thanks always thought there must be a better way than comparing values before and after typeconversion

how does p4 win this
dice_game([(1, 3), (2, 6), (6, 3), (5, 6), (2, 2), (5, 6), (5, 4), (1, 3), (5, 6)]), 'p4')

p4 has a value of 11 and player1 and player8 have the same value, and the tiebreaker doesnt work there ...

its not slower because you have one value that holds the current highest instead of a list with perhaps hundreds of numbers and then you have to search through that list for max value when u return it and python is known for lists being slow at a certain amount of data