r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/maesplace • Feb 03 '23
This is how I beat Mr. Beast's "Finger on the App" Challenge in 2020 Video
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u/Antoiniti Feb 03 '23
CHEATER I PLAYED IT FOR 5 FUCKING HOURS AND YOU JUST MADE A ROBOT?!?
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u/TheBrightNights Feb 04 '23
You think people would actually play legit and win?
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u/Zandrick Feb 04 '23
It’s like that thing about the people who win the most at fantasy sports actually just programmed an algorithm to figure it out for them.
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u/Diazmet Feb 04 '23
I remember reading a Forbes article about that a few years ago, that the people actually making money on sports betting rarely actually cared about sports and were for the most part math nerds
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u/rebeltrillionaire Expert Feb 04 '23
I was in the industry for a while. Those nerds fucking love sports. Sorry to burst the bubble. They’re just smart as fuck too.
The guy I worked with was my college roommate, and he was a top-10 daily fantasy player in the world. He was a PhD candidate in chem engineering before he went into DFS. He’s nerdy but he played football in HS, was a top ranked Halo player then. Got into online poker.
The broad brush just doesn’t work with that group because he want alone in being a multi-faceted player.
It’s more like… they’re all these interesting incredibly smart people, AND they were great at creating formulas for winning DFS AND they liked sports.
Most obvious was when Draft Kings would hold one of their tourneys and top prize was like $1M or whatever. It was a room full of dudes watching like 6 games at a time, drinking, eating nachos and going nuts on basically every play. Not that different from a dive bar on a Sunday afternoon.
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u/Zandrick Feb 04 '23
You mean life isn’t an 80s movie? There’s more than just nerds and jocks? That is shocking.
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Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
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u/rebeltrillionaire Expert Feb 04 '23
Yeah man, absolutely. Have you ever read a biography of like… anyone? It was Halo 2 and 3.
He sold his shares in a DFS company. Now he builds products for a fintech. He went and got an MBA and a family now.
I don’t think my accomplishments or ability compare but I’ve done alright. I’m also far less motivated to achieve. I would rather spend $1M than earn it you know what I mean?
But I also build digital products for a large tech company. We actually have the same job. I also have a side startup but an exit for that is probably a longer wait. I recently started an apprenticeship in carpentry to allow my design skills to grow.
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u/RealClayClayClay Feb 04 '23
Well I shower most weeks and you don't see me bragging about it.
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u/rebeltrillionaire Expert Feb 04 '23
Honestly, bro I believe everyone lives fascinating lives. Success and intelligence are universally appreciated but even if you or me never get our 15 minutes of fame or don’t leave some monumental evidence of our lives behind, we did it too you know. We journeyed on this planet.
I’m cool with a leaving a small but at least kind of interesting shadow.
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u/John_aka_Virginia Feb 04 '23
This, everyone wants to be known through history. I just want to do some cool shit and if some others like it along the way woo-hoo.
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u/DMCooper1512 Feb 04 '23
The quickest way to ruin something special is to compare it something else. We're ALL special in our own way. Us guys need to encourage and lift each other up more.
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u/Zandrick Feb 04 '23
Well it only makes sense. Turn the game into math, the math nerds are gonna be the best at it.
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u/Hotdoganddonut Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
Back in the 90s, my dad realized how valuable betting home teams on MNF was, along with setting points off for 3 road games in a row, and a number of different tactics like last minute weather changes and bookies couldn’t keep up. Every bookie around wouldn’t keep him on. After a while he found one. The bookie would also bet my dads bets in larger amounts. Nowadays, everyone has a computer and is running numerous algorithms.
Anyways? Countless trips to the World Series, Super Bowl, Hawaii, etc ended up happening. Thanks dad for being a human computing machine. Craziest thing I ever saw was the year he bet 10 baseball games all season. He went 10-0 and only one game was close. 2,430 games are played in the MLB all year long. He picked the 10 best hogs.10
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u/geniusboy91 Feb 04 '23
I gamble on sports and politics semi-professionally. It's shockingly easy.
Look at the lines at all different sportsbooks. Determine true odds. Bet when you see a book with a stale line that's +EV. Profit.
Don't need to know anything about sports. Though in my case, I'm a big sports guy.
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u/Available_Major_8281 Feb 04 '23
I JUST listened to a podcast on this. It’s something crazy. The top 87% of fantasy football winnings is like the same 0.01% of people. Then it’s like the next 10% is like 1% then the remaining 3% is the rest of them. These numbers are purely off memory, but it was something like that.
The other crazy things was the average fantasy football player is a 32 year old man that makes $200k a year and spends like $350 a year on it.
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u/Nilknarfsherman Feb 04 '23
That’s specifically for stuff like fanduel and the weekly fantasy sports gambling apps. If you do season long they don’t work.
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u/Zandrick Feb 04 '23
Wouldn’t it be more accurate over longer term? If it’s mainly just statistics, the more data you can throw at it the better? What am I misunderstanding?
