like on the fucking edge all the time because hyacinth is just so overbearing and particular about everything you know she's nervous she's like dropping her tea and stuff all the time yeah you i want to say right i'm pretty sure that you are the only person on this podcast that has really watched that show. Because you even know the names of the characters. I'm telling you. I honestly have no idea.

Not a word of a lie. Keeping Up Appearances, I think, is like the British Golden Girls. It's so fucking well written. It's unbelievably good. It's classic. I don't know where to even watch it. I never see it on TV or on any of watch it on iplayer they have all of the seasons on i'll go and watch them i'll go and watch it send me what you think is the best episode i i when i watch it i'm thinking to myself

who wrote this and what experiences did they have that led them to write this because the writing for uh for hyacinth in particular is incredible like it's just because she's like she's a middle she's a middle class um like aspiring posh person you know like she she thinks she's a like as posh as the queen but she lives in the suburbs right with her with her husband who works at like a fucking stapler factory as like middle management or whatever right so it was written by a guy called roy clark it's it is really good i'm like the most British name i've ever heard he did last of the summer wine for 40 years holy shit i mean there's some classic sitcoms though too like he did open all hours

as well so these are all shows that were banned in my house right open all hours was banned last of the summer you watched dad's army though so me and parents action thing about dad's army and don't say you spoiled it it's coming out it's all right it's coming out soon i don't know probably months but i afterwards i realized we didn't really talk about dad's army and actually talk about who they are and because i realized after that not everyone's gonna ever fucking heard of this show we just sort of went into it assuming that everyone knew as much as we did and and i'm a bit concerned now that people aren't gonna get it um but i might have to do some dad's armpits yeah have you heard of it i it, yeah. Do you know any of the characters?

I don't know any of the characters, no. God damn, we didn't, yeah, we missed it. We should have. It's kind of like, it's like my parents would have watched that, right? Like on TV. It is old. It's old. It is old. Yeah, it's old.

Yeah, I think I just used to watch it with my parents on TV in the evenings, like occasionally. I don't know if you're going to like keeping up appearances, F but uh but it is i'll give it a go it holds it is it is humorous at times for sure like uh it's there some episodes are better than others as well but like uh like there's this there's one episode where they go on a cruise ship and uh and hyacinth's brother-in-law this guy he's like, he's a scouser called Onslow. And he's just got like, he's fat. He's got the wife beater. You know, he looks like he works like at a car mechanics or whatever.

And she doesn't like him. She thinks he's too common, right? And so she goes, they go on this cruise ship and she's making this big deal about how she's going to have dinner with the captain. They're going to sit in like the VIP section and have dinner with the captain or whatever and then they turn up and onslow's there having dinner with the captain because he won he won like a lottery which was like a trip on this cruise ship so she's just fucking mortified the entire time like that he has just like you know jumped the queue or whatever to like you know do all these posh things that he doesn't appreciate because he's just like you know he's got like a

can of beer and he's belching and stuff and like all these other people are like you know like royal admirals and stuff like that it was going out in uk when seinfeld was going out in america yeah it's like early 90s made around that same generation Except it's obviously the British Mirror Which is instead of Rich New York apartments In the middle of the city living And written by a comedian It's a long suffering British sitcom

In a very British situation Yeah I like it a lot Well here's homework for the viewers You need to watch some Dad's Army You need to watch some Dad's Army. Yeah. You need to watch some Keeping Up Appearances. You need to play some poker and tell me if you won or lost and if you felt like it was a game of chance or a game of skill.

Yeah. You need to try and find some natural resources for the people of Scotland to utilize. And you also need to write in with any problems that you want solving because we're super good at solving problems all of that you should put some anal beads we killed it today in the problem solving sphere yeah we just solved it all you're right so if you have a problem this is the new topic for the next mailbag please send in your problems don't make them all toilet involved no No, no. And, you know, try to keep them broad. But you can go for it.

If there's some geopolitical issue that you think needs to be resolved and quickly, we'll probably be able to do it. And you don't mind an ill-informed but decisive answer, then come to us. All right. Well, I think we did it. We did a podcast. We've done it. That was great. We accomplished that at least.

Yeah, we are doing stuff. I can't stop doing stuff. Just doing stuff all the time. I'm doing stuff all day. I'm actually doing things all day. I'm going to stop. Look at this guy.

Big, big, big boy pants on. He's got a big, busy day that he's got to. I'm going to go do something else as well. All right. Bye.

All right. Bye, everyone. All right. Bye. Love you.