*pound* 5

Thank you Plank, it was my first national and I'm glad for that
I had a great time, I improved more in that weekend than I have in any given months of playtime

The venue was amazing, there was no hurt for TV's (just short of the 1 tv per 2 person ideal)
The transportation from airport to venue was great, no hassle there
You gave more than enough time to plan for me to make it out there, and I really appreciate all the work you put into making this a wonderful experience for all who came out.

I wish that I could have made it to more of your tournaments, but even so this one was amazing, PP's, AXE's, Armada's and Hax's performances should serve as inspiration to all up and coming, established, and veteran players that we're playing a game where anything can happen, where YOU can make anything happen.

With all that said, I would also like to add that I am deeply sorry for how things turned out with the prize money. We got a chance to briefly touch on the subject of the disappointing turnout, and while I expected that it was smaller than you expected did not realize how much of a snowball effect it would cause.

I am disappointed in our community moreso than ever now, we like to compare our game to other games, claim it as underrated, praise it for it's depth complexity and ever evolving metagame and deny any claim that it's dying or fading away, but with *POUND*5 being the successor to the biggest melee tournament in history and having such a significant drop in attendance it really makes me question the direction our game is heading in.

I fully understand that our game is just that, a game, but I thought that as a community, our feelings toward it transcended those of other 'games'. 10+ years melee has been around, many of you have been playing it almost just as long as it's been out, granted, not competitively. But I thought that would hold some merit as far as dedication goes. *P*5 was announced over half a year in advance, Plank put in major work to see that there was no issues as far as housing goes, we had the venue all day and all night, ample TV's, the location was great as far as food goes, it wasn't crowded, I thought he did an amazing job putting together an 'underground' tournament. And this wasn't the first one either.

Now after all this, when **** hits the fan, he's a criminal? A bad guy? People are talking about suing him? It's disgusting. First of all if you didn't attend pound5 you are seriously in no position to voice your opinion on the situation, seeing as how you're part of the reason why it happened. I'm not saying you were obligated to go to the damn tournament, but it was most certainly within your ability to attend, you chose not to for reasons that I really don't care about, but the point is that you chose not to.

Am I saying that the people who trained hard for this tournament to win, and did just that, don't deserve their money? No, of course not. It's perfectly acceptable for them to expect to get paid for their talents & hardwork, but no one should have been relying on the prize money because nothing is guaranteed, so not receiving prize money from this tournament should not put anyone in a position worth suing over, much less suing one of our own.

Plank took a risk with this tournament, not something I agree with, but he did.
A risk that was not to benefit himself, but he did it for the community, he put together what he anticipated would be the largest (or close to it) tournament to date. And if you would just for a second imagine what it must have been like for Plank to see the marks he set not be met by a community who's general laziness, or lack of motivation, or whatever you want to call it, is becoming ever more apparent I think you might feel a touch of empathy.

Look back to the *pound* series, and ask anyone who attended and everyone, if not the vast majority will comment on how great it was. I've never heard a negative opinion on the overall experience of the pound series, or any national, regional, or local tournament for that matter. Because for most of us, when we go to these tournaments, it's not to win money. We're going because we enjoy playing the game, hanging out with people who share our common interest, learning, challenging ourselves to become better, getting to spend time with people who excel at this game and hear them talk about it. Hang with friends we've made through the game that we haven't seen in a while, catching up, having fun.

At least that's the way it is for me, and in my opinion the way it should be.
Now don't get me wrong, I have every intention of becoming the best melee player. I'd much rather win than lose, but that doesn't mean that I don't take away just as much from losing as I do winning.
I'm going for, as most people are, the experience and the social aspect of hanging out with the smash community.
*P*5 ran me $600+, and while I wish it could have been cheaper, I don't regret any dime I spent there because it was amazing.

Thank you plank, and shame on ya'll for turning your back so abruptly to someone who's put more work into this game & community than 99% of you can claim to.

Before a possible ****storm happens again, this needs to be a PM, not a topic. Thanks for the post tho 3.

Nicknyte said:

Before a possible ****storm happens again, this needs to be a PM, not a topic. Thanks for the post tho 3.

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I'm addressing the community as well as plank, so no.

I'm gonna throw in 2 cents.
I said this before in the previous thread.
Like 3 said,

" am disappointed in our community moreso than ever now, we like to compare our game to other games, claim it as underrated, praise it for it's depth complexity and ever evolving metagame and deny any claim that it's dying or fading away, but with *POUND*5 being the successor to the biggest melee tournament in history and having such a significant drop in attendance it really makes me question the direction our game is heading in."

