“Everything is a game for him, and the odds are always on his side,” Powers adds.

And even with the odds in his favor, Palmer is clearly willing to do whatever it takes to attain victory—including dedicating the majority of last January-term to becoming the best in the world at SailX, an online sailing video game.

“It’s kind of like a tactic simulator so it’s pretty cool,” Palmer describes. “I started playing it the winter of my sophomore year when someone showed it to me, and then I just played it an awful lot—way more than I should have.”

After playing the game for two to three hours a day over the break, Palmer finally reached the pinnacle of SailX players worldwide.

“I mean there are guys in the middle of nowhere who will just play SailX and don’t do anything with their lives,” Powers says. “But somehow Alan still became number one.”

With his goal accomplished, Palmer made a strategic exit from the online sailing world.

“I could really only go down from there,” Palmer says. “So I retired on top.”

Nowadays Palmer focuses his competitive spirit on FIFA (and real sailing, of course), along with the position at J.P. Morgan he will begin after graduation this spring.

But if Wall Street doesn’t work out, Palmer’s roommates have another plan in mind.

“If I were to go to Vegas, I would take Alan with me to ask him what to do,” Powers says. “I feel like he would know how to cheat the casinos out of millions and million of dollars.”

He basically did it in CS50, so who’s to say it won’t work in the real world?

—Staff writer Madeleine Smith can be reached at smith21@college.harvard.edu.