So, I was reading this comic series, Maxentius. Basically following a guy who is a animal keeper but also a 'secret agent' in the time of Justinian.
Anyway, there are some bits that I've having some real issues with.
So these scenes talking the Nika riots
Now, what is the issue here? They're roman legionaries and it's the Roman empire, right?
Except...roman legionaries didn't look like that by then.
Given that it's Justinian (admittedly a few centuries before my usual focus of study), it should be spatharioi or the Scholae Palatinae or Excubitors
'Well what should they look like then?' Not 2nd century AD Legionaries, that's for one.
Probably like this these guys
I get they're trying to do a 'no no these are ROMAN IMPERIAL GUARDS but...they don't look like that by then.
It's even weirder since later on they go and show Byzantine forces like this
So the use of lorica segmentata armoured troops for imperial guards is ...odd.
This bit is also odd.
Since counter to what it says, belisarius' fleet did stop on the way to Africa. It wasn't just a 'straight line, no breaks, no diversions, tough shit if you have no food we're still sailing on'.
Mainly since the bread incident happened when the fleet was docked at Methone and was sorted out. It then went to Zacynthus (Ionian island) before crossing over and stopping at Catania in eastern Sicily.

And the whole fleet followed the general's ship, and they put in at Perinthus, which is now called Heracleia, where five days' time was spent by the army, since at that place the general received as a present from the emperor an exceedingly great number of horses for the royal pastures, which are kept for him in the territory of Thrace. And setting sail from there, they anchored off Abydus, and it came about as they were delaying there four days on account of the lack of wind that the following event took place.

(Procopius, History of the Wars, ed. & trans. by H.B. Dewing (Loeb Classical Library; Harvard University press, 1916), p. 115 (as hosted at https://penelope.uchicago.edu/ThayeE/Roman/Texts/Procopius/Wars/3D*.html )

And upon setting out from Abydus they met with strong winds which carried them to Sigeum. And again in calm weather they proceeded more leisurely to Malea, where the calm proved of the greatest advantage to them. For since they had a great fleet and exceedingly large ships, as night came on everything was thrown into confusion by reason of their being crowded into small space, and they were brought into extreme peril. At that time both the pilots and the rest of the sailors shewed themselves skilful and efficient, for while shouting at the top of their voices and making a great noise they kept pushing the ships apart with their poles, and cleverly kept the distances between their different vessels; but if a wind had arisen, whether a following or a head wind, it seems to me that the sailors would hardly have preserved themselves and their ships. But as it was, they escaped, as I have said, and put in at Taenarum, which is now called Caenopolis. Then, pressing on from there, they touched at Methone, and found Valerian and Martinus with their men, who had reached the same place a short time before.
[...]
The bread which soldiers are destined to eat in camp must of necessity be put twice into the oven, and be cooked so carefully as to last for a very long period and not spoil in a short time, and loaves cooked in this way necessarily weigh less; and for this reason, when such bread is distributed, the soldiers generally received as their portion one‑fourth more than the usual weight. John, therefore, calculating how he might reduce the amount of firewood used and have less to pay to the bakers in wages, and also how he might not lose in the weight of the bread, brought the still uncooked dough to the public baths of Achilles, in the basement of which the fire is kept burning, and bade his men set it down there. And when it seemed to be cooked in some fashion or other, he threw it into bags, put it on the ships, and sent it off. And when the fleet arrived at Methone, the loaves disintegrated and returned again to flour, not wholesome flour, but rotten and becoming mouldy and already giving out a sort of oppressive odour. And the loaves were dispensed by measure to the soldiers by those to whom this office was assigned, and they were already making the distribution of the bread by quarts and bushels. And the soldiers, feeding upon this in the summer time in a place where the climate is very hot, became sick, and not less than five hundred of them died; and the same thing was about to happen to more, but Belisarius prevented it by ordering the bread of the country to be furnished them.
[...]
And setting out from Methone they reached the harbour of Zacynthus, where they took in enough water to last them in crossing the Adriatic Sea, and after making all their other preparations, sailed on. But since the wind they had was very gentle and languid, it was only on the sixteenth day that they came to land at a deserted place in Sicily near which Mount Aetna rises.

(Procopius, History of the Wars pp. 119-125.)
So what next?
This weirdness
For reference: No, Belisarius did not disguise his army as moors to sneak into Carthage, kill the Vandals and then turn their siege equipment against the vandal fleet.
While it's true that he disembarked further down the coast than Carthage, they didn't go straight to Carthage. They liberated several towns and cities enroute before engaging the Vandals at Ad Decimum, where they were defeated before following them up to Carthage.

And the rout, after Ammatas fell, became complete, and the Vandals, fleeing at top speed, swept back all those who were coming from Carthage to Decimum. For they were advancing in no order and not drawn up as for battle, but in companies, and small ones at that; for they were coming in bands of twenty or thirty. And seeing the Vandals under Ammatas fleeing, and thinking their pursuers were a great multitude, they turned and joined in the flight. And John and his men, killing all whom they came upon, advanced as far as the gates of Carthage. And there was so great a slaughter of Vandals in the course of the seventy stades that those who beheld it would have supposed that it was the work of an enemy twenty thousand strong.
[...]
Meantime Belisarius meeting the fugitives, bade them stop, and arrayed them all in order and rebuked them at length; then, after hearing of the death of Ammatas and the pursuit of John, and learning what he wished concerning the place and the enemy, he proceeded at full speed against Gelimer and the Vandals. But the barbarians, having already fallen into disorder and being now unprepared, did not withstand the onset of the Romans, but fled with all their might, losing many there, and the battle ended at night. Now the Vandals were in flight, not to Carthage nor to Byzacium, whence they had come, but to the plain of Boulla and the road leading into Numidia. So the men with John and the Massagetae returned to us about dusk, and after learning all that had happened and reporting what they had done, they passed the night with us in Decimum.

(Procopius, History of the Wars p. 157-169)
Bonus round:
This thing
I can't speak for the quality of the germanic runes as I don't speak nor can I read early germanic ruins but it feels like the whole 'realm from Jerusalem' is only a thing that would work in English, no?
Primary Sources

Procopius, History of the Wars, ed. & trans. by H.B. Dewing (Loeb Classical Library; Harvard University press, 1916)

Secondary Sources

Arthur E. R. Boak, A History of Rome to A.D. 565, 5th ed., (New York : Macmillan, 1965)

Breaking down the math, layman's terms

Hey everyone. There's been a lot of questions behind the math of both sides, and I want to break it down into digestible chunks so that most people can understand it. I watch Dream's content quite frequently, so it kind of broke my heart to see that math was being used incorrectly in order to confuse people.

Let me explain basic probability, and then I'll move to explain why the binomial model (used in the mods' paper) is accurate and why the stopping rule should not apply at all, as well as considering what "statistically significant" is supposed to mean.

Flipping a coin ten times, what are the chances of getting ten heads in a row? The fundamental counting rule says to multiply 1/2 ten times, or 1/2 ^ 10. This equates to 1/1024. Hard odds for sure. Most simple things in probability just takes this rule and places it in neat formulas to calculate probabilities with ease given a few variables, instead of having to calculate individual *events* and multiplying them together.

Let's dive a little bit deeper. What are the chances that if you throw a coin ten times, half of them will be heads and the other half are tails? Well, you could calculate the probability of all 5 heads (1/2 ^ 5) and all the tails (1/2 ^ 5) and multiply, right? Multiplying through would get you the same number, 1/1024. But that's not right, because that's the case of getting 10 heads in a row!

What we calculated instead was the probability of throwing exactly 5 heads in a row, and then exactly 5 tails in a row. This doesn't take into the account if we threw 5 tails in a row, then 5 heads in a row. Or if we got a head, a tail, a head, a tail, alternating sequence. Or if we got 4 heads, 5 tails, and then a head on the last flip. Or...

We can see this would take a very long time to find all the different ways to organize 5 heads and 5 tails in a group of ten. Thankfully, we do have another way to solve this. This classic case is called *combinations* and calculates the probability, ignoring the specific order of the events that come in (in this case, coin tosses).

In order to do this, we have to learn about *permutations*. Permutations are something we already covered a little bit with our first coin flipping example. The only difference between permutations and combinations is that order matters in permutations. What do I mean by that?

Permutations would ask questions asking how likely one specific scenario is out of the different ways a race with 10 people can finish in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, or the exact order of heads and tails on coin tosses (get exactly 2 heads, then 1 tail, then 1 head, then 3 tails, then 2 heads, then 1 tail). The scary looking formula is n!/(n - k)!, where *n* means the *n*umber of objects and *k* means what is being ordered. In the case of the racers, n = 10, k = 3. In the case of that exact set of coin flips, n = 10 and k = 10 as well.

Maybe you don't trust this formula. That's fine, you can look it up yourself, you can read *why* in works here, or any other site if you don't like wikipedia.

All this is doing is the counting rule in a nice formula. In the case of the racers, there's 10 ways any one of them can come in first, 9 of the remaining 9 comes in second (because someone is already first and can't be second at the same time) and 8 of the remaining 8 (because 2 people are already first and second and can't be third at the same time). This gives us 10 * 9 * 8, or 720 ways 3 racers can come in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Out of a list of boring people A thru J, the chance of B comes in 1st, F comes in 2nd, and A comes in 3rd is only 1 possible way of those 720 outcomes, giving a probability of 1/720.

I hope so far it's been making sense. Do let me know if it does not, because I can point you in the right direction for more resources, or try my best to explain it myself.

The way it works with the formula is that n! is equal to 10 * 9 * 8 * 7 * ... * 1. The ! is a shortcut of all the numbers multiplied counting down to 1, starting from n. We take this ungodly large number 10! and divide it by (10 - 3)!, or 7!. You can run it through your own calculator, but doing 10! and then dividing by 7! doesn't really show how the counting rule works. What we can see instead is that when we do this:

10 * 9 * 8 * 7 * 6 * 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1
--------------------------------------------------
7 * 6 * 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1

We can cross cancel everything from the 7 onwards, giving us just

10 * 9 * 8
-------------
1

This is exactly the same as the counting rule, because the scary formula n!/(n! - k!) was derived from the counting rule, not vice versa. Place a 1 on top of that number, and that's your chance of getting some arbitrary 3 people getting 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. 1/720. The same answer we got when using the counting rule.

Cool. So going back to our original example of combinations, we gotta figure this out without the order. What are the chances of the top 3 finishers being people BFA, in no particular order?

Thankfully, in a group of 3, things are much easier to calculate. It could be ABF. Or AFB. Or BAF. Or BFA. Or FBA. Or FAB. Six ways.

Kinda hard to do with 5 heads in 10 tails to count everything out though, right? There's a shortcut.

We can organize these top three runners in their own little group. How many ways can we get 1st 2nd and 3rd in a group of 3? Using the counting principle, there's only 3 options for 1st place, 2 options for 2nd place, and only 1 for 3rd place. 3 * 2 * 1. 6 ways to organize a team of 3. So out of the 720 ways, there are 6 ways to organize a group of three, giving us the number 6/720, or 1/120.

That was a mouthful. Thankfully, there's another function for combinations, which is n! / (k! * (n - k)!). Don't take my word for it, you can find it here or any other site if you don't like wikipedia. N is again the number of objects/events, k is again the number of things being sorted. If you are really astute, you can see that combinations formula is only an additional k! in the denominator of the fraction. In the case of the racers, it was that 3! for organizing 3 people teams. The formula bakes up to get us 120, and so the chances of people BFA being chosen in A thru J would be only 1 out of 120 ways. The same exact answer we derived from using permutations only. 1/120. This is not a coincidence, again, but a formula to save time.

Let's go back to the coins example of 5 heads and 5 tails in 10 coin flips. Well, you'd get 10! / (5! * (10 - 5)!). Plugging this into a calculator gets us the cool value of 252. Well, that's the number of ways to organize 5 heads and 5 tails in all the possible orders. We still have 1024 ways to get coin flips. To calculate probability, we just put the number of wanted events over the number of all events, which gets us 252/1024. You can search up the answer yourself if you don't believe me. Run through a calculator.

That's combinations. Let's jump into the binomial theorem.

Geosquare's video does a wonderful job explaining *when* to use the binomial theorem, and in the case of blaze rods and ender drop barters, it's quite accurate. The binomial theorem is used to answer questions like "out of some number of trials, what are the chances that we got some number of successes?" In the case of our coin flips, it's 5 heads out of 10 coin flips. In the case of piglin barters, it's Dream's 42 successful ender pearl trades out of 262 barters. Cool.

The formula already given by Geosquare is already out there, but it's nCx * p ^ x * q ^ (1 - x). Reddit formatting fails me here, but I can explain it. nCx is just a shorthand way of writing the combinations equation, with N attempts and X successes (10 flips, 5 heads). P is the probability of a success (1/2 chance of heads) and Q is the probability of a fail (otherwise known as 1 - P, or 1 - 1/2, or 1/2, or the chance of a tails). For our 10 coin flips example, we have all the information we need to plug in everything we need. You can follow along with any calculator, or check wikipedia or any other site for the math.

We get the same answer, in case you were too lazy. 252/1024 if you kept the number as a fraction, or about .246 if you didn't. This binomial equation was created stemming from the very same counting principle we started this entire crash course with. We just organized the 5 heads and 5 tails in 10C5 ways. I hope you're still with me, because we're at the final stretch.

Let's move on to dream's ender pearl trades. The known rate of a success is 4.73%, or .0473, the number of successes is 42, the total number of trials is 262. All of these are numbers from the 6 streams that happened after Dream's short speedrunning hiatus, or rates from the Minecraft wiki.

Try it yourself using a website that does it for you, like this first search result or anything else you can scrounge from the internet. If you have a graphing calculator, there's probably a built-in formula that does it for you. If not, you can still do it with the combinations formula, and the simple exponents.

The number is low. Very low. So low that the site I linked cannot find the significant digits. So low that the second search result gets a number of 0. This is not a mistake. The mod team has received this number in their own calculations.

But to be fair, we shouldn't be calculating the odds of getting *exactly* 42. We should be calculating the odds of getting 42 *or more* trades, since we're looking for the odds of getting Dream's luck or better. Doing this the long way is simple enough, if not tedious. We calculate the odds of getting 42 successes, then add it with the odds of getting 43 successes, and then 44... all the way up to 262 out of 262. Thankfully, there's another formula to do it for us. It's called Cumulative probability, and it does nothing but add up binomial theorems over and over again until a given value. If you have a graphing calculator, then it should be an option next to binomial probability. Otherwise, you can search up a site that does it for you like this.

The cumulative theorem starts at 0 and add binomial formulas until a given stop point. So in order to calculate the odds of getting Dream's luck or better, we just subtract 1 by the cumulative formula, since the odds of 100% minus the odds of getting 0 to 41 successes should get us 42 to 262 successes. All I'm doing is finding the *opposite* chance of something since it's easier to calculate. For example, for calculating odds of finding 1 or more heads out of 10 coin flips, it's easier to find the probability of getting 0 heads, and then subtracting with 1; rather than finding the chance of exactly 1 head, then exactly 2 heads, etc.

The number is still very grim. For reference, in AP stats we consider anything lower than a .05 chance to be statistically significant, although this is a random number. Other fields may field a different *p* value, as it is called.

Dream's chances for pearls alone are .00000000000565, a number which borders on completely improbable. My math is done via this Wolfram Alpha widget. Plug in X > 41, n as 262, and p as .0473. This number is incomparable to most real life scenarios, as most people have memed about. Could it happen? I suppose it could. The thing is with numbers of this scale, we can only conclude that either

congratulations, the odds have been beaten to an incomparable degree or

there was another factor that had been introduced that wasn't previously calculated, or any of these plugged in values were wrong. It's a simple matter to check all of the values via his streams and the value in the Minecraft wiki, with zero margins for error, so the values can't possibly be wrong. The only explanation is that something went wrong in this system because the probability of Dream's droprates is very significantly low. Either the Java random generator bugged out (unlikely, see Geosquare's video why this is not possible) or the drop rates had been changed.

