Micah, when I first played I suspected the same thing, then I looked at the numbers and they worked. Then I figured out what the top players did and I did the same thing - something not wrong or

Micah, when I first played I suspected the same thing, then I looked at the numbers and they worked. Then I figured out what the top players did and I did the same thing - something not wrong or illegal in UpDown, but illegal real life, something that I am sure we've all done on UpDown because I didn't even know it was illegal until I tried the same thing on Scottrade and a pop up warned me. That strategy, plus a good eye on stocks, plus a lot of time yielded me 15% of my portfolio in one day playing RF sometime a while ago.

Keep in mind that this year contest is numerical earnings divided by what you started with. I started with $1,000,000 in Feb and, if I recall correctly, that 15% of my portfolio turned out to be around $400,000. $400,000/$1,000,000 is 40%. I literally spent 5 hours on UpDown that day. I have since moved on to other things, but based on my performance, 10,000% is not impossible. I mean if I made 1% of my port today, it would put me up 6.91% for the year contest based on the way it is calculated.

As a side note, sometime in June or July they increased the commission on a sliding scale $100 base + 1% or something instead of $100 flat which cut into the ability for us players to earn, ergo later players have a lot harder time catching up even with the same strategy. In fact, I noticed quite a few of the top players going down the day of the switch because they weren't aware and didn't seem to be keeping a eye on their bottom line. It most definitely seemed to be UpDown's response to our strategy, but did not totally prevent it.

The only thing that *may* be wrong is that more than one of the top 10 portfolios are run by one person, but that does not affect the numbers.

Another thing to address. UpDown is glitchy and they may be a bit slow, but they do fix things. I had $105 to claim and they gave me $99.5. I complained and sent multiple emails, some ignored and some misunderstood even though I spelled things out clearly. They gave me the rest a week and a half later. Point being up until I last played in August, they have been fair, accurate, and fixed problems, albeit slow.

And if you think that I am an UpDown sock puppet, my past winnings should indicate an SEC contest where they had to verify that I was a UF student though I suppose the really paranoid would suspect that I was a UF student that worked for UpDown...

This kinda sucks. I got my 238% +/- without cheating. By just picking stocks I thought would do well and using common sense. Also, I didn't know a thing about the stock market before starting this

This kinda sucks. I got my 238% +/- without cheating. By just picking stocks I thought would do well and using common sense. Also, I didn't know a thing about the stock market before starting this game early this year. It's kinda crazy they'll let someone win the contest that admitted to cheating with technical glitches. That would have been my biggest secret if I were them. But what the hell, if they do give it to you, nobody can blame you for taking the money... thats for sure. Anybody else would have jumped on it if they had figured out whatever it is that they did... cheating or not. They are probably the webmasters of the site...LOL. Now that would be funny.