First. I started off with a $2M port - just like everyone else.
Second. I've been playing since 1998.... Crazy - I know.
Third. When I started playing, we could not short any stocks or star bonds..no such thing was available.
Fouth. The maximum shares we could buy back then was 10,000 shares of any movie stock.
In those days, movie stocks were halted on Fridays when movies opened - awaiting "numbers" to come out Saturday mornings. If you held a stock long and it bombed at the box office - you lost H$. Period. If you held a stock long and it did well - HSX adjusted the stock way up - a big "payday."
There was never a "coordinated" effort on the part of us to buy "this" stock or "that" stock. DMac in those days "fined" any port 25% if they were caught "cheating."
There was no Kaigee in those days to tell us which starbonds were adjusting - we had to figure things out on our own. Kudos to players like him who help us all now!
I did not sit on HSX day and night buying and selling play money stocks to build my port...it was a hard "slog" even until maximum shares were increased to 25K, then 100K shares. I traded a few stocks daily when I logged on...played Classic Cash, etc. (which wasn't around when I started) and hoped I won $50K H$...I felt I hit the 'jackpot' if I won once in awhile. I also had a family and a 'real' job so I didn't have time to play HSX night and day - some maybe players did, but I doubt the majority of us could do that.
Today my port is not as huge as some of the Billionaires here...but if you look at 'who' is in the top 300 LTD, you'll find many of us started back in 1998 or around that time - playing for many years. Some players now have built their ports faster than others of us could do - since we can now short stocks and other things that HSX has done over the years.
But to say that all the billionaires 'cheated' their way to where they are is unfair.
As EF Hutton used to say, most of us: "We earned it."
P.S. Incidentally, several years ago Grory...who is now #3 LTD (used to be #1 till she retired) many players accused her of cheating to get to #1 LTD... so she opened a brand new port at $2M and BUILT IT to over $1B in a year...she did it by daytrading stocks, AND she did NOT spend day and night doing it - she wanted to show traders that it COULD be done. So please don't be so quick to judge how billionaires got to where they are.