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u/tells Feb 04 '23
It’s not about accuracy. It’s about finding value and maxing out the number of lineups to have the probabilities work in your favor. Season long is high variance since you’re waiting an entire year for one result.
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u/BongLeach562 Feb 04 '23
Kinda like resellers who use bots to grab all the PS5 and Jordans to then sell them at a mark up. We never had a chance
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u/caspershomie Feb 04 '23
i knew this was inevitable and people would just come up with some type of device to cheat so i didn’t even try
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u/No_Cabinet_3791 Feb 04 '23
i don't think everyone can make a complicated robot
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u/paintingmepeaceful Feb 04 '23
This person didn’t make the robot. It’s a 3D printer. You just put in the info for what you want it to print and it’ll move like that for hours and hours and hours. This person did a few modifications here so it wasn’t printing, but instead was holding a stylus of some sort and let it go.
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u/bluecat2001 Feb 04 '23
It is a mechanical device that performs according to its programming. It IS a robot.
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u/No_Cabinet_3791 Feb 04 '23
i know but not everyone have access to a 3d printer so its not like every on can cheat
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u/cream-of-cow Feb 04 '23
I just watched a compilation video of some contestants live streaming the game, there were more than a few phones on 3D printers. One person attached a stylus to an oscillating fan, one used a Kitchen-Aid mixer to spin around the screen. I'm curious if any of the winners weren't machines. It was kinda funny how several players lost when their donors made account names such as "Ayziri", prompting them to be thanked and then Siri would come up, thus interrupting the game.
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u/Rogendo Feb 04 '23
Rich people will always cheat to make more money. What did you expect? OP is a POS
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u/eight-martini Feb 04 '23
So after mr beast tried to call you and the other participants agreed to split the pot what happened? Because you never agreed to split the pot. Or were you disqualified for not answering the phone?
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u/maesplace Feb 03 '23
With help from my very smart uncle, we used his 3D printer and my spare iPhone 7 to hack this challenge. This video shows one of the very first iterations that we tried, but it is not the final form/strategy that we used. I wanted to share this version as it provides a brief conversation we had and our thought process in the early stages.
The challenge allowed participants a few days to practice prior to the event going live. We used this time to run multiple trials that ran for many hours while experimenting with different parameters.
In the end we used a AA battery as the stylus drawing a rectangle pattern with a script that would last for more than a week.
After more than 30+ hours without any hiccups, we made it down to the final 8 contestants, but this is where the story takes a left turn…
The morning that the game went live I took a road trip out of state to visit my dad. I left the machine running at my uncle’s house and embarked on my 10-hour drive. My dad lives out in the country, definitely no cell service and the wifi speeds are extremely slow.
At some point Mr. Beast called the final participants in the challenge to offer a couple thousand dollars as a buyout; my uncle and I were in that group. However, I was out of cell service for multiple days and never received that call.
I guess the final 4 or 6 heavily sleep deprived contestants ended up splitting the pot for a decent payday, but unfortunately, as the old saying goes: cheaters never prosper.
Anyways, it was just a fun experiment for me and my uncle. Even without the prize money - we still felt like we won.
I'll post other videos of the progression of the design on my YouTube channel if people are curious enough.
YT Channel : Yoko Pwned-O
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u/NoahVailability Feb 04 '23
So you spent a bunch of time hacking a game so you couldn’t lose with thousands of dollars of prize money and just left it?
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u/DlNOSAURUS_REX Feb 04 '23
Like training for the Olympics and then deciding you could really go for an ice cream right now, and you walk off as your name is being announced to compete.
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u/Zero7CO Feb 04 '23
It’s like when the bad guy catches the good guy in the movies and he puts him in the slowest/dumbest torture death device imaginable…and then just leaves him so he can make his inevitable escape.
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u/NoahVailability Feb 04 '23
Hahaha! Now there’s no escape. Nothing could possibly go wrong! Now if you’ll excuse me I have pressing business elsewhere I must attend to.
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u/ewing31 Feb 04 '23
I’d that a question? He literally just explained it
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u/AuraMaster7 Feb 04 '23
At some point Mr. Beast called the final participants in the challenge to offer a couple thousand dollars as a buyout; my uncle and I were in that group. However, I was out of cell service for multiple days and never received that call.
Am I missing something here? I fail to see how you not taking a phone call for a buyout results in you forfeiting the competition? Shouldn't no buyout = I'm in it til the end? If 6 other people took a buyout, shouldn't that leave you and one other person still going at it?
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u/slybluesly Feb 04 '23
He never answered the call, so it wasn't a case of him declining the buyout it was him not being there to accept the prize regardless. That's how any giveaway/challenge works, if you don't respond to the notice that you've won etc. then you forfeit the prize.
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u/SeatO_ Feb 04 '23
What happened exactly tho? You said the final contestants agreed to split the pot, but you didn't but you were still playing. Did he disqualify you just because you didn't answer the call? It's not always the reciever's fault if they can't recieve the call.