Do zombie baby villagers with enchanted diamond armor and an iron sword on a chicken exist? Sure, by some fraction of some decimal with 34 trailing zeroes. The problem is that this sample size is large. 262 trials make this number incredibly difficult to replicate. For reference, getting 8 straight ender pearl trades is easier than Dream's odds. More samples make this number difficult to believe.

So that's the math. Now I'll explain why a "stopping rule" is not a valid way to throw out the binomial model. Thanks for reading if you got this far. I only want to get the numbers straight. I'm not informed on jar files, code editing, or anything else. Do comment if you have any questions or concerns about the numbers, I'd be happy to explain it.

—

The "stopping rule" is valid in cases where in any given trial, you "stop" on a success. This leads to the average trial having more "successes" than failures. This is best explained by, again, heads and tails. You succeed on a day when you flip heads, but you keep flipping on tails until you get heads.

Some days you'll get just one head. Great! But that would mean that you'd have runs where you get 100% heads, no? And that's not very accurate to the coin's 50-50 rates.

This is *supposed* to skew the data against Dream, because it unfavorably makes the odds worse for him, because there are "less trials" because the speedrunner stops trading after receiving their final success. The problem with this "stopping rule" is that it doesn't change the base chance of success. If you run this heads and tails simulation, you aren't going to magically have a more than 50% of head drops because you stopped on heads. The coin is still 50-50. You run the heads-stop, tails-keep going game for a month, and you'll see that about half of flips are still heads.

In the streams, piglin barters don't stop. Perhaps gold is not further traded for that particular run, but the ender pearl rate is still .0473. New runs are made regardless. On a personal best record, maybe on a run with 3 pearl drops out of 10 gold is earned, and Dream shuts off a stream after a good run. That doesn't change the fact that there are more streams to continue and the ender pearl drop rate is unchanged and will continue to be .0473. In the case of the last stream, unless he got ungodly luck on only the last run of the last stream would this "stopping rule" be implemented. And only then would the stopping rule apply. But this luck was consistent across all 6 streams.

Saying that the stopping rule is relevant is like saying that in our heads-stop tails-keep going example, the probabilities should be adjusted. Sure, maybe if we're looking at a single run *only*, where we could flip a single heads and call it a day. The rate of heads isn't 100%, after all. But when we look across literally *all* of the streams after his hiatus, stopping rule is being used inappropriately to change the data.

The six streams in question were all watched and tabulated after Dream's short hiatus. There was no specific stream the moderators picked and chose, but simply all of them. The added streams should not have been calculated in the result because you're changing the sample. Introducing new data in light of the improbable is misleading.

Even then, the stopping rule and added data went so far to decreasing the 11 leading zeros to... 7 leading zeros. For reference, statistically significant is still .05. 1 in 10 million odds is still unquestionably difficult. Someone has calculated already how many alternate universes it would take for every man, woman, and child playing a stream's worth of runs a day since Minecraft came out to attain his luck.

As for Dream's point that statistics are biased...

Yes, they're inherently biased. But most of this comes from data sampling. It's incredibly time and resource consuming to literally survey *everyone* in the world to see how much they like the newest brand of Coke. Or how much they like their current salary. Or how much pizza they eat on any given week. If someone isn't careful in how they pick and choose to study a small group in order to get a good survey explaining everyone, then this leads to skewed statistics.

We're not working with biased data sampling here. We have the time and resources to manually go through his streams and find the exact numbers. Statistics works based off the fact that we *don't* have easy numbers to just plug into equations. We *don't* know the percentage of the entire world who likes the newest brand of Coke. Or their salary. Or their pizza consumption. So we have to figure that out using the formulas at our disposal to find them, given unbiased sampling of the entire population.

This level of math is a practice problem in an AP Statistics class. It does not require college or university. We've been spoon-fed all the data nice and neat and all we have to do is plug in the information. There is no bias in math. Nobody can claim the numbers are wrong because of calculations, as Dream has mentioned multiple times. They are wrong because of how the data was taken. And as far as I know, everyone is on the same page with the same values given the streams and datamined values.

Now I'm incredibly disappointed, first and foremost. There are skeletons in everyone's closet. I have my own, and so do many. But please don't try to the basis of all facts by obfuscating the math. What happens when people use it to their own advantage, and there's no trust remaining in them? People lose faith in them, and go off uninformed opinions.

Maybe you don't agree with this side comment about the stopping rule and the added streams. That's fine. I just implore you all to do the math, and understand that there are some things which shouldn't be lied about, like math and facts which everything else relies on.

Edit: fixed links, cleared up some ambiguous syntax.

9/11 Truth Megapost Redux

This thread was originally posted 3 and a half years ago and has since been deleted by the author. I believe it deserves a second go: https://np.reddit.com/conspiracy/comments/6j16ei/911_truth_megapost/
I've been looking into 9/11 for a few months now and I decided to throw together some of my most compelling information and links and share. Please share your thoughts and any additional info.

World Trade Center - Flights 11 and 175

WTC 7

World Trade Center Building 7 was a 47-storey, fireproofed, steel-frame building completed in 1987. On 9/11 2001, it was hit by debris from the North Tower WTC 1 collapse at 10:28 AM. The official government narrative claims that this debris ignited fires that burned for several hours and weakened WTC 7 until it collapsed at 5:20 PM. This narrative has been doubted by skeptics who have studied the collapse -- notably the 2,800+ Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911). Noting the sudden initiation of the collapse, the complete destruction of the building, the lack of structural resistance, freefall speed, and symmetrical fall into its own footprint, AE911 insists WTC 7 was brought down via controlled demolition.

Government's Inaccurate WTC 7 Collapse "Simulation"

The 2004 9/11 Commission Report did not mention WTC 7. After complaints from architects and engineers about this anomalous collapse being swept under the rug, the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began a formal WTC 7 study, initially attempting to blame internal diesel tank fires and denying freefall collapse speed. However, with AE911 Truth pointing out calculations of freefall speeds from video, and that diesel fires could be ruled out by lack of smoke, NIST was forced to concede on both of these points before their final 2008 WTC 7 report.
Still, NIST officially claimed that WTC 7 collapsed "primarily from normal office fires." By ignoring sheer studs and other structural components of this modern steel-frame building, NIST concluded that the failure of column #79 somehow initiated a sudden universal "progressive collapse."
Here is NIST's computer model of the initiation of collapse alongside video of the actual collapse. Does it match?
Video: https://youtu.be/pmdcMb5D9gM
AE911 Truth asked to see the data behind this simulation to understand how NIST reached their conclusions. Their request was denied because it might "jeopardize public safety."
NIST Letters Denying Requested Info:
https://cryptome.org/nist070709.pdf
https://cryptome.org/wtc-nist-wtc7-no.pdf

Larry "Pull it" Silverstein

Owner of the WTC buildings Larry Silverstein says that he decided loss of life in WTC 7 was so heavy that he should just "pull it." Whatever that means!
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p34XrI2Fm6I
Silverstein built and owned WTC 7 since 1985, and acquired the WTC towers in July 2001. After 9/11, he fought in court for a double insurance payment, claiming there were two terrorist "occurrences." He didn't win the $7.1 billion double payment he was hoping for, but he was awarded for 1 & 1/3: a payout of $4.55 billion.
Other interesting statements by Silverstein:

his wife thankfully reminded him of his dermatology appointment on 9/11 and insisted he go, making him skip his customary breakfast at the top of WTC 1 that morning: https://youtu.be/9ScGZCqEyGM
Regarding the new replacement building for WTC 7, "the first design meeting was in April of 2000." ... 17 months before it was destroyed?: https://youtu.be/j-_WYHwUtcI?t=28

What Was In WTC 7?

WTC 7 consisted exclusively of government agencies and financial institutions, including the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management, as well as Secret Service and CIA offices.
http://www.wtc7.net/background.html

Previous High-Rise Fires

Before and since 9/11, no steel-framed high-rise buildings have ever collapsed from office fires. We are told that on that day, three did: WTC towers 1, 2, and building 7.
Past examples:
1991, Philadelphia, PA – One Meridian Plaza burned for 18 hours, gutting 8 of 38 floors. A FEMA report said "beams and girders sagged and twisted," but "continued to support their loads without obvious damage."
2004, Caracas, Venezuela – Parque Central building burned for 17 hours, gutting 20 of 50 floors. It did not collapse.
A segment on previous high-rise fires: https://youtu.be/l0Q5eZhCPuc?t=746
A 9 minute video, Steel Buildings Don't Collapse From Fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnnjIzamnJo
Of course, WTC 7 was hit by debris, which did some damage. Also, WTC 1 and 2 were hit by airplanes, but they withstood those impacts well, like they were designed to.

1993 Seattle Times Article, "Twin Towers Engineered to Withstand Jet Collision”

John Skilling, WTC head structural engineer:

Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A lot of people would be killed… The building structure would still be there.

Full article: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930227&slug=1687698

January 2001 Interview with WTC Construction Manager

WTC Construction Manager Frank DeMartini:

The building was designed to have a fully loaded 707 crash into it. That was the largest plane at the time. I believe that the building probably could sustain multiple impacts of jetliners because this structure is like the mosquito netting on your screen door—this intense grid—and the jet plane is just a pencil puncturing that screen netting. It really does nothing to the screen netting.

Video of interview: https://youtu.be/1pvEge5HPJU
Note: The Boeing 707 and 767 aren't "apples and oranges", see the stats compared here: http://www1.ae911truth.org/faqs/655-faq-9-were-the-twin-towers-designed-to-survive-the-impact-of-the-airplanes.html
Frank DeMartini died in the towers on 9/11.

Aman Zafar Photoset

Aman Zafar took hi-res photos on 9/11 from a distance across the Hudson River -- some of the best photographic evidence from that day. They show pretty clearly how undamaged the lower 90ish and 75ish floors of the towers were. Were these massive marvels of modern architecture really so fragile that one to two hours of fires fuelled by office furnishings and jet fuel (essentially kerosene) in the top floors was enough to suddenly reduce thousands of tons of structural steel and concrete into clouds of dust and a pile of debris barely taller than the lobby?
Note the upward and outward ejections of debris. Could fire and gravity do that?
Photoset: http://www.amanzafar.com/WTC/

Fire and Steel Temperature

Even if we're generous and claim the fires burned as hot as 1500°F (which is unlikely -- though NIST claims 1800°F), they would have to heat thousands of tons of structural steel beams to at least 1000°F for significant weakening. These beams would be fireproofed and would meet building codes created to protect against fires. Is it plausible that fires could do this to the buildings in just 56 minutes in the case of WTC 2 and 1 hour and 42 minutes for WTC 1?

Fire Department Tapes

The tapes of FDNY comms show firefighters ascending the stairwell of the South Tower WTC 2 and dealing with "two isolated pockets of fires" at the 78th floor. They are convinced they "should be able to knock it down with two lines." The firefighters have no concern about collapse, even to the last minute. This doesn't sound like they are discussing a building with 1000°F raging fires burning so intensely throughout that they could have heated the beams on every floor -- in an under an hour -- to weaken them enough to initiate an immediate total collapse with negligible structural resistance.
FDNY Tapes: https://youtu.be/VGzMnmWYec0

David Chandler Analyses North Tower Explosions

Some of the clearest footage of explosives at WTC 1.
Video: https://youtu.be/nUDoGuLpirc

South Tower Collapse Compilation

A compilation of WTC 2 collapse footage where the use of controlled demolitions is apparent.
Video: https://youtu.be/qhyu-fZ2nRA

Raw 9/11 Footage from Hotel Window

This footage from a hotel window across from the WTC towers shows a close-up view of the lower floors, demonstrating how undamaged they were. Note: Some graphic images of jumpers, bodies.
Video: https://youtu.be/kZi4o2OBLEI
Some points of interest:
@14:40 - "can hear more explosions!"
@19:15 - News in background is unsure of what has hit the Pentagon
@19:40 - Sparks emitting from corner of tower

Eyewitness Accounts of Explosions

A compilation of eyewitness accounts of explosions at the WTC.
Video: https://youtu.be/TY5pg2n95ko?t=4580

Barry Jennings - Witness From Inside WTC 7

Barry Jennings witnessed explosions inside WTC 7 that left him trapped in the stairwell. His testimony contradicts the official NIST report that there were "no witness reports" of explosions. NIST's draft WTC 7 report was released 2 days after Jennings passed away in unclear circumstances 2008.
Video: http://dai.ly/x26mumq?start=4919

WTC 7 Collapse Foreknowledge

Firefighter Foreknowledge

At least 60 firefighters demonstrated foreknowledge of the collapse of WTC 7 at 5:20PM. More than half of them spoke in certain terms (i.e. “is coming down” vs “might”). Considering no steel high-rise building in history had ever collapsed from fires (except the Twin Towers that morning), how were they so certain that this modern, 1987, 47-story, fireproofed steel-frame building would collapse? It seems they may have been told by somebody.
Graeme MacQueen has looked into this a bit:
(9 pgs) Article: http://www.journalof911studies.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2008MacQueenSeven.pdf
Discussion of this at the 2011 Toronto Hearings: https://youtu.be/xqqelDq4P48?t=3630
With ReThink911: https://youtu.be/rNJ6WYFwR-o

News Foreknowledge

Jane Standley of BBC reported on the collapse of WTC 7 (AKA the Soloman Brother's Building) at 4:54 PM -- 26 minutes BEFORE it collapsed. The building is visibly standing behind her as she reports it has collapsed. BBC "loses connection" with her mid-conversation. BBC's official explanation for this was that they received an erroneous report from Reuters on a confusing day.
Video Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltP2t9nq9fI
Later, BBC contacts Standley again for a report. She describes the situation but when they bring up WTC 7 (@ 2:12), the audio cuts out. Coincidence?
Video Clip: https://youtu.be/gsqAHhTWEH0?t=40
CNN Report the collapse 67 minutes early:
Video Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWK8IwJH0w
ABC News:

another building in the World Trade Center Complex, which was not struck by an airplane, is in danger of collapsing...

Video Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaNHuwGAG1I
NBC News, reporting upcoming collapse 26 minutes early:
Video Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDkUZo2QVLE
CNN shows emergency workers at WTC7:

"Keep your eye on that building, that thing's comin' down!"
"The whole thing is about to blow up. Move it back!"

Video Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU_43SwWD9A
Fox 5 Reports Collapse < 1 min early. After reporting it collapsed, they cut to a live feed, and it comes down live on screen:
Video Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDDZANw9isI
Not foreknowledge, but an interesting observation from Dan Rather at CBS:

For the third time today. Its reminiscent of those pictures we've all seen too much on television before when a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite.

Video Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koUl7arMncs

PNAC Describes Benefits of "a New Pearl Harbor" in 2000

The Project for the New American Century, a neo-conservative think-tank that included many Bush Administration members such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, wrote a report in September 2000, a year before 9/11, called Rebuilding America's Defenses. It outlined a plan of massive military expansion, with a goal of ultimately fighting and winning "multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars" to consolidate US global hegemony.
They stated that their ambitious

process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor.