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basically. Every other fighting game community in the world looks down on the smash community. Thats just how it is. They don't like us because we don't use arcade sticks or whatever/they don't think its that serious of a game.
Whatever. Thats another argument. But from what I've seen, they don't ever look at the positive things this community has. They always pick apart the negative aspects. And if you guys actually go about in suing plank, then holy cow talk back complete negative backlash towards our community. You all claim you want to help the community grow and such, but its gonna even tougher to help the game grow if all we do is add onto the negative stigma. I mean its already tough to help grow a 10 year old game and brawl seems to not be doing so well either. MLG certainly didn't help you guys. They literally replaced brawl this season with absolutely nothing. How does that make you feel as a community? And if you go about in suing him? Wow. Yeah. As a community, we honestly don't need that to happen.

Although you fully expected prize money for winning, lets be real here. Its not gaurenteed especially at a tournament of this size which has pretty large venue fees. This sorta thing happens ALL the time and even in the SRK community and other gaming communities. I've seen it happen multiple times and its happened PLENTY of times in the smash community. Basically this is how it usually goes down and Pound 5 is no exception and neither is the smash community.:

1. Someone in the community steps up to host an amazing event. Everyone comes and enjoys it, but attendance is not as high as they expect it.
2. The TO, to dig himself out of a financial hole, after using up all of the venue fees has to use the prize money to pay off the venue/whatever. Seriously, it would be pretty ****ed up to leave plank in a financial hole like that after all the hard work he put into pound. Like I said before, if you came to this tournament 100% expecting guaranteed money then you are a fool. Its the expected outcome after winning, yes, but to if you went and used money because you expected a huge check to come in from this then that was pretty foolish of you and no one is to blame but yourself. **** happens. And this is a clear example of **** happening. Nothing in life, especially in a situation like this is gaurenteed.
3. Everyone gets mad. Gives the TO a bad rating. The community pretty much shuns that TO and that TO goes away forever even though he came in with 100% intentions and everyone that attended the event had a blast and barely any complaints.

Now this isn't it always works. Like OC3 and SNES, the TO sometimes legitimately just walks away with the money. But obviously Pound 5 wasn't a case like this and I think its pretty petty and immature to honestly want to sue Plank for throwing an awesome, while not perfect event.

I came. I had a blast and I fully appreciate plank for hosting.

Those are just my thoughts.

Laijin said:

Now this isn't it always works. Like OC3 and SNES, the TO sometimes legitimately just walks away with the money. But obviously Pound 5 wasn't a case like this and I think its pretty petty and immature to honestly want to sue Plank for throwing an awesome, while not perfect event.

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what happened at SNES? i found out earlier about OC3, but now snes has my attention

Calvo819 said:

what happened at SNES? i found out earlier about OC3, but now snes has my attention

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I'm only basing this off of what I heard. But since I heard multiple people mention it(especially in the P5 thread), I've come to the conclusion that it probably did happen.
Basically, the TO didn't pay anyone and walked away with the prize money.

I don't understand these posts that sugar-coat him as a person. If he was truly a good person, he would find a way to resolve this instead of running from his problems.

Yes, he worked hard to make the event possible, but that doesn't mean he should be excused. He ****ed up, and what's most disappointing to me is that international players actually came to this tournament and we were supposed to represent ourselves as a country. This wasn't how it should have went down at Pound 5.

ADHD said:

I don't understand these posts that sugar-coat him as a person. If he was truly a good person, he would find a way to resolve this instead of running from his problems.

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Yea, if he were truly a good person he'd come up with 2k NP.

It's nothing to do with that, it's very cut and dry, he planned for more people, less people showed up, simply put there was not enough money being exchanged to pay out. It's not like he's hiding money, it's not there.

3 said:

Yea, if he were truly a good person he'd come up with 2k NP.

It's nothing to do with that, it's very cut and dry, he planned for more people, less people showed up, simply put there was not enough money being exchanged to pay out. It's not like he's hiding money, it's not there.

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He did have the money, he just used it to pay off his debts.

3 said:

Yea, if he were truly a good person he'd come up with 2k NP.

It's nothing to do with that, it's very cut and dry, he planned for more people, less people showed up, simply put there was not enough money being exchanged to pay out. It's not like he's hiding money, it's not there.

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Firstly, blaming the people who didn't come has absolutely no basis and blaming the community is ******** as well. Plank didnt just plan for more people, he made a business deal with a corporation predicting more people that showed up. THIS IS THE SAME THING THAT HAPPENED AT WINTERFEST in Florida 09(i believe), in which the tourney host "planned" for more people and because he didn't hit the predicted turnout the players couldn't be paid their full payments since he had to pay the venue part of the pot. I don't understand why he thought he could predict the turnout to such an extent as to barter with the payouts of the players, but regardless this is the result. Are we saying plank is a bad person, no, or we saying he is to blame and should be held accountable, yes. Blaming it on anyone else is stupid.

Obviously he has no money, and that's the issue. There's really no remedy

You can forgive someone for making a mistake. However, just as I would forgive a friend for breaking my phone, it wouldn't mean I didn't expect compensation for it. Part of growing up is learning to be civil under these situations, and seeking the fulfillment of contracts without allowing feelings to get in the way.