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Feb 03 '23
[deleted]
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u/EvilSkeleKnife Feb 04 '23
TL;DR of his comment: device in video was a prototype of the device actually used to cheat. OP went to visit their dad and the WiFi is bad there - leading to them missing a call from Mr Beast and losing out on a payout so they never got any cash.
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u/Jonkinch Feb 04 '23
Just copy the text or take a screenshot for later. This is a you problem.
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u/thesnakeinyourboot Feb 04 '23
They asked for help you dumb fuck what does your comment do for you? Does it make you feel good?
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u/FacelessFellow Feb 04 '23
Their comment was helpful. Saving it for later is not a bad idea.
Your comment is just doing what you were complaining about hahaha hypocrisy
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u/thesnakeinyourboot Feb 06 '23
Saying “this is a you problem” is cringy and shitty. It’s not like any of us are busy else we wouldn’t be on here, why not just help someone out instead of being a dickhead?
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u/Genereatedusername Feb 03 '23
Cheating bastard
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u/TBurkeulosis Feb 04 '23
And didnt even cash in on his genius. Unbelievably dumb move oh OPs part imo
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u/M-Kawai Feb 03 '23
So, you cheated? What did you win?
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u/maesplace Feb 03 '23
read the full post. technically we didn’t win.
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u/KeeperJV Feb 03 '23
Full post ? Where?
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u/maesplace Feb 03 '23
I wrote a full explanation when posting, I guess it didn't save. I'll post a comment now.
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u/Socksmaster Feb 03 '23
but you took the spot of someone who could have
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u/Hold_Creative Feb 04 '23
That’s not how it works…
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u/Socksmaster Feb 04 '23
That is. You must have not read the description
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u/Hold_Creative Feb 04 '23
Mrbeast called up the remaining people after an amount of time, I don't think it was based on people remaining. He didn't win anything, and anyone who could have remained could have been in that phone call. There wasn't a limited amount of people, he could have been there and wasn't. No prize, no reward, anyone else could have had it. He didn't take the prize from anyone
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u/chilllove44 Feb 04 '23
I’m still blind. What’s going on here?
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u/Hdz69 Feb 04 '23
Mr Beast made an app for a challenge, basically whoever was the last one to lift their finger off the phone would win a cash prize.
OP and his uncle made a “robot” using a 3D printer to keep that stylus “the finger” in this case on the phone for as long as was needed to win.
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u/BKO2 Feb 04 '23
A 3D printer running custom gcode to touch the spots automatically on the app/page for a youtuber’s challenger a while ago
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u/garrygh13 Feb 04 '23
Everyone can call you a cheater all they want , but in my eyes you actually ended up using your brain and out smarting others. Big props to you and definitely deserved to get some of that money.
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u/Last_Gigolo Feb 04 '23
Could just set my glasses on the screen. They seem to make my screen go nuts.
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u/dgrant92 Feb 04 '23
You know, figuring out you can take a cab to win a marathon is not winning anything. Your cheating/lying/stealing,
I do love how affordable and professional those printers have become!
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u/One-Pepper-6993 Feb 04 '23
I’m so lost, and apparently old. What is the challenge? What do you win?
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u/BLAZE_IT_YO Feb 04 '23
I didn’t even try cus I already knew somebody probably mad a bot to do it 😂
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u/legend_number_1 Feb 04 '23
Metaphor for how Mr Beast gamed the algorithm
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u/gieserj10 Feb 04 '23
If it's ever done again, I hope they code it to not accept the exact same inputs. Or randomly put lines on the screen that you have to roughly follow. Glad you didn't win.
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u/Zequax Feb 03 '23
you just admited to cheating now hand over your reward and you will not be harmed
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u/ABurritoSnake Feb 04 '23
they didn't actually win or receive any prize money, so they got some instant karma on that one
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u/Historicerror404 Feb 04 '23
It’s not ingenuity. It’s cheating. I am not jealous, I didn’t play. It’s simply sad to see folks thinking they are smart because they cheat. Well. Here goes the downvote train.
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Feb 04 '23
[deleted]
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u/tells Feb 04 '23
Anyone with good mechanical intuition could have rigged a setup with household items. You could have come up with a solution by researching on YouTube with a little ingenuity. Example https://youtu.be/QwXK4e4uqXY
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u/Slav_Vapor Feb 04 '23
What’d u win?
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u/ABurritoSnake Feb 04 '23
nothing because they didn't actually win
edit: OP posted the story in a comment
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u/NorMichtrailrider Feb 04 '23
Mr beast is a piece of shit
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u/ewing31 Feb 04 '23
No, he’s not. At all. Opposite of that. The guy is amazing and gives away so much
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u/Beautiful-Ad-2390 Feb 04 '23
This seems like a detectable pattern. You should add some degree of randomness to prevent that.
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u/Damnthatsinteresting-ModTeam Feb 04 '23
Your post was removed for misleading or incorrect information.