Full text (see page 51 for quote): http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

Zelikow Describes How US Gov Could Exploit a Major WTC Attack in 1998

Philip Zelikow was a member of George HW Bush's National Security Council during Desert Storm, co-author of a book with Condoleezza Rice in the mid-90s, and would go on to be part of George W Bush's transition team, as well as the author of National Security Strategy 2002 AKA the "Bush Doctrine" of pre-emptive warfare. Despite these conflicts of interest, he would become the executive director of the "independent" 9/11 Commission.
In 1998 -- nearly three years before 9/11 -- with Defense Department bigwig Ash Carter and former CIA Director John Deutch -- Zelikow co-authored a paper in Foreign Affairs entitled "Catastrophic Terrorism":

If the device that exploded in 1993 under the World Trade Center had been nuclear, or had effectively dispersed a deadly pathogen, the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America's fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, this event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures, scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either further terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently.

Full Text: http://web.mit.edu/~Chemistry/deutch/policy/1998-CatastrophicTerrorism.pdf

Emergency Crew Arrived in NYC For Terror Drill Day Before 9/11

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was holding a terror drill set for 09/12. Personnel arrived in NYC on 09/10.
FEMA Member Tom Kenney on CBS:

To be honest with you we arrived on late Monday night [Sept 10th] and went into action on Tuesday morning..."

Video: https://youtu.be/5EVIfwYKbM8
Mayor Rudy Giuliani:

The reason Pier 92 was chosen as the command center is because on the next day, on September 12th, Pier 92 was going to have a drill. It had hundreds of people here from FEMA, from the federal government, from the state, from the state emergency management office, and they were getting ready for a drill for a bio-chemical attack... The equipment was already there, so we were able to establish a command center there, within 3 days, that was 2 1/2 to 3 times bigger than the command center that we had lost at 7 World Trade Center.

Video: https://youtu.be/vmPwwd1NdiU

Drills Simulating Hijacked Planes Confuse Air Traffic Control

War games diverted much of the Northeast US air defense to Alaska, while other war games simulating hijacked airplanes flying into buildings confused radar operators on 9/11.
Video: http://dai.ly/x26mumq?start=1422

The Lone Gunmen Pilot

In March 2001, 6 months before 9/11, the pilot episode of the X-Files spin-off series The Lone Gunmen aired. The premise: the heroes unravel a government conspiracy to fly a commercial airliner into the World Trade Center to increase arms sales.
Just an odd coincidence? Make of it what you will.
9/11-relevant highlights from episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIdhoc0PRr8

WTC 7 Evaluation

Structural engineer Dr. Leroy Hulsey and his students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks are in the midst of conclusively debunking the bogus official claims of the NIST report with their two-year WTC 7 Evaluation. Using a sophisticated computer model of WTC 7, down to each beam and rivet, they have concluded that "normal office fires" could not have caused the collapse that occurred. Their report will be released August 2017.
WTC 7 Evaluation Website: http://www.wtc7evaluation.org/
WTC 7 Evaluation Intro Video: https://youtu.be/C-VNjYXU-CE

Pentagon - Flight 77

Official Story

The official story tells us American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked at 8:51 (5 minutes after the first WTC strike) and, piloted by terrorist Hani Hanjour, flew without being intercepted for 45 minutes. Over the Pentagon, it pulled a high-speed 330-degree turn before knocking over five light poles, accelerating to 853 km/h, skimming above the Pentagon lawn to strike into the first floor of the building at 09:37. 64 died on the plane, 125 in the Pentagon.

Hani Hanjour's Flying Skills

Pilots say this would be an extremely difficult manoeuvre and would be nearly impossible for an inexperienced pilot like alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour, whose flight instructors said he could barely handle a Cessna weeks earlier in August.
US Navy Top Gun and 27-year commercial pilot Ralph Kolstad has studied the official flight path and says,

I have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757s and 767s and I could not have flown it the way the flight path was described... Something stinks to high heaven!

Newspaper articles quote Hanjour's flight instructors saying he "could not fly at all" and was "a terrible pilot." In the summer of 2001, a New Jersey flight instructor "declined a second request" to take the alleged would-be hijacker in on a small-plane flight "because of what he considered Hanjour's poor piloting skills."
(Quotes from David Ray Griffin's book, The New Pearl Harbor: Revisited)

Pentagon "Plane Crash" Surveillance Video

Although the Pentagon was arguably the most secure building in the world, this is the only publicly available footage of the alleged crash of Flight 77, released almost five years after the incident in May 2006. (A second camera right next to this one captured nearly identical footage that was also released). This footage does not prove that a plane hit the building.
Video: https://youtu.be/zac9vt3a4Ug

Unmarked Lawn

Considering the supposed rapid descent to ground level and the low first-floor impact site, it is odd that the plane didn't leave any marks on the Pentagon lawn.
Pictures of lawn:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Pentagon.Nach_Einsturz.Rasen.jpg
http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/pentagon/images/8.jpg
http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/pentagon/images/5.jpg

Cable Spools

Some have suggested these cable spools -- unhit by the plane -- were directly in the flight path.
Photos:
http://i.imgur.com/ShDuD.jpg
http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/pentagon/images/6.jpg

Lack of Plane Debris

CNN Reporter on 9/11:

from my close-up inspection, there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon... The only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you could pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage, nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon...

Video: https://youtu.be/7BNqgNvUhRQ
Interview with April Gallop – A Pentagon employee who experienced the blast and crawled out of the blast hole to the lawn. Gallop says she

didn't see any evidence of metal, airplane seats, no luggage. Nothing that would give me any indication that it was a plane that had hit the building... There was nothing on the inside that would give me any indication that there was a plane.

Video: https://youtu.be/EIy9hjB3DGk
Interview with and exclusive footage by freelance cameraman Bob Pugh, who was at the Pentagon minutes after the explosion. @06:20 -

I'm looking for wreckage, and I don't see anything discernible. I can't find a piece of anything that I recognize. I can't see the tail, I can't see the wheels, I can't see the engines, there's no chairs, there's no luggage, there's no logo...

Video: https://youtu.be/-xtEJ4zrIPM

Gas Station Security Camera Footage Confiscated by FBI

December 11, 2001 National Geographic Article, "Three Months On Tension Lingers Near the Pentagon": A CITGO gas station employee who worked on 9/11 says the gas station's security cameras were close enough to the Pentagon to have recorded the moment of impact:

I've never seen what the pictures looked like... The FBI was here within minutes and took the film.

Richmond Times-Dispatch Article, 11 Dec 2001: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1211_wirepentagon.html
For reference, here is the unobstructed view of the Pentagon from CITGO Gas Station: http://www.rense.com/general63/unob.htm

C-Ring "Punch-Out" Hole

Alternately described in official government accounts as being created by the nose of the plane or the landing gear, this large round hole was located on the inside of the Pentagon's C-ring, several layers inward from the outer wall. Is this plausible? What really caused this?
Aerial view showing location of hole: http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/aa73fce2-9d8c-489b-97be-c31b2b61d4a7.jpg
Photos of hole:
http://www.rense.com/general63/Grandpunchoutcut.jpg
http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/pentagon/images/16.jpg

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta's Testimony

Dick Cheney's Timeline

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta testified to the 9/11 Commission about his experience in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) bunker under the White House on 9/11.
Mineta said he arrived in the PEOC bunker at 9:20, and Vice President Cheney was already there at that time.
The 9/11 Commission Report ignored Mineta's testimony and wrote that Cheney arrived 38 minutes later at 9:58 (and thus AFTER the Pentagon attack). Multiple others have also made statements suggesting Cheney was in the bunker earlier.

Stand-Down Order?

Most importantly, Mineta mentions

a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, 'the plane is 50 miles out'... 'the plane is 30 miles out'... When it got down to 'the plane is 10 miles out,' the young man also said to the Vice President, 'do the orders still stand?' And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, 'of course the orders still stand! Have you heard anything to the contrary?'

Video: https://youtu.be/qjR0gGXV-04
Were they talking about a stand-down order telling the fighters or anti-air not to engage?
At the very least, while the 9/11 Commission Report attempts to paint a false narrative suggesting US leadership was unaware, confused, and unable to make decisions in time that morning, the facts seem to suggest they had a lot more knowledge and control than is admitted.

Video Removed From 9/11 Commission Website

Video of Mineta's testimony was originally available on the 9/11 Commission website, but it was removed. When questioned about this the National Archive said it must have been lost in a "snafu." It has since been recovered and is now widely available on the internet.

Wedge 1 an Unlikely Strike Location

Why would the terrorists strike Wedge 1 of the Pentagon? The section directly opposite would have been a much richer target and easier to approach. It was public knowledge that the Defense Secretary's office and the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and those of other top-ranking officers, were located on the opposite side of the explosion zone.
Instead, Wedge 1 had obstacles on its approach (a raised street with signs, light posts, the Pentagon control tower), and was, according to the LA Times:

a portion of the building that had already been renovated. It was the only area of the Pentagon with a sprinkler system, and it had been reconstructed with a web of steel columns and bars to withstand bomb blasts. The steel reinforcement, bolted together to form a continuous structure through all of the Pentagon's five floors, kept that section of the building from collapsing for 30 minutes--enough time for hundreds of people to crawl out to safety.
The area struck by the plane also had blast-resistant windows--2 inches thick and 2,500 pounds each--that stayed intact during the crash and fire. It had fire doors that opened automatically and newly built exits that allowed people to get out... While perhaps 4,500 people normally would have been working in the hardest-hit areas, because of the renovation work only about 800 were there Tuesday, officials said.

LA Times, 16 September 2001: http://articles.latimes.com/2001/sep/16/news/mn-46435
Is this the spot terrorists would have chosen to strike?

Citizen Investigation Team's (CIT) Study

With a series of straightforward interviews with 13 independent eyewitnesses of the low-flying plane at the Pentagon on 9/11, who are certain about what they saw, Citizen Investigation Team demonstrates that the government's oft-repeated official story of a southern Flight 77 approach was impossible. All 13 witnesses -- including two police officers -- are sure the plane flew directly over the Navy Annex and North of the CITGO gas station. This suggests the official flight path is false, and the knocked over light poles on the bridge south of the Pentagon and the path of internal damage were staged.
Images of CIT Witness Flightpaths vs. Official Story:
http://www.citizeninvestigationteam.com/pics/closest-north-path-still-misses-poles.jpg
http://www.citizeninvestigationteam.com/pics/north-south-citgo.jpg
In the section from 59:40 to 01:13:30 in the video "National Security Alert" below, CIT interviews a cab driver, Lloyde England, whose cab was supposedly hit by a light pole knocked over by Flight 77 during its approach along the official-story southern flight path. Featured on the news, his cab windshield was smashed but his hood was oddly undamaged considering the forces at play. After persistent questioning by CIT, England eventually admits his role in a conspiracy to stage the incident:

This is too big for me, man. This is a big thing... I'm not supposed to be involved in this. This is for other people. People who have money... It was planned.

Hi-res photo of Lloyde England's cab at Pentagon: http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/pentagon/images/1-1.jpg
A news segment on Lloyde England, from the beginning to 01:28. (The remainder of this video identical to the end part of the longer doc below. I recommend watching it there with more context): https://youtu.be/iAL9gJMSX6M
(1 hr 21 mins) CIT Documentary - National Security Alert - the 9/11 Pentagon Event: https://youtu.be/_HlUmmPBoLg

Shanksville, PA - Flight 93

Barren Crash Site

Many witnesses remarked on the lack of debris at the Shanksville crash site. Like the Pentagon, there were no bodies, no identifiable pieces of fuselage, wing, or tail section, no luggage, or seats visible at Shanksville. News mentions a second crash site, 6 miles away, adding to the confusion.
Video: http://dai.ly/x26mumq?start=3981

Flight 93 Shot Down?

Witness John Fleegle mentions he saw the lights flicker, then heard engines roar, heard a large boom and saw a "big ball of fire" in the air.
He saw a plane flying away that might have been a fighter, but it was flying into the sun and difficult to see.
Later he told his story to a retired Air Force member who suggested:

that plane was shot down... they zap the radar frequency on everything before they shoot. That's why your lights flickered."

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWcdSyyppHI
Furthermore, while the 9/11 Commission Report claims that shootdown authorization was not received until 10:25 -- well after the crash of Flight 93 at 10:03 - 10:06 -- other accounts dispute this.
National Coordinator for Security and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke wrote that shoot-down authorization was received between 9:45 and 9:50, and a CNN report that aired before the Commission Report was released suggested a similar timeline.
(The official story is that the passengers, inspired by passenger Todd Beamer's phrase "let's roll", stormed the cockpit and attempted to reclaim the aircraft before the hijackers drove it into the ground.)

Debris Photos

There are some pictures of supposed Flight 93 debris that were released during the 2006 trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. They don't look very convincing of a plane crash either.
Photos: https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery.htm?id=C7A45234-155D-451F-67A019C294E6A905
A lot of the 9/11 evidence released during the 2006 Moussaoui trial is sketchy, nonsensical, or contradictory to previously touted official storylines.

9/11 Commission

Commission Delayed

Historically, when major disasters have occurred, governments have quickly created independent commissions to investigate.
Number of days before an investigative commission was formed:
Titanic – 6
Pearl Harbor – 9
JFK Assassination – 7
Challenger disaster – 7
9/11 – 411

Barry Zwicker's Criticism

Media Critic Barry Zwicker, author of Towers of Deception, on the 9/11 Commission:

the term 'whitewash' doesn't do justice to the report of the 9/11 Commission. 'Omission-riddled inventive cover-up,' maybe.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkUWErM1E-o&t=1973s

Executive Director Philip Zelikow

The widows of 9/11 victims complained publicly after the Bush administration appointed Henry Kissinger as the 9/11 Commission Director. Kissinger was replaced with Philip Zelikow, a man with many conflicts of interest. This video explains Zelikow's deep connections to Bush and how he was a key member of the 9/11 cover-up.
Video, Corbett Report, 9/11 Suspects: Philip Zelikow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1VtozvvG4c

Chairman Thomas Kean Statement

9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean:

we think that in many ways the Commission was set up to fail.

https://youtu.be/YCbl7_yWryo?t=118

Miscellaneous

$2.3 Trillion in Pentagon Spending Unaccounted For Day Before 9/11

On September 10th, Donald Rumsfeld pointed out that $2.3 trillion in Pentagon spending was unaccounted for. He spoke of the need for change to a wasteful bureaucracy. But things changed the following morning:
Video: https://youtu.be/H_p92dECEpQ?t=10

Israeli Spies

A very interesting four-part Fox investigative series on Israeli spies in America and possible links to 9/11. Concerns that US intelligence wiretapping was compromised by Israel.
Video: https://youtu.be/LbkQddEDPs0

Insider Trading

ABC News, 20 September 2001.
Before 9/11, put options were purchased betting against stocks of United Airlines, American Airlines, and Marsh & McClellan (based on the floors of WTC 1 that were struck). Somebody made millions.
Video: https://youtu.be/QUHZcUwHrJ8

Indira Singh and Ptech

Indira Singh was senior risk management consultant at JP Morgan Chase bank in 2001. She was seeking to equip the bank with enterprise architect software that would provide "god's eye" visualization, mapping, and analysis of transactions, interactions, systems, processes, and personnel in the bank. Many recommended a small Quincy, MA company called Ptech. Their list of clients included the White House, Secret Service, FBI, IRS, NATO, IBM, the Postal Service, and the FAA.
However, Singh became reluctant to use their software when she discovered that Ptech's top investor was Saudi Al-Qaeda financier Yassin Al-Qadi, who had been placed on the US terror list in October 2001. Singh's research further linked Ptech to the CIA network that armed the Mujahideen in the 80s. When she told the FBI, they weren't particularly alarmed. In fact, they even actively blocked an investigation against Al-Qadi.
Ptech's relationship with the FAA is particularly interesting.

