# Curriculum vitae Canonical page: https://gamemathemagics.com/#/cv ## Christian Fenner Mathematician · Exact solvers, optimization and probability fenner.d.christian@gmail.com·702-366-4531·Las Vegas, NV Download PDF ↓ Mathematician building exact solvers and optimization systems, replacing simulation and search with closed-form solutions and packaging them as tools people without the mathematics can use. Published original research on constructive reel strip theory; has built the same solvers for pull-tab games at production scale. Open to technical mathematics roles broadly. Game mathematics and probability are where the passion is. ### Published research #### Existence and Construction of Reel Strips from Mathematical Specifications 2026 Preprint · Zenodo · doi:10.5281/zenodo.22139239 - First constructive theory for targeting RTP, hit rate and volatility simultaneously. Feasibility is computable from the specification alone, so you know whether targets are achievable before any strip is built. - The current state of the art (Kamanas et al., 2021) searches count vectors for RTP alone via metaheuristic optimization, and lists independent hit-rate and volatility control as open future work. This paper solves that open problem by construction. - Read it in the browser — 59 pages, navigable, no download needed. ### Independent game models #### Jackpot Climb: Treasure Temple 2026 Original 3×5 ways-to-win slot · designed independently - 95.8% RTP across four interacting components. Base game with compounding stacked-wild multipliers (Temple Shake); a hold-and-spin vertical climb with lava destruction and cliff-hanger survival (Jackpot Climb); locking-wild free spins with conditional reelsets modelled as an absorbing Markov chain (Amazing Absorbers); and a progressive jackpot. - Full reel strips, paytable, par sheet, sensitivity analysis and analytical verification — every component checked in closed form against simulation. - Play it here , with the math model and the analytical derivation viewable inside the cabinet. ### Experience #### Game Mathematician → Game Design Systems Engineer Mar 2025 – Jun 2026 Arrow International · Las Vegas, NV (remote) Promoted within the first year; compensation more than doubled. A custom role and career path were created around these contributions. - 2 progressives in 5 years → one on every game, 10 seconds each. A real-time constrained optimization solver for contribution-rate design. Users define target probability curves visually; the solver recalculates rates over truncated-geometric survival distributions with moment matching, and auto-generates verification proofs and regulatory compliance documentation. - Replaced a senior mathematician’s Monte Carlo process with instant exact computation. An exact probability engine for stochastic trajectories using absorbing Markov chains and discrete convolution, plus a boolean event engine for compound queries simulation cannot answer. Shifted design focus onto per-session revenue and time-on-device. - Concept to working prototype: months → day one. An end-to-end design pipeline: feature mechanics wired as node graphs generating a visual scripter and simulator, tiered parameters defined on a grid, tickets unwrapped into any target distribution by a custom knapsack solver. - Hours of manual Excel rebalancing → ten minutes, no math background needed. An interactive distribution editor that preserves exact expected-value and hit-rate invariants during freehand editing via atomic probability-mass transfer, with a volatility slider driven by max-entropy Boltzmann fitting and Newton–Raphson moment matching. - 10–15% productivity lift across ~100 employees. End-to-end automation across CI/CD, version control and cloud storage with computer-vision detection, auto-generating documentation that had been a large manual burden. #### Actuarial Analyst Jan 2024 – Feb 2025 AFLAC · Remote - 50× faster sensitivity analysis. Stochastic differential equations replacing the prior simulation-based method. - Causal inference models in R and Python evaluating policy features and rate changes through counterfactual analysis. - Built the direct-to-consumer data pipeline architecture and the monthly exposure tables for experience studies, in SQL and Snowflake, with a Streamlit front end. ### Tools built All four run live on this site — open one and use it. - Maestro — full game-math design platform: node-graph authoring, knapsack-balanced tickets, live simulator, self-describing export. - Loom — reel strip construction: builds strips from target specifications using the co-location matrix framework from the paper. - Foresight — player-experience query engine: exact compound event probabilities with full session economics. - Runway — optimal play advisor: bet sizing, denomination mixing and stop-loss strategy for any distribution. ### Education #### B.S. Mathematics 2023 University of Oklahoma · 4.0 GPA - All undergraduate mathematics completed in two years, plus 27 graduate units, roughly a master’s worth of coursework. - Tutored every subject at the university math center, including classes I was taking at the time. Students worked out informally that they could turn up during my Calculus 2 hours and get help on stochastic processes. The part I liked most was dropping the formulas and explaining the problem itself, so people understood it rather than memorized it. - Self-studied Calculus BC as a high-school sophomore, two to three years ahead of track, then carried straight on through Calculus 3 and beyond. - Actuarial exams: SOA P, FM, FAM and SRM, plus CAS MAS-1. All five passed within one year. ### Technical Languages PythonC#C++JavaScriptTypeScriptSQLR Methods Constrained optimizationAbsorbing Markov chainsDiscrete convolutionL-BFGSNewton–RaphsonReverse-mode ADBranch and boundHierarchical knapsackMonte CarloSDEsCausal inference Tools Excel (PyWin32 COM)Visual StudioSnowflakePower BIGitNode.jsReact ### Actuarial exams SOA PFMFAMSRM CAS 12MAS-1 Five exams, all passed within one year: probability, financial mathematics, statistics and predictive analytics.