How to get 102 MILLION Players Plus points (CARSONRAIDER1 a/k/a GAMBIT)

I am by no stretch of the imagination a top NTN Buzztime player. After participating in the game for over a decade, and after having been a registered player for several years, I've only earned about 200,000 Players Plus points. A respectable total, but not a leading total.

So I began wondering who had the highest Players Plus score on the entire NTN Buzztime network.

It turns out that the player with this honor is CARSONRAIDER1 a/k/a "GAMBIT." This player, as of March 20, has amassed a total of 102,978,000 lifetime Players Plus points.

How does one amass over 102 MILLION Players Plus points? Well, I took a look at GAMBIT's gameplay on February 25 to find out.

On that day, GAMBIT went to Big Wangs Hollywood for some lunchtime fun. A LOT of lunchtime fun.

GAMBIT arrived at Big Wangs at 12:30, just in time for a couple of Lunchtime Trivia games (5,911 and 5,298).

But GAMBIT didn't stop when lunch was over. There were a couple of 15-minute Buzztime Trivia games to play, followed by a half hour of Countdown.

All in all, GAMBIT played Buzztime games for 1 1/2 hours.

Well, that's 1 1/2 hours at Big Wangs.

You see, later in the day GAMBIT showed up at Mr Bs in Los Alamitos (GAMBIT's home location) and played trivia from 4:45 pm to 9:30 pm - an additional 4+ hours of trivia play, or nearly 6 hours' total trivia play on February 25.

Louis Gray is fond of saying that sleep is unproductive and a waste of time. I wonder how he feels about trivia.

It helps when the site staff knows the game (Out of the Park Pizza revisited)

I had a chance to return to Out of the Park Pizza in Anaheim on Monday (I was there in February and play Lunchtime Trivia. More people are apparently playing at lunch now, which is a good sign.

But the best sign (to me anyway) was that the staff was playing along. In fact, one staff member (no, not the waitress/cashier/bartender/owner I saw before) actually helped me get one of the answers right - something that contributed to my 6,597 (out of 7,000) score in my last game.

Of course, it's in the staff's interest to make sure that people perform well in the game. Not only does this help ensure that they'll come back, but it also puts their bar/restaurant higher on the leaderboard that's displayed to all the other sites. So if someone at a low-scoring facility sees that a nearby place has a high score, that person might just visit the other place next time.

Sports IQ

I finally played Sports IQ during a visit to Tequila Hoppers in Upland last night.

An interesting game, especially since one of the rounds does not feature numeric answers.

In this round, you are given a question, and then are given the answer as a series of words in which the letters are not revealed. (Think Wheel of Fortune.) You need to supply two of the letters. As time passes, some of the other letters are revealed.

So, for example, you might be asked a golf question and get an answer such as

_*_ _ _ * _ _ _ _ _

in which you have to supply the starred letters.

After a few seconds, the answer might look like this:

R * _ Y _ * I _ _ O _

In this case, you would need to enter "OC" on your Playmaker (or equivalent).

In the end, I did well in the game. And it was nice to be back at Tequila Hoppers, especially during their extended happy hour - small pizza and a 25 oz beer for a little over $10 isn't bad.