Bonnie: Could you describe the relationship of PTech with the FAA? PTech worked with the FAA for several years, didn’t they?
Indira: Yes... They were looking at, basically, holes in the FAA’s interoperability with responding with other agencies – law enforcement – in the case of an emergency such as a hijacking.
... how they would respond in case of an emergency... if anyone was in a position to understand where the holes were, PTech was, and that is exactly the point: if anybody was in a position to write software to take advantage of those holes, it would have been PTech.
Bonnie: Was there a reference to PTech having operated in the basement out of the FAA?
Indira: Yes. Typically, because the scope of such projects are so over-arching and wide-ranging, when you are doing an enterprise architecture project, you have access to how anything in the organization is being done, where it is being done, on what systems, what the information is. You have carte blanche.
If it is a major project that spends several years, the team that comes in has, literally, access to almost anything that they want because you are operating on a blueprint level, on a massive scale. So, yes, they were everywhere, and I was told that they were in places that required clearances. I was told that they had log-on access to FAA flight control computers.

Video, Corbett Report: Ptech and the 9/11 Software: https://youtu.be/LIUgxMC8PwM
Corbett Report Article: https://www.corbettreport.com/articles/20090717_cyber_911.htm
Full 2005 interview with Indira Singh on Bonny Faulkner's "Guns and Butter": https://youtu.be/Oe_tl8VnkTo

FBI Agent Robert Wright's Investigation Into Al-Qaeda Financier Al-Qadi Impeded

In the mid-1990s... two Chicago-based agents were assigned to track a connection to Chicago, a suspected terrorist cell that would later lead them to a link with Osama bin Laden. Wright says that when he pressed for authorization to open a criminal investigation into the money trail, his supervisor stopped him.
"Do you know what his response was? 'I think it's just better to let sleeping dogs lie,'" said Wright. "Those dogs weren't sleeping. They were training. They were getting ready." ...
The suspected terrorist cell in Chicago was the basis of the investigation, yet Wright, who remains with the FBI, says he soon discovered that all the FBI intelligence division wanted him to do was to follow suspected terrorists and file reports — but make no arrests.
"The supervisor who was there from headquarters was right straight across from me and started yelling at me: 'You will not open criminal investigations. I forbid any of you. You will not open criminal investigations against any of these intelligence subjects,'" Wright said.
Even though they were on a terrorism task force and said they had proof of criminal activity, Wright said he was told not to pursue the matter.
In 1998 al Qaeda terrorists bombed two American embassies in Africa. The agents say some of the money for the attacks led back to the people they had been tracking in Chicago and to a powerful Saudi Arabian businessman, Yassin al-Kadi. Al-Kadi is one of 12 Saudi businessmen suspected of funneling millions of dollars to al Qaeda and who had extensive business and financial ties in Chicago.
Yet, even after the bombings, Wright said FBI headquarters wanted no arrests.

ABC News, December 2002, "FBI Called off Terror Investigations": http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=131907

Documentaries

(30 mins) Stand for the Truth: A Government Researcher Speaks Out – Recently released. Former NIST Employee Peter Ketcham reviews the 9/11 investigation and explains how it was a sham: https://youtu.be/GvAv-114bwM
(1 hr 50 mins) 9/11 Exposed 2nd Edition (2015): https://youtu.be/4Nmj6t51Wz8
(2 hrs 4 mins) 2011 "Toronto Hearings" at Ryerson University – AE 9/11 Truth discusses some of their best evidence for controlled demolition: https://youtu.be/xqqelDq4P48?t=720
(58 mins) Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out: https://youtu.be/Ddz2mw2vaEg?t=356
(1 hr 38 mins) Loose Change 9/11: an American Coup (2009): http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x26mumq_loose-change-911-an-american-coup-2009-documentary_shortfilms
(15 mins) Solving the Mystery of Building 7 - Narrated by Ed Asner. Delightfully low production value and kitschy. But intriguing. He's a bit of a slow talker. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nyogTsrsgI
(2 hrs 18 mins) The Full AE911 Documentary: Structural engineers, firefighters, demolitions experts, etc. speak about 9/11 and the holes in the official report: https://youtu.be/mK86S-HZxTE?list=FLv31V0HsG3ivqkj9r5_dhDA
(1 hr 21 mins) Citizen Investigation Team Documentary - National Security Alert - the 9/11 Pentagon Event: https://youtu.be/_HlUmmPBoLg
(5 pgs) Article: Europhysics News: 15 Years Later - on the Physics of High-Rise Building Collapses: https://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2016/04/epn2016474p21.pdf

A Warning From History - President Eisenhower 1961

17 January 1961, in his presidential farewell address, Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to warn the American people about the potential dangers of the military-industrial complex. Considering the state of the country since 9/11, his words are more important than ever.

We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, 3 and 1/2 million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.
Now, this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence: economic, political, even spiritual, is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.
Our toil, resources, and livelihood, are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.
In the counsels of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence -- whether sought or unsought -- by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals. So that security and liberty may prosper together.

Video: https://youtu.be/8y06NSBBRtY"

Solo Atraks-1, Fallen Exo + Comprehensive Writeup

Video link
I know the final few minutes of this were posted yesterday (and I appreciate the enthusiasm there!) but I figured I'd also go ahead and post the full run and dive into some explanations I thought were interesting. First though I'd like to thank some major strategic contributors from Twitch - this section will be a little lengthy but it does have some insights as well, so skip at your own risk if you're here for details.
Big Thanks to:
Kog was the first to notice the way to determine the right Atraks from her replications, which is by looking for small changes in the health bar. He was also the first to suggested a ranged stun for the third stun, which was a strategic breakthrough. These critical contributions made the run possible, but I also have Kog to thank for a huge number of minor optimizations. His investment in the challenge really improved my outlook on it, too, so huge thanks to Kog for his above and beyond help.
Fryco pointed me in the direction of mods that relieved a ton of pressure from adds and allowed me to focus near single-mindedly on the rest of the mechanics. Specifically, arc resist mods are just crazy good in this encounter and I didn't know that, but the enhanced operator augment mod is actually insane here too. With this setup I was nearly invincible, it took massive misplays for me to die to adds.
Wildfire corrected my understanding of the wipe mechanic's timing. I was under the impression that a strict timer started at the beginning of the encounter, but Wildfire pointed out that the timer actually starts after every stun. This helped correct a huge, needless amount of rushing on my end that made consistency possible in a way it would have taken forever to arrive at on my own.
GrimAgent suggested crouching to cleanse the replication from myself, which seemed to make the self-cleanse "hitbox" more forgiving. It's hard to overstate the importance of consistent cleanses, but runs depends entirely on it - a slow cleanse (we're talking ~an extra second in a lot of cases) means one less guess on the boss, which reduces chances of success by 25% on the spot. A "very slow" cleanse that's 3 seconds late is a wipe. It's a kind of wonky mechanic that needs to be done near perfectly, so a little extra forgiveness with it helped massively. Grim also was around for a lot of the pre-attempt theorycrafting to get runs off the ground. Also thanks to Grim for pretty much all graphical stuff that went into the video (thumbnail and RNG explanation image).
Butters also helped with quite a bit of testing during the early phases when I still needed a person to rely on for some help in the encounter while I was attempting various solo experiments, so thank you very much for that help Butters.
Faldo_ found the best cleanse spot, which was the doorway of the airlock itself. There aren't many places to check within the airlock and I had tried what I thought was everything with varying levels of success, but Faldo's approach turned out by-far best. Interestingly, the doorway is too short to cleanse on without crouching, so it seems like this development came in two small steps for a major improvement to consistency. Faldo is also the first player to achieve final stand in this solo which is a huge achievement.
One thing I found that I'm personally satisfied with is the "soccer" strategy of cleansing two replications at once after juggling them. For a long time I was cleansing replications in individual airlocks after juggling them (for speed), but after deciding that keeping more airlocks functional was a higher priority, the cleanse-one-kick-one approach was my idea. This whole mechanic came to my complete satisfaction because the replications sometimes bounce away immediately after stuns, which I complained about as "the wrong time to play soccer" every time it caused a wipe (which wasn't uncommon), so to have the kicking become part of the intended strategy was serendipitous to say the least.
Kyro and Lemons suggested I hold onto my super for movement reasons instead of using it to clear servitors. While I don't use that strategy in this run, it was an impactful change that allowed me to continue runs that would have otherwise been impossible.
Disco from my day 1 raid team was the first person I heard mention the idea of self-cleansing with ricochet rounds. I'm not sure how many people thought of this or if crediting anyone is really appropriate, but Disco considered using RR to self-cleanse in the middle of our world's first raid attempt, and I think that's very clever of him to have noticed so early on.
And finally, my gf Vanessa who had to babysit our dog and let me game until odd hours of the night so I could run this to my heart's content.
A lot of others suggested I use Lament skating for speed, but I prioritized consistency with what I am already familiar with over gaining a small (but significant) boost to speed that would disrupt my intuition. Overall this run is so heavily dependent on speed that anyone attempting it should at a minimum be comfortable with everything I do, but mastering sword movement on top of that would be a big help.
Interesting details about the run:
I'm gonna start this section with the two most frequently asked questions:
In order to determine the correct replication without scanner, you damage the replications as much as you can without actually forcing wrong stun / wipe. By doing this, the correct replication will take noticeable damage on its health bar, but incorrect ones won't wipe you. This doesn't entirely eliminate RNG, but it increases your odds enough to make this a realistic challenge.
In order to cleanse the replications from yourself as operator, you use ricochet rounds against a wall in the airlock.
This is probably the most interesting solo we've ever had in Destiny in my opinion. Without necessarily speaking to its difficulty, it has everything a solo challenge has ever had in Destiny bundled together. There is a major RNG barrier to success (which I'll get into in much more detail), there is a incredible stress test on movement speed and precision, inaccurate shots are often punished with a wipe, and anything short of the best build quickly begins to push the run into the realms of impossibility. On top of these factors, the narrow timeline for elevator cleanses combined with the 4-stun DPS cycle seems to almost suggest Bungie deliberately intended to keep this option possible, which is probably just a coincidence, but it's amazing to see exactly how narrowly this challenge avoids impossibility. These opinions on the run are absolutely subject to change if any more strategic breakthroughs are found post-completion, but barring that possibility this challenge is the ultimate gauntlet of Destiny mastery and dedication. I'll expand on all those points one at a time, with RNG last because it's the most interesting to me.
On movement:
As far as movement is concerned, every wasted instant hurts your chances of success substantially during the DPS phase. An icarus dash without a boost, an unnecessary clamber, a bodyblock from a wretch, or any other miniscule thing is likely to reduce your chance of completion by 25% on the spot. This is because, while stuns in space are effectively a given when playing well, you need to immediately cleanse the replication in an airlock and get back to the orbital elevator pods afterwards. During this window, any tiny mistake robs you of a guess on the base side replications - hence, even very small movement hiccups can reduce chances of success by 25% (or 33% on the second stun). In my runs I was not able to test all replications at base side even a single time - even when my space side stun was as convenient as possible - so you're going as fast as possible to fight for the best odds, not to guarantee success.
Movement hiccups after a base side stun are a bit more forgiving, but small mistakes there can compromise your ability to pick a good position to stun from on space side. Ideally on a third stun you are able to stun from right next to an active airlock, but getting into position takes time - if you trip up base side, it's likely you'll have to stun from a suboptimal position for the third stun, which greatly reduces your chances of making it to the final stun in base afterwards. It's hard to overstate how impactful even tiny movement slip-ups can be in this run. Also, this run is subject to the typical nuances most Destiny challenges are, such as kicking around replication instead of picking it up for no apparent reason / sword attacks tracking to enemies instead of the direction you're facing / etc.
Again, noting that I'll go deeper into this later, RNG can make your forgiveness for movement better or worse, ranging from totally impossible, to absolutely unforgiving, to "please don't let me mess this up, this is as 'easy' as it gets." In so many words, your speed and precision with movement are major decisive factors in your odds of success.
On aim:
While there isn't much to say about aim, there are two critical points where accuracy is do-or-die. During any "testing" of the bosses, a missed grenade launcher shot is a major time waste. This, like with movement, can easily mean a single missed shot reduces your chances of success by 25% or 33% depending on the phase.
For example, if I am going base side after a good 3rd space stun and I've already killed close right base replicant, I still need to test two of the three remaining among left, middle, and far right base side replicants. The optimal way to do this is to stand by middle and shoot left without moving (as there's a 2/3 chance I'll be moving farther from the real one if I do, and I still have time to get to left if it's the correct one since it's my first guess), then shoot right while moving toward it (guess is now a 50/50 and I'm running low on time so I want to be as close to both options as possible), then either attack right or middle after I've ruled out the others. In this scenario, if I miss the shot on the left or right side replicants, my odds of success drop from 100% (4th stun is guaranteed by accurate gameplay following a good RNG 3rd stun) down to 66% on the spot. You simply do not have time redos with the base side stuns, so precision in aiming here is absolutely critical. Also, I assume it sounds easy enough to hit a boss with a grenade launcher, but it really is more difficult than it sounds, particularly when the boss randomly meanders behind partial cover.
As with movement, good RNG can help relieve the punishment of poorly aimed shots, but this is a challenge in which you want to rely on RNG as little as possible since you're forced to rely on it to a significant extent by design.
The second place where aiming is critical is during the cleanse. As stated before, you cleanse by using ricochet rounds against the airlock door while crouched for best consistency. What's not immediately obvious about this is that a slightly angled shot (left or right of direct center) will be a miss that doesn't cleanse you. Same with too high or too low. The cleanse happens as follows: get to airlock door-> crouch -> push yourself up against the door -> aim directly at it, at the right height, on center, without any clear visual indication you're aiming at the right spot -> fire -> trust you got it right and keep moving. The hitbox isn't exactly "tiny" per se, but it is absolutely small enough that your aim needs to be careful and deliberate every time you cleanse.
On builds:
I have never actually felt the need to perfect a modded loadout for my character before this challenge. During other difficult runs like GM nightfall solos I would use the necessities and wing it from there, but in this case, mods and gear were insanely important.
Kinetic weapon: Needs to be ricochet rounds. Strong preference for mid range (so not SMGs ideally) and high RoF (so not HCs ideally) for cleansing and optimal engagement range. Feeding frenzy is a valuable perk since you can't crit shanks, and rampage or swashbuckler are ideal damage perks since you don't want to waste time reloading (particularly wearing transversives, which improves speed and is therefore probably best). I used a False Promises that dropped in the middle of my early attempts in the most serendipitous imaginable fashion At the end of my runs, it had exactly 8000 kills on it. Prior to that I used a RRapid hit/Kill Clip Sacred Provenance, which was also very good and would have done the job similarly well.
Energy weapon: Needs to do exactly enough damage to clearly hurt the right replication but not cause a wipe on the wrong replications. Also needs to be usable at long range. Strong preference for mid-air accuracy for movement reasons. I used truthteller, and I'm honestly not sure anything other than a grenade launcher can meet all the demands of the challenge. As an incredible bonus, blinding grenades disable servitor immunity which makes them far less of a hassle to deal with (particularly because they can make the boss immune under bad circumstances), and greatly reduces enemy add pressure (which is one important piece of the "I feel invincible" build).
Heavy weapon: Ideally, Two Tailed Fox, but since I didn't have that, I used Lament. This is pretty much exclusively for boss DPS.
My armor mods were built around two key concepts: 1. maximizing DPS, and 2. staying alive. Shocking.
As far as staying alive, I used two arc resistance mods (which are insanely strong, I had no idea). This alone makes an enormous difference in the boss room because almost every bit of damage thrown at you is arc, so those mods are unbelievably high value for their cost. On top of that, I used the raid specific "enhanced operator augment" mod, which is absolutely busted. The way this mod works is that whenever you're down to red health, you get periodic bursts of health regeneration. I did spec into recovery for the most part as a general stat, but so, so many times I was hit hard enough to be low red only for this mod to kick in and bail me out. With the combined effect of high recovery, double arc resist, and op mod (an appropriate shortening), the enemies in the encounter almost never killed me. The sheer damage resistance and health resilience was actually hard to believe.
For the damage aspect, I exclusively focused on maintaining lucent blade. Since lucent blade doesn't stack with things like rifts, wells, or much else, this was an easy way to give my damage a strong buff without having to change gameplay to make it happen. I ran supercharged (+2 charge cap), charged up (+1 charge cap), and stacks on stacks (x2 charge gathered) to minimize the amount of intentional charge gathering I'd have to do, taking charge to get the charges (orb pickup = +1 charge), and lucent blade as the singular way to spend those charges. I would've loved to use protective light as well just to see how unkillable I would be, but anything that might take my charges before a DPS phase wasn't an option.
The rest of my mod slots were spent on things like grenade scavenger (artifact mod) and finder, which all helped, but ultimately weren't critical in the run. My split of recovery and mobility was tier 8 and tier 6, and those numbers also helped but were probably not critical.
On the uncanny "did Bungie intend this?" design of this challenge:
Replications are the most significant limiting factor to success in this challenge. You can only cleanse them in space, but you have to pick them up in base, too. This means that you'll definitely have times where you can't cleanse instantly after picking up regardless of your RNG - on the first stun you can, on the second you can't, etc. Here's why that's interesting - as a result of this design, the optimal pathing is effectively as follows:
1st stun / cleanse 1st / run base 2nd stun / run space 3rd stun / cleanse 2nd / run base 4th stun / run space
... so 5th would theoretically be
5th stun / cleanse 3rd / run base
at which point you'd be left with replications 4 and 5 uncleansed while headed the direction exactly opposite of where you need to be to cleanse them. If the DPS phase ran any shorter cleansing would be trivial, and if it ran any longer, it would be impossible. To me, this is quite a coincidence.
But that's not all there is to it - replication balls wipe you if left unattended for ~45 seconds, and this timer is reset when knocked off a player (notably, NOT when picked up). As a result of this, combined with the ~13 second elevator ride and pickup mechanics, this is the timeline of a ball juggle to get two balls to space at once after fourth stun:

