The game was different back then and money was harder to come by and that created a certain balance if you will in terms of leveling and boosting stats.
King_Ace was an amazing guy. But he certainly didn't dominate the highest rank and highest level always. Rank 18 to 22 was held by me for a long time. We competed for highest level as well and if I remember, I held highest level for awhile as well. Regardless, King_Ace was a legend in his time, as a player.
The reason some of us gave up on the game, is because how accessible money became because of the bookie and later the stock market.
I remember very well, the month before BB and Sif got top level, the entire HOF of highest level players were in the hospital non-stop everyday. We knew someone was power-leveling and we knew the bookie was responsible for that. They bought disgusting amounts of stat enhance boosters and then they started leveling. I had spoken to Sif, Sif as a matter of fact, when he got level 100, he gave everyone (from my understanding) in the HOF billions as a compensation for using us to level. That was really nice of him. But it made us realize that something was off with the game since they were able to have so much money. Sif had explained me that he knew soccer (or football as it's called) very well and he cleaned up making bookie bets on that... billions, maybe a trillion or two... I never got the exact number.
I had discussed this with King_Ace at the time and that was the beginning of the end of some of us old timers. The game took another direction, (it seems it was for the better since TC is alive and well) but it was something that not everyone was able to adjust to. We resorted to gambling to try and make money to keep up, obviously King_Ace had a problem, he would even ask me for money, which I gave him a couple of billions at the time to help him out, but I wasn't doing well myself... so eventually he blew everything and was done. I didn't, I kept a lot of my cash, but was never truly interested in being competitive in TC after that moment and eventually quit, till recently made a very casual return.
For those who (like myself) enjoy reading about the great players. Enjoy. Someone tell RobinHood to unblock me, the feud is over, its been over 15 years already and I might need another osteopath appointment soon.
Or at the very minimum, if someone is hospitalized and a bounty was claimed on him, make it so that the chance of reviving this person drops significantly more with every additional bounty claimed on him within a given time frame.
This betting event should be cancelled or the draw should be dismissed and the win regarding the bet should go to Canada. This controversy clearly altered the betting outcome.