[M. Bison]

I thought I should clear up a few things.

I'm not sure how reserved slots work.  If I join a full server, does it automatically kick a non-reserved slot holder out?  Or, am I denied because there's an AFK reserved slot holder sitting in Spectator?

Neither of these assumptions are correct. The reserved slot works in the following way, two slots are reserved for admins or other selected users, and regardless of whether one of these users are connected or not, the slots are still inaccessible to the general public and will result in a kick on connect. The reserved slots are only usable when all public slots are inuse and when there are some reserved slots available. If a user connects on a reserved slot and someone on a public slots leaves, then the user will then be pushed onto a public slot (i think, it could also just keep them on the reserved slot).

Correction, I do have a reserved slot, but I must still wait to connect when the server is full.

There's a bug in SRCDS which has messed up the slot count by slightly increasing it, however, this does not have an effect on the slots themselves. You'll have to do "connect IPORT" in console to get into the server as any attempt to do it through the server menu will likely bring up the server full dialog. The reason being that the servers menu on client tries to compute whether you'll fit by obtaining the current slot count and the maximum slots. And as you can guess, if the server is reporting 42/42, then the client won't even try to connect. The "connect IPORT" command on the other hand, completely circumvents this client-side checking, and tries to connect regardless.

If you're wondering why the client does these checks before trying to connect, the reason is that it can request this information packet several times per second, whereas actually trying to connect to the server is a lengthy and slow process that can take several seconds to complete. It's only there to make your life less frustrating, or in this case more frustrating, as the SRCDS bug has messed up the slot count. Although, if you think about it, it's sort of like free reserved slots for public players, since the last few slots can't be used without the connect command, and so most public players won't be aware that they can get in by using it.

PS: Popular Maps #2 isn't actually full until it says 48/42. This is due to the slot count being messed up by 6. When the servers activity drops sometime later, I'll restart the server and check if there are any available updates which fix the bug.  :o