Start by dropping 3rd at base elevator, resetting it
Grab 4th and drop it at base elevator to reset it, too
Pickup 3rd / go to space / drop 3rd / go to base
Pickup 4th / RESET 4th / Pickup 4th / go to space
Drop 4th / pickup 3rd / RESET 3rd / begin soccer

During this section, you have to leave stuns unattended for nearly their entire timer as you go up and down the elevator. As it takes some time to pickup the ball, drop the ball, and move between flat walls and the elevator pods - on top of the elevator movement itself - it's not unusual to run those timers dangerously low. This actually wiped me at least a handful of times due to going slightly too slow - it just so happens that my successful run was very clean in this regard so I had a very generous 6 seconds every time at least.
All this said to reinforce one point: A longer DPS cycle would be impossible because you'd have to juggle during a DPS phase, which there isn't time for, because the time allotted by the replication mechanic and elevators makes it so. In my opinion, quite the interesting coincidence if this is unintended.
And finally, on RNG:
This challenge is NOT a Riven solo. Riven's eyes was a 1/45 pure odds that you couldn't help at all, combined with the 1/2 chance of her even going to the right side for a start the fight. Riven solo was a beast of its own, but the true "difficulty" of it was almost entirely found in fighting against terrible odds. Atraks-1 is very different in the sense that, while it does have a large RNG component, there are a myriad of ways you can mitigate it and keep your chances of success far better than the 1/90 on a fresh Riven start.
By my calculations - which are summarized in this image link - you have a 29.3% chance of any run being completable at the outset, considering there is a 54.2% chance of success on any single DPS cycle, and you need two of those in a row.
The information in that image is subject to two major considerations:
Firstly, boss movements can totally let the goose loose. If a boss stands in a particularly terrible spot, it becomes much harder to check it and can reduce your chances of success by forcing you to guess with less testing either by committing to the weird spot or by ignoring it and hoping it's not the correct one. In any case, the overall good/bad value of the stun cycles I've covered are not absolute by any means.
Secondly, the testing order also matters a lot. The clearest example is that any run in which the 2nd stun is on base left I have considered an irredeemable wipe. This is because testing all four in base is nearly impossible, so it makes sense to prioritize checking base far and base close (both of which are on the right side), so there's a high probability of finding the right one. Because the limiting factor is travel time, you are forced to check "sides" rather than specific replications.
It's very possible that improvements to routing and testing speed could come later and improve the wipe / difficult scenarios to better statuses, but as of right now, the probability of it being a completable run is somewhere around 29.3% with the current knowledge - so in that way, it is a very RNG based challenge (as the variability in difficulty from the top end of that 29.3% to the bottom of it is very high), but as far as completability goes, it isn't just hoping for the best all the time. Rather, this challenge is entirely about overcoming bad scenarios.
Overall, I love this raid encounter, and while this challenge is very RNG heavy, and 75% is not 75% somehow, I enjoyed doing it a lot.
Also, HUGE congratulations to Tier 1's Vendetta who also just completed this challenge. Incredible achievement on his part and he was impressively quick to get a completed run in. Can't say I'm too surprised though, he's an insane gamer. Major kudos to him!

Tom in Palau

Tom’s win in Palau is easily one of the greatest performances in Survivor history. In every single aspect of the game he completely dominated; controlling every vote from start to finish, winning 5 of 7 potential individual immunities, and being almost universally beloved by the Jury. This is one of a handful of wins that should be in contention for the greatest of all time.
The most memorable part of Tom’s game is how he seemed to be leading from start to finish; not just to people watching at home, but to the players on the island as well. He was the de facto leader of Koror, single-handedly carried them to the most success of any tribe in Survivor history, and then won 5 of a potential 7 individual immunities.
Depending on who you ask, this could be a good or bad thing; is it to Tom’s credit that he was the biggest threat the whole time and still ran the game pillar to post, or was he doing a poor job managing his threat level and had to rely on winning immunity to stay in the game?
The answer is conclusively the former; Tom was able to control every aspect of the game in a way that made him unbeatable in front of the jury, but also set him up with a clear path to the endgame even though he was the biggest jury threat.
Taking the Bull by the Horns
In the next section of this essay, I will elaborate on how Tom created the perfect onion alliance; but for now, this section is going to walk through just how and why Tom became the biggest threat in the game before the tribes had even merged* . . .
Tom definitely made several choices that led to him entering the merge with a huge target, but he also actively tried to minimize his threat level as much as possible given the circumstances. Before the game even started, Tom was singled out as a potential target – his fireman’s t-shirt identified him as a hero who served during 9/11. CBS forced him to wear the shirt; he fought several battles with them in the pre-season, demanding not to wear it⁶. Since CBS forced his hand, he intentionally tried to downplay his real-life heroics and made sure not to mention it ever during the game. He also had the foresight to wear swimming trunks underneath his shorts, in case Production pulled a surprise marooning like Pearl Islands⁶. Listening to every interview he’s done, it’s very clear just how much thought Tom put into the game going in. (He’s easily one of the most insightful players the show has ever had; listen to anything he says about his game and you’ll understand why he’s one of the greats.)
As Tom said at the Tribal Council where Koror voted off Willard, he entered the game intending to fade into the background – both strategically and physically. This is clear from the first episode; Palau kicked off with two Immunity necklaces up for grabs, going to the first man and woman on the beach. Instead of jumping into the water early to race for them, Tom was one of the last to jump, and let Ian get the necklace instead. And before the tribes separated, he didn’t emerge as the leader; instead of taking charge, he focused on making connections that would pay off down the road.
It wasn’t until after the schoolyard pick that Tom started to act as the leader. While in hindsight we know that Koror will be the most dominate tribe in Survivor history, that was the complete opposite of what both tribes expected to happen. Compared to Ulong, which had Jeff, Bobby Jon, Ibrehem, and Stephenie, Koror looked like the older, weaker tribe; they all thought they were going to be crushed in challenges^3,4,6,7. The tribe was so concerned that Ian gathered them around for a frank discussion of strengths and weaknesses, so they’d have a day’s head start trying to out-strategize Ulong when it came to challenges⁶.
Koror seeming so outmatched is why Tom decided to forego his intended strategy of sandbagging challenges; he decided it was more important for Koror to win, and knew he’d need to go all out for that to happen. In my opinion, this was the correct choice; entering the merge with numbers is a huge advantage (of the seasons to have an uneven merge, nearly a full 70% have been won by a member of the tribe with the numbers advantage), especially for a player like Tom – whereas someone like a Chris D. or Danni could stay under the radar, a physical threat like Tom would’ve been picked off right at the merge.
After he went so hard in the first few challenges, Tom intentionally took a step back – sitting out the last 3 Immunity challenges. I think this is one of the more underrated moments of pre-merge strategy, (underrated because it didn’t work and didn’t make the edit). But Tom sat out to try and make Koror lose; by that point in the game, he’d realized Coby was never going to work with him. He correctly calculated this would carry to Coby’s jury vote, and wanted to send him on the pre-jury trip, replaced by Bobby Jon as the mayor of Ponderosa⁹.
He also tried as much as possible to make his success in challenges feel like team success. While Bobby Jon and Stephenie were telling Probst that Tom was singlehandedly winning challenges for Koror, Tom was intentionally trying to spread the credit around. Willard noted in confessional that Tom didn’t let a day go by where he didn’t compliment every one of his tribe members. And when it came time for the tribe to “officially” pick a leader, Tom jumped at the chance to designate Gregg and Ian, which is one of my favorite slick Survivor moves; Tom’s proving that he’s the leader, making the decision, but since he’s verbalizing that it’s actually Ian who’s in charge, he gets away with it. Brilliant.
His dominance in challenges wasn’t just physical, either. Before each challenge starts, Jeff and the crew walk the players through the course and give them an opportunity to ask questions. While most tribes only ask a few, Tom always made sure to ask Jeff dozens⁶ – making sure he knew every way he could game the challenge within the rules. I’ll get into it more later, but the fact that Tom’s leadership was so decisively successful is part of why Tom succeeded where so many before him failed; a huge portion of Koror’s success really was do solely to Tom, and he never made any real leadership blunders that would cause people to turn on him.
That’s what separates Tom from players like Joe or Ozzy (both challenge beasts who carried their tribe to great pre-merge success) – he’s an actual leader. Most challenge beasts are lone wolf types who only end up leading because they’re too obstinate and self-assured to let anyone else make decisions. They spend too much time roleplaying as a hunter and gatherer, neglecting social bonds and setting themselves up to be taken out right around the merge.
Tom carefully avoided falling into these traps. The first measure he took was never going out alone; him and Ian would go out together hunting clams, and secretly ate several in the water before bringing them back to camp⁶. This accomplishes two things: 1) Lessens the target on his back, since someone else is also doing just as much work for the tribe 2) Built his bond with Ian even tighter, since they shared a mutually beneficial secret (Tyson pulled the same maneuver in BvW). This strategy was also on display when he caught the shark, immediately calling Gregg over to help him bring it in, which Gregg described as “one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.” And when Koror lost their fire-making kit in the ocean, Tom was sure to bring both Ian and Katie with him to go find it; that way he got to spend hours firming up his tight trio, while being perceived as a hero by the other 6 tribe members because he brought fire back.
While successfully ingratiating himself as Koror’s leader, Tom also actively worked to foster a “team” environment; Gregg notes in his Survivor Oz interview³ that the 5-person alliance of Tom/Ian/Gregg/Jenn/Katie was always shutting down strategy talk so no one would consider flipping. This no-nonsense environment is why Willard was voted out the only time Koror went to Tribal Council; him and Coby were the only two who refused to fall in line, and Tom knew that Coby was getting on everyone’s nerves⁶. By taking out Willard, he removed the only player who could potentially swing Caryn away from him.
Tom did make a few mistakes in drawing unnecessary attention to himself, though. The first is when he won Individual Immunity at the merge. It was the classic “stand on a pole and be tempted down” challenge, and him, Caryn, and Stephenie were the last three standing. At this point in the game, Tom already had the numbers locked down to take out Coby – as evidenced by the 7-2 vote against Coby at Tribal that night; there was no need for him to win immunity this round. Especially because Stephenie was still standing, and would be the odds-on favorite to win against Caryn. If Stephenie had won immunity, Tom would’ve had more cover in taking out Coby, saying his hand was forced; I doubt this would have changed Coby’s jury vote, but it would’ve been a good way to get attention off of himself – he would seem less threatening losing to the girls, and would build up Stephenie as the most pressing immunity threat. There is slight risk to this, though; if Stephenie won, there would have been a couple hours back at camp where Coby could potentially swing votes against Tom (it ends up being a surprise “straight to tribal after the challenge” vote, but they wouldn’t have known that at the time). But Coby had no social capital at the time, and had been trying to rally people against Tom with no success for days. I understand Tom’s reasoning for winning immunity here, but I think the potential risk of losing it was quite small, and at this point in the game Tom should’ve been doing anything possible to keep the spotlight off of him.
His next misstep was at the Final 7, when he gathered everyone around to give a speech basically asking them to do him a solid and not punish him for winning challenges for Koror in the pre-merge. This is without a doubt the nadir of Tom’s game; for a player as incredibly capable in all ways as Tom, this is cringe-inducing. All this speech does is draw more attention onto him, as he himself highlights all the reasons they should be thinking of voting him out. Luckily, Tom agrees; during his RHAP interview, he said it embarrassed him just thinking about it⁹. In his slight defense, this is better than previous iterations of the same school of thought – again from players like Joe or Ozzy, who actually believe it. Tom knew his speech was full of crap, and only gave it out of intense paranoia⁹; and this is far from the only thing he was doing to avoid receiving votes at Final 7. As I’ll detail later, he had a masterful plan in the works. If this was Tom’s only course of action this round, it would really hurt my impression of him; but it really was just a sidenote in an otherwise brilliant round of his.
Tom made a few more very small mistakes – upsetting Jenn by using their fresh water reward for drinking instead of showers and that kind of thing – but these were all incredibly minor and never came anywhere close to influencing a vote. One thing that becomes clear when listening to exit press from the Palau cast is that the Survivor editors were going out of their way to make mountains out of molehills when it came to Tom; he was almost never in danger, and everyone but Coby adored him, so they really had to focus a lot of attention on any little negative comment that was made about him.
All Roads Lead to Tom
As I’ve already mentioned, Tom was a huge target from Day 1; his 9/11 heroics combined with his wife and kids at home, not to mention his in-game performance, all conspired to paint a bullseye on his back. So how did he manage to last the full 39 days?
That question is partially answered by one of the most brilliant alliance structures of all time; earlier I called it an onion alliance, meaning it had layers – Tom, Ian, and Katie being the core, which branches out to Gregg and Jenn, which branches out to Caryn and Janu, ending at Coby. But that really doesn’t do it justice; it was more like an intricately weaved spiderweb with Tom at the center.
Starting at the center, the cornerstone of Tom’s game was the incredibly close bonds he was able to cultivate with Ian and Katie; outside of Rob and Amber, I think this is the tightest alliance in Survivor history (I could hear arguments for Cops R Us). Hearing these three describe their alliance, it sounds like the Fates pulling strings; all three noticed each other in casting, immediately taking a liking to each other^4,5,6,7,8,9. On the boat ride to the island, Tom and Ian silently connected through eye-contact alone; as soon as they landed, Tom walked up to Ian and said “are we winning this thing or what?” and Ian replied “I know one of us is”⁶. These three were locked in with each other as soon as the game proper began, which is evidenced by them picking each other 1-2-3 in the schoolyard pick.
Besides their immediate affinity for each other, Tom says in the episodes that he aligned with Ian because he’s the only person who works as a physical shield for him; by making sure Ian was always paired off with him, Tom managed to shrink both of their targets.
I’ll discuss it more in my next section, but this trio had a bond that verged on unbreakable. What I want to focus on now though is that Katie was the only player in the whole game closer to Ian than Tom; and because of the nature of the alliance, it didn’t even matter. Both Tom and Ian knew from the jump that they wanted to go to the Final 3 together with Katie, and they both knew whoever won the FIC would take Katie; and because Tom and Ian are both two of the greatest challenge competitors in the show’s history, compared to Katie who consistently underperformed, they knew with near certainty she would not win the FIC. The only time Katie choosing Ian over Tom could be relevant was a moot point.
The next layer in Tom’s alliance is where the brilliance starts to show. As I mention above, Tom was consistently going out of his way to make sure people viewed Ian as the same as him to minimize his own target; but this came with a risk – it could potentially draw twice as much attention to both of them, if people believed the two most threatening players were running the game (an example of this would be Rob/Ethan/Parvati in WaW). To counteract this effect, Tom picked Gregg and Jenn to round out his majority alliance; they were overtly a couple on the island, which was well known by everyone out there. As Tom says on RHAP⁹, people were too distracted by the “real” couple to notice that Tom and Ian were reaping all the same game benefits of being a couple without attracting any of the negative attention.
The other benefit of having Gregg around is that it created a proto-Meatshield alliance; because Tom, Ian, and Gregg were the three most threatening physical players in the game, they needed each other to provide cover. As Gregg says on Survivor Oz, he couldn’t target Tom earlier than Final 5 because then he would become the new Tom and be taken out next³. This meant that Tom had almost guaranteed himself a place in the Final 5 within the first few days of the game.
But he didn’t stop there; while Katie, Ian, Gregg, and Jenn isolated Caryn and Janu, Tom went out of his way to create bonds with them. He would spend hours a day comforting Janu^4,11, promising her she would make the jury or Final 2; and this was a particularly smart pitch for him to make, because Janu wanted to quit. By giving her the choice of making jury or making it to the end, he was basically telling her “whatever you want, I’ll give you”. And because he knew she didn't want to stay in the game, he didn't have to worry that breaking a Final 2 promise would come back to hurt him.
And while his bonds with Katie and Ian were extremely strong, he specifically made sure he was Caryn’s closest ally just in case they decided to flip on him; which pays off greatly at both the Final 7 and Final 6 rounds, where Caryn tips him off to a potential girls’ alliance and then agrees to go to rocks with Tom and Ian.
Now that I’ve laid out the pieces of Tom’s alliance, I’m going to try and articulate why it works so brilliantly as a whole – this might get hard to follow, but bear with me.

The first step is having the majority within the Gregg/Jenn/Katie/Tom/Ian alliance made of himself/Katie/Ian. If that alliance made it all the way to Final 5, Tom’s side would prevail and he’d be in the F3.
He sets Gregg and Jenn as counterweights to himself and Ian, so no one realizes the true pair running the game.
He aligns with Gregg and Ian, providing cover for their own threat levels, so they don’t want to vote him out until F5 when there’s less chance it will blow back on them
He becomes Caryn’s closest ally, so he’ll have a canary in the coal mine in case someone decides to flip on him.

Because Tom had all of these intersecting bonds, it became nearly impossible to vote him off. Katie and Ian were tightest with him, so they didn’t want him gone; and if they decided they did, they would both have to agree at the same time. But not only that, they would also have to pull Gregg and Jenn as well; but of course both Gregg and Ian didn’t want to do this, because having Tom there was the only reason they themselves were not being targeted. The only other way for Tom to lose the numbers would be if Katie betrayed both Tom and Ian – which, as I’ll get into later, she never would have done because of their close personal bond – and also get Caryn to agree, which Caryn wouldn't because Tom was her closest ally, and Katie burned that bridge during the mid-game.
As early as Final 10, Tom had set the game in a strategic deadlock. If more than two people were talking – literally any two people – word would get back to Tom. Even if they wanted to, it was impossible to vote out Tom – about 100 different lucky breaks would have to all align for the events to fall in the exact one-in-a-million pattern necessary to take him out.
But as I’m about to explain, no one even really wanted him to go. . .
Social Stronghold
Tom’s might be the best social game in the history of Survivor; not only was he unbeatable in front of the jury, he was also so beloved that people couldn’t bring themselves to vote him out.
The core bond Tom had with Ian and Katie is hard to overstate, and is a key part of why no one was ever able to mount a real attempt to blindside him. The three of them connected before the tribes were even divided and named themselves “the Power of 3”. When Katie was asked on Survivor Oz how Tom was able to run the game, Katie replied “no one wanted to vote him out because we liked him.”⁴
This is on display at Final 7. This vote is a bit confusing, because everything Katie and Caryn say in exit press seems to contradict the narrative the show presents. According to the edit, at this point in the game Katie and Stephenie were trying to pull in Jenn and Caryn to blindside the boys, with Tom being the target. But in her Survivor Oz interview¹⁰, Caryn said she was the one who tried to turn the game at 7, but Katie refused, telling her “I would rather Tom win the game than you.” When I first heard this, I assumed it was Caryn trying to make herself look good by bending the truth; but then in Katie’s Survivor Oz interview, Katie confirms that she was the one who didn’t want to go with the girls’ at F7, because she didn’t think Stephenie or Caryn would take her to the finals, and she decided that if she had to give the game to someone, she wanted it to be Tom and Ian⁴.
But this narrative is complicated by scenes we see in the episode; namely Katie’s famous “Caryn sucks” confessional, laying the blame at Caryn’s feet for the girls not getting together. And in Stephenie’s Survivor Oz interview², she says that it was Caryn’s fault the alliance didn’t come together – which is evidenced by her voting for Caryn the night she goes home.
Based on all of this, I think the timeline of the F7 unfolded like this: On Day 28, Caryn tells Katie she wants to get the girls together, and Katie shuts her down. But Katie was a superfan and like Coby really wanted to “play the game”^4,8, so she brought the idea up to Stephenie. This snowballed into the idea getting back to Caryn, but she was already shut down by Katie and Tom had swooped in and locked down their alliance.
I don’t think this was ever a serious idea for Katie; this is what she said in confessional:

Caryn went back and told Tom that I was planning to get all the women, which is not what I was doing. I was just entertaining the thought.

As her conversation with Ian that episode shows, she really didn’t want to blindside Tom because she liked him so much; but if she was going to, she wouldn’t do it without Ian. And as I’ve already explained, Ian wouldn’t move against Tom because Tom was the only thing guaranteeing him safety to the F3.
And by Day 30, Tom had Caryn completely on his side. Both Katie and Ian described her as “obsessed” with Tom^7,8, to the point of it being comical. I mentioned previously that I thought Tom played brilliantly at the F7, and his move with Caryn is why; as he lays out in the beginning of the episode, he knows that the F7 is the perfect time for someone to try and make a move against him. To counteract this, he intentionally firmed up his relationship with Caryn, who he knew was on the outs with everyone else. Because he’d made a F3 deal with her, she immediately ran back to him when Katie began reconsidering the girls’ alliance.
It speaks incredibly well of Tom’s game that no one votes for him this round; he was vulnerable for the first time because Ian won immunity, he was the consensus biggest threat to win, and his name was thrown out. And not a single person cast a vote for him; not even Stephenie, who knew she was going home and decided to cast her vote out of spite toward Caryn. The argument that Tom needed his immunities to win rings completely false to me, because he didn’t have the necklace at the best possible round to take him out, and no one went for it. That’s evidence of an off-the-charts social game.
This relationship with Caryn pays off again at F6; this is the round where Gregg won Reward, and took Katie and Jenn with him on an overnight spa trip. This set Ian and Tom on edge; the plan was for this group to go to Final 5, and they were worried that Gregg and Jenn would convince Katie to flip and leave them on the outs. Instead of just having faith in Katie, Tom came up with a plan to neutralize the threat; instead of waiting til Final 5 as promised, he got the jump on Gregg and Jenn. And by surprising Katie with this news right before Tribal, Tom effectively made sure that Gregg and Jenn couldn’t turn the numbers back against him and Ian. (The episode edits it to appear as if only Ian told Katie before Tribal, but her Survivor Oz interview makes it clear Tom was a part of this decision⁴). Tom’s bond with Gregg was strong enough that Gregg never saw the blindside coming; he said on Survivor Oz the last confessional he gave was bragging that he was already making plans on how to spend his million³.
And because Tom’s bond ran so deep with Katie, he was able to level with her honestly at Final 5. At this point in the game, Ian had blown things with Caryn; she asked him if he was going to take her to the end instead of Katie, and he hesitated and accidentally said Katie first then corrected and said Caryn. Tom did the best he could to clean up the mess, but the bridge with Caryn was burned. This caused Caryn to revert to trying to gather the girls together to take out Tom and Ian.
To shut this down, Tom laid things out in plain terms to Katie; if she took one of them out at Final 5, she’d be taking the huge risk of the guy still left in the game winning at Final 4, in which case they would vote Katie out. But even if that didn’t happen, and Katie managed to sit in the F3, Tom broke the jury down and told her she’d never win – she wouldn’t be getting Janu’s vote, and Tom promised she wouldn’t get his, Ian, or Stephenie’s.
I think this is a tactic that should be utilized more in Survivor; Tom isn’t depending on some sense of loyalty from Katie to keep his game intact, he simply explains to her that she’s going to get 2nd no matter what, and at least she’ll get to keep Tom and Ian as friends if she keeps her word. Of course, there is risk to this strategy; this is what Katie said in confessional:

Tom sucks today

If you don’t have a strong enough bond with the player you’re threatening, it just comes off as bullying. They may even be inspired to vote you out because of it (see Monica in Samoa). But Tom knew he was tight enough with Katie that he could throw his weight around and it wouldn’t backfire, because she did adore him and Ian, and felt miserable even considering turning on them. (She routinely calls both Tom and Ian two of the greatest people she’s ever met^4,8.)
Tom’s bond with Ian also works to his favor in the final stretch of the game. At the Final 4, Ian was struggling with the idea of taking out Tom if he won immunity; he has since confirmed on RHAP⁷ that he really doesn’t believe he could’ve gone through with it. But once Tom caught wind of it from Jenn, he forced Ian into a fire-making challenge. He explained his reasoning for this on RHAP⁹; he could tell that the game was started to weigh on Ian, and knew if he started beating him down mentally, he would break. The “power of 3” alliance making it all the way just like they’d planned from Day 1 should’ve been the best day of Ian’s game, but he said on RHAP that it was one of the worst of his life⁷. Tom running Ian through the emotional ringer is why Ian decided to step down at the F3, because he felt it more important to have Tom’s respect than a million dollars. If that’s not evidence of Tom’s unparalleled social game, I don’t know what is.
It also served another purpose; making Ian look bad in front of the jury. Tom knew that Ian had been telling everyone that Tom was making all the decisions, trying to make himself look better in a jury vote; Tom didn’t want to risk breaking their alliance by calling him on it. Instead, he waited for an opportunity to throw Ian under the bus; as soon as he saw that Katie and Ian were fighting, he jumped on the chance to paint Ian as shady and duplicitous⁶.
And his strategy worked. Gregg, Jenn, and Stephenie were always going to vote for him over Ian^2,3, and Katie and Coby would always have voted Ian^1,4. That meant that both Caryn and Janu were potential swing votes; and while Janu’s never answered the question (as far as I could find), Ian believes that she would have voted for him⁷. I’m not sure I agree with that, because several people have confirmed Tom spent hours a day comforting Janu^6,10,11; but assuming it is, that would make Caryn the swing vote. And on Survivor Oz, she said that Ian was like a son to her on the island, but he really lost his way in the last 2 Tribal Councils; she confirmed she would’ve voted for Tom because of that¹⁰. Obviously, some of Ian’s downfall was most definitely his own doing; but Tom deserves a ton of credit for 1) building such an incredible bond in the first place, which is the reason Ian was so frazzled near the end 2) being willing to exploit Ian’s emotional state for his own gain (he confirmed on RHAP it was all theatre⁹).
The Biggest Jury Threat
I’ve already laid out that Tom beats Ian, but it’s worth noting that Tom could have beaten anyone.
These are the players who are obvious goats – Janu (wanted to quit the whole time), Caryn (obnoxious, lied about how much money she had⁴, annoyed everyone^3,4,7), Coby (only got along with Janu and Caryn, but Ian⁵, Katie⁴, and Gregg³ really disliked him).
Against Gregg or Jenn, Tom would’ve gotten at least Caryn, Stephenie, Ian, and Katie.
Even against Stephenie, who was actually very well liked this season, he would have won. No one in interviews has been specifically asked about this match-up, but Stephenie herself said on Survivor Oz that Tom would have beaten her²; and if you’ve ever listened to any of Stephenie’s interviews, she’s not one to admit someone is better than her. If she believes Tom would’ve beaten her, it’s because she knows for sure that Tom would have beaten her.
Contrary to popular belief, Katie was not a goat. She only became a goat because she was going to the end with Tom and Ian – who would have made everyone look like a goat. She did not get along with Caryn and Janu, but was very close with the other 5 members of the jury; Gregg to this day considers her a good friend and immediately ran up and hugged her when FTC ended because he felt so bad about what he said³ (he explains that even though he loved both Tom and Katie, he convinced the whole jury that both finalists should be brutalized at FTC because they were getting the million), Jenn based on her Final Words considered Katie her closest ally other than Gregg, and she got along well with Stephenie from Day 1. The fact that Tom managed to get Ian’s vote, when Katie was Ian’s closest friend the whole game, really speaks volumes to Tom’s dominance. If Katie was sitting next to anyone besides Tom or Ian, she would have had a strong chance at getting at least 3 votes.
Tom was that big of a jury threat, and he never so much as received a single vote against him. That is easily one of the most impressive feats in Survivor history; to play from Day 1 to Day 39 as the biggest threat in the game – such a big threat that players on the other tribe have singled you out – and still not receive any votes. If not for Coby’s lone jury vote for Katie, Tom would have managed the first “Perfect” game.
Here is a few compliments paid to Tom by his fellow castmates:

Stephenie said Tom is one of the greatest guys she’s ever met, and was always there on the island to comfort you when times were tough².
Gregg said Tom was a “genuinely good man” he was proud to vote for, incredibly likable, and easily one of the best to ever play³.
Katie said Tom was “Amazing, inspirational, great leader, amazing”, “Captain America”, and “one of the greatest guys I know.”⁴
Caryn said he was “very strong, manly, like a father-figure.”¹⁰
Ian described him as “a hero in every sense of the word” and still has no regrets stepping off to let him win⁷.

Even Coby, who was Tom’s biggest detractor, had this to say about him:

He deserved to win, and he kicked my ass. . . it was an honor to get to go to battle with him.⁹

He also said on Survivor Oz that players on his season actively wanted Tom to win because they liked him so much¹.
I see a lot of talk about J.T. in Tocantins or Kim in One World playing the best social games of all time, but I rarely see Tom’s name in those ranks; people get distracted by his record 5 immunity wins (which while tying Colby’s number, actually made Tom the most successful individual challenge competitor in Survivor history. The Outback merged at 10, meaning Colby lost 3 challenges. Palau merged at 9, so Tom only lost two), and miss the incredible social and strategic game he was playing.
By literally any metric you choose to judge a player – their social, strategic, or physical game – Tom is easily one of the greatest to ever play. He won 5 individual immunities, survived the most dangerous rounds of the game without the necklace, created a strategic spiderweb that nearly guaranteed him a place in the F3, built social bonds that made him unbeatable in front of the jury, and browbeat Ian into stepping down and handing him a million dollars.
Sources:

Coby on Survivor Oz
Stephenie on Survivor Oz
Gregg on Survivor Oz
Katie on Survivor Oz
Ian on Survivor Oz
Tom on Survivor Oz
Ian on Talkin’ with T-bird https://robhasawebsite.com/survivor-ian-rosenberger-interview-palau-tbird/
Katie on Talkin’ with T-bird https://robhasawebsite.com/survivor-katie-gallagher-interview-palau-tbird/
Tom on Talkin’ with T-bird https://robhasawebsite.com/survivor-tom-westman-interview-palau-heroes-villians-tbird/
Caryn on Survivor Oz
Katie’s EW Survivor Quarantine Questionnaire https://ew.com/tv/survivor-palau-katie-gallagher-quarantine-questionnaire/

The Survivor Oz episodes have been taken down from all pod-catchers, but I have them saved in a dropbox if anyone wants to check my sources.
*I know Palau never technically had a merge - Koror absorbed Stephenie - but it’s much easier to just write “merge.”

I took the Top 10 players in MVP voting and tried to find the difference each player made for their teams, and how they’ impacted their teams in the clutch since the beginning of the year. Here are my findings.

Hello everybody. After an Adderall and a cup of coffee I decided to spend 8 hours collecting stats to find how impactful the Top 10 MVP candidates have been to their team since the beginning of the year. I am not making any conclusions from my stats, but the findings are nonetheless interesting, and I implore you to use them however you please. The stats sorted in this thread are meant to tell you about the difference a player makes in certain times for their team
Important notes for these stats: The ‘standard’ stats collected are from games since January 1st, and regular season only. The reason I did this was because I wanted to be conducive of more recent play, as well as account for the more recent bubble performances. The games held in November and December of 2019 are so far away at this point that I felt my selection would be more accurate to how a player is playing now. These stats are from regular season only. This is just a personal test run for stat collection so don’t be too bothered with the methodology. You will notice some players don’t pop off the screen like you expect them to, namely LeBron, so it’s important to keep in mind that they had a secured position relatively early to other teams. Basically, winning to LeBron was not as important to the fringe playoff contenders, or teams that were gunning for preferred seeding. In addition, because this is Top 10 MVP candidates, Jimmy Butler is missing. Sorry Jimmy. I’m not too upset about this, as he had a smaller sample size relative to the others due to injury. During this process, I realized that clutch stats weren’t actually being collected from January 1st but rather the beginning of the season. This was an issue with NBA’s website, as I double checked that I had entered the right functions. All stats were collected from NBA’s website. So, standard stats are traced from January 1st. Clutch stats are traced from November 2019.
Clutch Stats: These are stats from the regular season where a players team had a 5-point difference or less, either ahead or behind, within the last 5 minutes of a game.
Real Ranking: This is a players real rank in unsorted categories. As mentioned, the stats sorted in this thread are meant to tell you about the difference a player makes in certain times for their team, but not too much about their skill in most categories. For example, Chris Paul’s Net Rating does not really change much with Clutch vs his Standard Net Rating. But that is not because he is a bad player or does not positively affect his team. Rather, it is a sign that he is always excellent. This is what you should be looking for in Real Ranking. Players who are always great, or poor, regardless of clutch or not.
Chart One - Players Ordered by Offensive Net Rating Difference in the Clutch: First, I wanted to look at the offensive difference a player had in the clutch compared to their normal performance. Offensive rating calculates an individual players efficiency at producing points for the offense. I took a players Clutch OffRTG and subtracted their Standard OffRTG. The stats below show which MVP candidates came alive in the clutch:

Players Ordered by Offensive Net Rating Difference in the Clutch	Difference	Clutch Offensive Net Rating (Real Ranking)	Offensive Rating (Real Ranking)
1. Pascal Siakam	+11.5	123.4 (1)	111.9 (7)
2. James Harden	+5.3	117.7 (5)	112.4 (6)
3. Chris Paul	+4.8	122.2 (2)	117.4 (3)
T4. Nikola Jokic	+1.2	115.6 (6)	114.4 (5)
T4. Giannis Antetokounmpo	+1.2	112.8 (7)	111.6 (T9)
6. Damian Lillard	+0.6	119.9 (3)	119.3 (2)
7. Kawhi Leonard	-0.9	119.4 (4)	120.3 (1)
8. Anthony Davis	-3.8	107.8 (8)	111.6 (T9)
9. LeBron James	-5.0	106.3 (9)	111.3 (10)
10. Luka Doncic	-15.7	100.4 (10)	116.1 (4)

Takeaways: Pascal Siakam and the Raptors came alive in the clutch big time last year. Later in this thread, you’ll see how much of that is actually his own work, having the biggest TS% jump of any player in this thread, with the second highest Clutch TS% overall.
Chris Paul led his team to the third highest Offensive Rating mentioned, and somehow made them better in do or die situations.
Dame and Kawhi don’t make the same dramatic jumps, but maintain the dominant offensive consistency needed during crunch time to still be amongst the best in the league.
Giannis and the Bucks, though, are slightly middling during both the Clutch and Standard Offensive situations.
Luka Doncic has by far and away the worst Offensive Rating in the Clutch, with a -15.7 drop, 10 less than LeBron who’s second to last ahead of him. We’ll explore this more later in the thread.
Chart Two - Players Ordered by Defensive Net Rating Difference in the Clutch: Conversely, I wanted to take a similar look at which players came alive defensively in the clutch. Defensive ratings used here are meant to measure an individual players efficiency at preventing the other team from scoring points. The lower rating the better, so these ranks are sorted by who made the most drastic defensive jump in the clutch. A negative number is good.

Players Ordered by Defensive Net Rating Difference in the Clutch	Difference	Clutch Defensive Net Rating (Real Ranking)	Defensive Net Rating (Real Ranking)
1. Nikola Jokic	-15.6	97.5 (5)	113.1 (8)
2. James Harden	-12.8	96.6 (2)	109.4 (7)
T3. Giannis Antetokoumpo	-10.6	85.7 (1)	96.6 (1)
T3. Anthony Davis	-10.6	97.6 (6)	108.2 (5)
5. Chris Paul	-10.4	96.9 (3)	107.3 (4)
6. Luka Doncic	-7.2	106.3 (9)	113.2 (9)
7. Kawhi Leonard	-6.7	101.8 (T7)	108.2 (6)
8. Damian Lillard	-3.3	115.0 (10)	118.3 (10)
9. LeBron James	-2.4	101.8 (T7)	104.2 (3)
10. Pascal Siakam	+1.1	104.5 (8)	103.4 (2)

Takeaways: Pascal Siakam with the Raptors have the second-best standard defensive rating with him on the floor but are the only team that didn’t elevate their defensive game in the clutch. This is unfortunate because they were able to do dramatically better on offense. To be fair to Siakam, the 104.5-103.4 range is not horrible, but it does say something about the Raptors and Siakam’s inability to elevate their defense when they needed it most.
Dame and the Blazers are nuclear on offense, but Chernobyl on defense. By far the worst defensive stats here.
On the flip side, Giannis apparently is a defensive god with the Bucks, leading in both clutch Defensive Net Rating and Defensive Net Rating.
Harden and the Rockets small ball somehow come away with second best Clutch Defensive Rating, further destroying the narrative that Harden is a bad defender.
Speaking of going against narratives, the Nuggets and Jokic make this massive crunch time jump from one of the worst in the league to one of the best. It's interesting to compare how moderate Kawhi's Clippers change was. From that WCF Semi-Finals series, these drastic changes and crunch time lockdowns are what swung the series back to Denver when their backs were against the wall.
Once again, Chris Paul takes a great game, and makes it better, but this time on the defensive end.
Finally, it is important not to be distracted by LeBron’s low rated differential here. 104.2 to 101.8 are both excellent defensive ratings.
Chart Three Players Ordered by On/Off Net Rating Difference: This chart here is the only one that is devoid of any clutch factor. This is a players teams’ Net Rating with them on the floor subtracted by their team’s performance off the floor. From this, we can infer how much of an impact each player had for their squad. The Real Rankings for Net Rating-Off are ordered backwards. The worse a team looks with them off the court, the better a player looks.

Players Ordered by On/Off Net Rating Difference	On/Off Net Rating Difference	Net Rating-On (Real Ranking)	Net Rating-Off (Real Ranking)
1. Chris Paul	+18.7	+10.1 (3)	-8.6 (1)
2. Giannis Antetokounmpo	+17.3	+15.0 (1)	-2.3 (4)
3. Kawhi Leonard	+13.6	+11.8 (2)	-1.8 (5)
4. LeBron James	+8.6	+7.0 (4)	-1.6 (6)
5. Damian Lillard	+5.8	+1.0 (10)	-4.8 (2)
6. James Harden	+5.6	+3.0 (7)	-2.6 (3)
7. Pascal Siakam	+4.5	+8.5 (4)	+4.0 (9)
8. Nikola Jokic	+2.5	+1.2 (9)	-1.3 (7)
9. Luka Doncic	-0.3	+2.9 (8)	+3.2 (8)
10. Anthony Davis	-2.2	+3.4 (6)	+5.6 (10)

Takeaways: Chris Paul meant everything to the Thunder. They are nothing without him. It has been known that the depth of that team was a problem, but they probably should have considered playing Paul 48 minutes a game. They should have considered cloning Chris Paul. They should have signed Cliff Paul.
The Blazers probably should have done the same 48 minutes a game strategy with Dame if they wanted even a chance to win a game. That pitiful Blazers Net Rating-Off is not a surprise to anyone who’s familiar with the Blazers injury woes. Sadly for Dame, +1.0 Net Rating-On is the worst of any player here, barely managing to scrape by. This isn’t too shocking considering the Blazers had the worst record of any team discussed here at 35-39. Without Lillard, the Blazers plummet. It turns out that having Mario Hezonja as your sixth man translates to losing basketball.
Next, Giannis shows that he means everything to the Bucks. It’s somewhat surprising in retrospect, just looking these stats, that the only game the Heat were able to take from them was the one Giannis went out with an injury. Obviously, as an avid Heat watcher throughout the regular season, these stats don’t give you the heads up to the fact that no team in the NBA was better equipped to stop him than the Heat. But Giannis’ impact for the Bucks is undeniable. He has the defense. He needs to lock in and conquer the offensive side of the game.
Both Kawhi and LeBron, paired with star teammates, show that they are the alpha dogs in town. For anybody curious, Paul George has a difference of +7.0, but the Clippers don’t fall into the negative like they do when Kawhi is sitting.
Pascal Siakam’s +4.0 Net Rating-Off speaks heavily to the Raptors depth, but they still improve the teams quality when he’s on the floor very well, all the way to the 4th highest Net Rating-On when he’s checked in.
Poor Anthony Davis, who has a solid +3.4 when he’s on the floor, sees the Lakers jump to a +5.6 when he’s off. I suppose this is a side effect of having LeBron as a teammate, who skews his stats through dominant leadership. I don’t feel too bad for Davis. Having great teammates is a good problem to have. And he is still decidedly positive.
Finally, Luka Doncic off the court gives the Mavericks a better Net Rating. When he’s on the bench, the Mavs have a slightly worse offense, but better defense, and that’s what does it for Luka’s negative skewing. To me, this speaks heavily to the Mavericks depth combined with Rick Carslile’s coaching. Since January 1st in 42 games where Luka spent some time off the court, the Mavs without Luka had a 115.2 offensive rating. This would be the highest in the NBA of all teams over the same time. Kristaps Porzingis, Seth Curry, Jalen Brunson, Maxi Kleber, THJ, Dorian Finney-Smith, Dwight Powell, Trey Burke, J.J. Barea, Boban, and Delon Wright might very well be the best offensive depth in the league when healthy. Interestingly, during the mentioned time frame, Kristaps Porzingis has an excellent +6.9 On/Off differential compared to Luka’s -0.3, and the Mavericks Off Court Net Rating for Kristaps nearly breaks even at +0.1. Kristaps really unlocked his game after a rocky post-injury start to the season, but he is still trending towards stardom if his health allows him.
Chart Four - Players Ordered by Clutch Net Rating Difference subtracted by Net Rating On/Off Difference: This chart takes a players Net Rating in the Clutch and the previously analyzed Standard Net Rating of Players. The players who come alive in the clutch relative to their usual self rise in these rankings, while those that faulter fall.

Players Ordered by Clutch Net Rating Difference subtracted by Net Rating On/Off Difference	Difference	Clutch Net Rating Difference (Real Rank)	Net Rating Difference (Real Rank)
1. Nikola Jokic	+15.7	+18.2 (5)	+2.5 (8)
2. James Harden	+15.5	+21.1 (3)	+5.6 (6)
3. Pascal Siakam	+14.4	+18.9 (4)	+4.5 (7)
4. Anthony Davis	+12.4	+10.2 (7)	-2.2 (10)
5. Giannis Antetokounmpo	+9.8	+27.1 (1)	+17.3 (2)
6. Chris Paul	+6.6	+25.3 (2)	+18.7 (1)
7. Kawhi Leonard	+4.0	+17.6 (6)	+13.6 (3)
8. Damian Lillard	-1.0	+4.8 (8)	+5.8 (8)
9. LeBron James	-4.1	+4.5 (9)	+8.6 (4)
10. Luka Doncic	-6.2	-5.9 (10)	-0.3 (9)

Takeaways: It’s no secret that Jokic and the Nuggets are clutch, and as we’ve reviewed, it’s because they get better on defense when they need to, while maintaining the solid offensive consistency that the big man is known for.
Harden takes a huge jump in the clutch, improving both offense and defense dramatically when needed, being second in differential in both categories.
Pascal takes a jump, but unlike those ahead of him, he does it exclusively through offensive dominance, while being the only player to take a (slight) step back on defense. Siakam more than doubled second place offensive differential player James Harden and it shows its impact here.
Anthony Davis, who heavily trailed LeBron in On/Off net rating, seemingly takes the reign from LeBron in crunch time, elevating his game defensively.
A reoccurring theme in this thread is that Giannis and Chris Paul seemingly mean everything to their teams, and it is glaringly obvious here. Though only 5th and 6th in differential respectively, they are first and second in real Clutch Net Rating, after being second and first in Standard Net Rating. It is hard to elevate your game when you are already a god.
Kawhi doesn’t drastically improve his game compared to others, but going upwards from a +13.6 to a +17.6 Clutch Net Rating deserves applause.
Both Dame and LeBron are negative relative to their Standard Net Rating, but are both positives on the floor regardless.
Doncic, however, takes a negative Standard Net Rating and makes it worse, with an appalling -5.9 Clutch Net Rating, the only player on this list with a negative in the category, and it isn’t even close. Remember, this year the Mavericks had the most efficient offense in NBA history, owning an incredible offensive rating of 115.8. Yet in clutch situations, their offensive rating falls to 93.9, the second worst in the league this season. This issue will be examined below.
Chart Five - Players Ordered by True Shooting % Difference in the Clutch: The chart below takes a players TS% in the Clutch and subtracts their Standard TS%. While the previous charts say much about a players team and how they impact them, this is chart highlights one of the most personal stats possible. In the clutch, can this player get a bucket?

Players Ordered by True Shooting % Difference in the Clutch	TS% Differential	Clutch TS% (Real Rank)	Standard TS% (Real Rank)
1. Pascal Siakam	+8.0%	63.3% (2)	55.3% (10)
2. Chris Paul	+5.2%	67.0% (1)	61.8% (4)
3. James Harden	-1.6%	59.2% (4)	60.8% (7)
4. Nikola Jokic	-2.0%	60.5% (3)	62.7% (2)
5. Giannis Antetokounmpo	-2.7%	58.7% (5)	61.4% (5)
6. Anthony Davis	-5.7%	56.5% (6)	62.2% (3)
7. Kawhi Leonard	-6.3%	54.6% (8)	60.9% (6)
8. Damian Lillard	-8.6%	55.8% (7)	64.4% (1)
9. Luka Doncic	-11.6%	45.0% (9)	56.6% (9)
10. LeBron James	-14.3%	44.3% (10)	58.6% (8)

Takeaways: Pascal Siakam takes a dramatic jump, going from the worst Standard TS% in the pool to the second best, with a scorching 63.3% Clutch TS%. I said earlier that his offensive jump seen in the first chart was due to nobody but himself, and this jump proves it. He becomes an offensive torch for the Raptors.
Chris Paul, though, somehow ascends from a phenomenal 61.8% to an even better 67.0% in the Clutch. Throughout collecting these stats, I was questioning whether the Thunders poor depth was creating a statistical domino effect that made CP3 look better than he really is. No. CP3 is better than you think he is.
Harden and Jokic maintain great consistency in the clutch, barely slumping in do-or-die situations, with Jokic specifically impressing by staying in plus-60% TS% range.
Giannis takes a dip here, one of the first times we see a break from the paralleled seasons of him and CP3, but this 58.7% shouldn’t be too shocking. While he and the Bucks were one of the few to have a positive offensive differential from Standard to Clutch, his Standard Offensive Rating of 111.6 and Clutch Offensive Rating of 112.8 are both average relative to the league, and below average to the others compared here. In any case, his TS% remains above the league average of 56.3%.
AD, who I have somewhat identified as the Lakers closer, also stays above this threshold.
Kawhi however takes a major hit, going from 60.9% to 54.6%. This is the first time Kawhi has looked bad in any of these charts, despite a slight dip mentioned earlier, his Offensive Rating in the Clutch was 4th best of any of the players here, at an awesome 119.4. This -6.3% is surprising but may have more to do with the relatively small sample size of his, as only 22 games for Kawhi went into the clutch this season.
Dame Time takes a huge hit here, going from an MVP candidate best 64.4% to a sub-league average 55.8% during the clutch. This isn’t too shocking necessarily, as having the reputation for being one of the league’s most clutch players, on a team without much other active talent, meant Dame often got unpunishably doubled at the logo during close games. Still it is strange to see this regression from Dame Time.
Finally, unlike the magical Siakam, Doncic and LeBron take roughly average TS% and make them way worse. Both are remarkably poor FT shooters, but that doesn’t explain the disappearance of their shots. How does this effect their teams? We certainly know that LeBron is likely the best player in basketball, and Luka finished fourth in MVP voting – behind only Giannis, James, and Harden, ahead of everybody else in this thread. So are these guys elevating their teams in other ways? Are they still winning games when their shot has disappeared?
Chart Six - Players Ordered by Clutch Win Percentage: This chart is probably the most important one here when it comes to the clutch. Offensive, Defensive, Net Ratings, and True Shooting Percentages are very helpful stats, but they fall short of telling you the most important thing about basketball. They say nothing about winning a basketball game. Games listed are those in which players took part in, which explains why the Lakers duo have different records.

Players Ordered by Clutch Win Percentage	Clutch Win Percentage	Clutch Wins/Losses/Games Played
1. Giannis Antetokounmpo	76.2%	16-5 (21)
2. Anthony Davis	70.4%	19-8 (27)
3. Pascal Siakam	70.0%	21-9 (30)
T4. Nikola Jokic	67.4%	29-14 (43)
T4. Chris Paul	67.4%	29-14 (43)
6. LeBron James	66.7%	20-10 (30)
7. Kawhi Leonard	63.6%	14-8 (22)
8. James Harden	63.3%	19-11 (30)
9. Damian Lillard	60.0%	21-14 (35)
10. Luka Doncic	45.2%	14-17 (31)

Takeaways: Giannis and the Bucks were great at closing, as well as everybody within the top six.
CP3 led his team to winning over 2 out of 3 games that went into the clutch. The Joker had the exact same games played as CP3, and same record, highlighting how much better he and the Nuggets got in the clutch. Both Jokic and CP3 led in clutch games played at 43.
Pascal, through his offensive explosions at the end of the game, had a third best winning percentage, winning 70% in 30 clutch games.
As it turns out, LeBron’s TS% was never an issue when it mattered most. Affecting the game in other ways, both he and Davis both went over the finish line first in 2 out of 3 games that went into the clutch.
Kawhi’s drop is interesting. 63.6% is winning basketball, but barely, and he only had 22 clutch time appearances on the season. The single player here to have less appearances in the clutch? Giannis. Both would end up being second round bounces. Compared to LeBron’s 30 appearances, or Jokic’s 43, does this say something about the necessity to get more crunch time reps during the regular season?
James Harden, despite his impressive individual performance and convincing On/Off and Clutch Stats, only walked away with 63.3% of games that went into the crunch time. This, to me, says a lot about the players that surround him.
Dame, despite the Blazers best efforts of losing games while he takes a breather, still manages to walk away with 60.0%.
A 16.2% difference separates first place from ninth place, but the difference between Luka and ninth place is a massive 14.8% difference. The only player to finish negative in crunch time games on the season. Unlike LeBron, the poor crunch time TS% seeps through to these numbers, big time.
Final Takeaways: The way Chris Paul elevated the Thunder when on the court, and then his own game during the clutch, cannot be understated. Leading in Clutch TS%, Net Rating On/Off Differential, and finishing Top 5 in every mentioned stat category in this thread except for Clutch Net Rating to Net Rating On/Off Differential where he finished 6th with a +6.6, Paul showed that he was both clutch and that the Thunder lived through him. I never understood why he finished so high in MVP voting with the low 18/5/7 volume, but the impact is indisputable.
Giannis, from these stats, solidifies his case as the best defensive player in basketball. Elevating his team similarly to how Chris Paul does, only somewhat middling offense holds him back, as he does not really raise his offensive game in the clutch.
The opposite to Giannis is fellow African, Toronto Raptor Pascal Siakam. Siakam seemingly went nuclear during crunch time offensive situations, leading in Clutch Offensive Rating, Offensive Rating Differential, and TS% differential. But oddly, he and the Raptors were the only team to not make their defense better during crunch time. When I said opposite to Giannis, I meant it. Pascal takes great offense and makes it better, while Giannis takes great defense and makes it better. Both could still elevate the other end though, defensively for Siakam, and offensively for Giannis. I think Pascal can reach it, already holding the 2nd highest Standard Defensive Rating of any player mentioned here. In any case, I never realized Pascal was this clutch. Spicy P was red hot late in close games.
The absolute craziest thing about Pascal: if you read the important notes at the start of the tread you will know that the stats calculated are Post-January 1st Standard Stats over Clutch Stats from the entire regular season, due to a glitch in the NBA's website. So this means that Pascal's Standard Stats are from the points in the season where he actually regressed - as the unaccounted months of October, November, and December were all season highs for him in efficiency and points, notably regressing after a groin injury on December 19th. Knowing he was not as good Post-January, you would think the reason Pascal looks so great here is because I am accounting for all clutch performances over the regular season, meaning there might be a severe skew from the clutch games that includes his prime months of October, November, and December, right? Wrong. Post-January, Siakam was actually radically better in the clutch. Taking into account this Post-January parameter, Siakam takes the leading 123.4 Clutch Offensive Rating from this thread to an untouchable 133.3 Clutch Offensive Rating, and bringing the second leading Clutch TS% of 63.3% to a would-be leading 68.0% Clutch TS%, while increasing the amount of FGA's he took in the clutch per game. Purely unstoppable. Defensively however, we see a major drop in the questionable Clutch Defensive Ratings going from a stout 97.1 to a measly 109.3. So was this a fair trade? Absolutely. The Pre-January Clutch Net Rating for Siakam was +8.7 to a dominant +24.1, trailing only Giannis and Chris Paul. And how did it translate to the teams record? Pre-January the Raptors had 13 games go into the clutch, going a poor 7-6 (54%) in those contests. Post-January, when Siakam hit his clutch stride: the Raptors played 17 games that went down to the wire. They won 14 of those. 14-3 (82%) would be the only game to break the 80% threshold. To me this shows that he has a switch that he can still flip on when he needs to. The groin injury, combined with him literally not practicing at all during the suspended season, did Pascal no favors. But if he can recuperate going into next season... The East might be in trouble. Siakam is special.
For the Lakers duo, the stats are sightly obscured for a few reasons. One, they were in a comfortable position for a lot of the year. Two, having two superstars on the same team affects each other’s stats heavily. That said, we can see through their Real Rankings, solid Offensive and Defensive Ratings, Clutch Win%, and positive On/Off impacts, that the duo were still dominant even in times where they were comfortably placed in the standings.
Jokic and Harden with the Nuggets and Rockets both displayed consistent offense that got better when needed, and the ability to dramatically elevate their defensive play from the norm. They finish 1st and 2nd respectfully in Clutch Net Rating to Net Rating On/Off Differential, and both show that their teams need them on the court to stay positive.
Kawhi displayed much of the consistency seen with CP3 and Giannis, leading in Standard Offensive Rating, and going for a solid -6.7 Defensive Rating Differential. He also maintained the 3rd highest Net Rating On/Off Differential behind CP3 and Giannis, and the 2nd Net Rating-On behind Giannis. He also had the 2nd least amount of crunch time games played with 22 to Giannis’ 21. Could this have affected both the Bucks and Clippers playoff runs? Do teams benefit form these crunch time experiences? The data implies it. Still, an excellent and impactful season from Kawhi.
Next, Damian Lillard was an unsurprising offensive torch, with his 119.3 Standard Offensive Rating and 119.9 Clutch Offensive Rating finishing 2nd and 3rd in their respective categories. Highest amongst Standard TS% with 64.4%, things get a little iffy for Lillard when you see that his shooting dropped off to around league average in crunch time. In addition, he with the Blazers defense was dramatically the worst one talked about in this thread, being dead last in Clutch Defensive Rating and Standard Defensive Rating. His group low Net Rating-On of +1.0 makes sense with him and the Blazers having the by far the worst record on the season of any team discussed here at 35-39, the only team below 50% on the season. Still, this Net Rating-On is much better than the injury plagued Blazers second worst -4.8 Net Rating-Off when he was getting a breather.
Luka Doncic, in many ways, was the anti-Chris Paul. Luka finished above 5th in only a single stat mentioned in this thread. He, with the Mavericks, were the worst in the following categories: Clutch Net Rating, Net Rating Differential, Clutch Win Percentage, Clutch Offensive Rating, and Offensive Rating Differential. He finished second to last in the following categories: Net Rating On/Off Differential, Standard TS%, Clutch TS%, Clutch Defensive Rating, and Standard Defensive Rating. He was the only mentioned player to have a negative Clutch Net Rating and Clutch Win Percentage, and one of only two players whose teams had higher Net Ratings while he was sitting on the bench. The redeeming parts of this stat collection for Luka is the 4th best Standard Offensive Rating, behind only Kawhi, CP3, and Dame. Another positive takeaway was that 6th place -7.2 Defensive Rating Differential, which means he and the Mavericks do improve in the clutch defensively. However, going to a 106.3 Clutch Defensive Rating from a 113.3 Standard Defensive Rating is still 9th of the candidates mentioned, ahead of only Damian Lillard’s Blazers. This was one of the more surprising takeaways for me. Doncic finished ahead of Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis, Chris Paul, Damian Lillard, Nikola Jokic, and Pascal Siakam in MVP voting, and snubbed all of these players but AD for a spot on the NBA first team. He only had a 7th seed playoff team, and seemingly is not playing a winning brand of basketball relative to what his contemporaries are doing. The well-rounded near triple-double statlines on the season, as well as being young, carried him to those season end accolades. The Mavericks, as seen in this thread, have some of the best depth in the league, and Doncic has a brilliant Coach in Rick Carlisle to help him develop his game. If the young Doncic wants to be a winner in the NBA, he needs to be the leader he his, and become a better closer for his team. We saw it in Game 4 against the Clippers. It was fantastic. But we need it on a more consistent basis.

2nd place odds calculator video

To work out the return on any bet, simply enter the Odds and the Stake. For example, if you were betting £100 on a 9-4 chance, enter: Odds = 9 (to) 4, Stake = 100, then click 'Calculate' The Instant Bet Calculator will then show the return on a: Win only bet Winning each way bet (1/4 odds) Winning each way bet (1/4 odds) Winning Place bet (1/4 Each Way Single Bet Calculator. Total Stake Odds E/W Odds Result Use the Each Way return calculator to work out your winnings online for all sports. Free, easy to use and mobile friendly bet calculator. This means that the each way ‘place’ odds for the race are calculated at 1/4. It also shows that places 1 and 2 in the race qualify for the ‘place’ parts in this race. In big horse racing events like Cheltenham Festival , you will typically find that there are 3-to-5 places paid. A place means finishing either first, or in one of a number of places – typically 2 nd, 3 rd or 4 th. Make sure you check the place terms before making your bet. The place terms for your bet include, the number of places the bookmaker will pay out on, and the fraction of the odds you will get if the horse does place. Usually 1/4 or 1/5. Some bookmakers enable you to enter the total stake amount instead, so if you place a $5 each-way bet you are actually wagering $2.50 on the selection to win and $2.50 for the selection to place. How to use this calculator. Enter the win odds and the place odds (either directly (e.g. 3.50) or as a fraction of the win odds (e.g. 1/3). Use our free bet calculator to calculate the cost and winning return of any bet type. Our tool calculates win odds and the cost of your bet. Bet Calculator Work out potential winnings for any type of bet or check winning bets have been settled correctly with our bet calculator. Enter your stake, bet type, odds (fractional or decimal), place terms (if applicable) and then hit the calculate button. Note that the odds are in digital notation, where 2.0 means "evens", 3.0 means "2/1", 1.5 means "1/2" and so on. Note also that the place odds shown are likely to be shorter than true odds on short-priced runners and longer than true odds on outsiders. Place: A fifth of 10/1 is 2/1 (10 divided by 5) so the place part of the bet is paid as £5 at 2/1 = £15 (£5 x 2 = £10 plus your £5 stake back). Total Return: WIN + PLACE = £55 plus £15 = £70 If your horse finished in places 2nd to 6th then you just get the place returns of £15, while the win part of the bet would have lost.

2nd place odds calculator top

Bet and lay 2 Betfair place markets from betandlay.co.uk ...

How to calculate positions in MS Excel http://bit.ly/1zvFp4s Calculate your accumulator/parlays quickly and easily. Add and remove by simply selecting which odds to include. Ideal for horse racing... H I love calculators and i love Floof so heres a videoEdited by https://www.youtube.com/user/TheMadz2012Twitter https://twitter.com/theodd1soutWebsite htt... How-To :: SingaporePools App - Multiple Bet Calculator Trade across 2 Betfair horse racing markets using an Excel spreadsheet to show the staking & profit or loss.Bet in the "Normal" place market, and lay in the ... In this video I Showed the best 3 Games from When Me, ZexRow and Mackwood placed 2nd in the Daily Trio Cup and Won $1,000, If you Enjoyed the Video Please be... Visual explanation of how to calculate the odds of winning the lottery using probability and using combination theory.How to Calculate the Odds of Losing At ... In this episode I explain the calculations on how to place a lay pre race and trade off in running for a guaranteed profit. In this episode the calculations ... #BrainGames #ForKids #YouTubeKids #UCo_cpz512to1L29XwuZ1oug #riddles #EmojiPuzzles #FindTheDifferenceYou have 30 seconds to solve each puzzle, there are 10 p...

Instant bet calculator - work out your winnings

2nd place odds calculator

2nd place odds calculator - win

Matched Betting Extra Place Horse Racing - January 21 Profits - £4,707 on top of Full Time Job

What is a ‘place’ in horse racing?

What is an ‘Extra Place’ in horse racing?

Time travelling Imperial Guards: Historical adventure comics now with 100% more badhistory.