I'm not here to flame Plank, I just want to respond to the OP with rationality. Notice the following things that I greatly disagree with in Plank's course of action.

1) He stole money from players. This is not an opinion, this is fact. When I registered for Pound V, I purchased a venue pass, and tournament entry. The venue pass is Plank's money to do what he wants with. He is charging me to be permitted to the venue that he rented. Naturally, most of this money goes into paying off that rent, but the money is Plank's.

However, when I purchased my Tournament Entry, it was already agreed that this was not Plank's money. As the tournament director, he is responsible for the money until he pays it to it's rightful owners (the winners of the tournament) but it is not his. Shaving any money off the pot is very dishonorable. Taking the entire pot is STEALING.

Plank put himself into debt by making several business decisions. It is a risk that any businessman takes, including TOs. However, when this risk fails, you don't just decide, "Oh well, let me STEAL all this money that I'm in charge of to pay off my debts." For him to say, "Guys, I'm not paying out prizes this tourney" is basically stealing money from people who PUT that money in the pot, and expected him to get it to it's rightful owners. He was in charge of it, but it was not his.

2) Plank was not honest with us about the situation. He was apprehensive because he saw things going poorly. He ADMITTED TO THIS HIMSELF in the post where he let us know what's up. Now, it's a poor business decision for him to not let us know things were not going according to plan, but in trying to increase his own profits to meet his needs, he screwed people over.

3) Plank apologized, then dipped. Honestly, he's acting really shady. If he truly was sorry, he would be here to answer questions, and take the brunt of this well deserved backlash for his poor business decisions. However, he's not showing his face, because he stole from the top players. This makes him a coward on top of a thief. He himself said that he wasn't coming online because he knew the backlash would be fierce. That is cowardly. He gave a blanket "I'm sorry" to everyone. If he was truly sorry (which he should be) then he should be apologizing DIRECTLY to players whom he stole over a thousand dollars from. However, Ally (who won Brawl Singles and placed 2nd in Brawl Doubles) has stated that he cannot even get in touch with Plank. That's beyond innocence.

4) We have no proof of Plank's word. I'm not accusing Plank of being a dishonest person, but he should understand the sensitivity of the situation, due to past events such as SNES, Winterfest, OC3, and others. Instead of just disappearing, he should at least be in contact with those whom he took money from. Imagine that Plank is sitting somewhere with his pockets lined with an extra couple thousand dollars, and you're sitting at home defending him. Plank did say this was the last Pound, perhaps he was just planning this all along. Make a quick getaway to the other side of the country, and disappear from the entire Smash Community. This isn't an attack on Plank's integrity, but it's possible. I wouldn't be so nervous about this possibility if Plank was here to defend himself from such accusations, but instead he's nowhere to be found.

All in all, Plank handled the situation very poorly. First he used our money, which now belongs to the tournament winners, to settle his own debts. Then, instead of owning up to it and facing the music, he dropped a quick, faceless post, and completely disappeared. I cannot stand up for this course of action.

Now, as I've said before, Plank is not the only one to blame. Every person who decided to stay in a hotel room with more than 4 people were essentially STEALING services from the hotel. Plank also specifically encouraged them not to do this, EXPLICITLY STATING that we needed to fill a quota of rooms for the discount to apply. As a businessman, it was a poor gamble to rely on Smashers to be honest and not bunch up in rooms. However, it is true that because we stole from the hotel, Plank now owes them more money. This means that the people in attendance directly did cause Plank's debt, since he was responsible for the hotel getting a certain amount of money from us, and we instead stole from the hotel (by staying in rooms without paying proper rates for them). Still, that is not enough of an excuse to steal everyone's money, and then disappear.

This is the reason why I'm currently very unfond of Plank, and think it is silly for people to defend him. To me, it is quite clear that despite decent intentions, he made poor decisions, then made worse ones at the expense of others to clean up his first mess, then made it even worse by not being here to deal with the situation he created. This is why I have lost most, if not all of my respect for Plank.

it's probably better for him to dip and avoid the scene when people are heated over it. him replying to posts legitimately only gives ignorant posters an opportunity to **** storm harder. the rational people generally understand that things did not go according to plan and are generally alright waiting it out for answers so long as they get them. all thats really going on is that he's doing himself and the moderation a favor by letting it cool off first.

Pierce, This is not in any way/shape/form the PLAYERS fault. Plank KNEW that next to no one would obey the "4 person per room " rule(no one does EVER) and thus should have had a back up plan(why the hell would you put faith into the MASSES to do the right thing?!?!). Plank pretty much gambled, lost and now has to deal with it. As a TO with huge amounts of exp and resources....he freakin blew it HARD. The sad part is, he knows better than this.

3 said:

Now after all this, when **** hits the fan, he's a criminal? A bad guy? People are talking about suing him? It's disgusting. First of all if you didn't attend pound5 you are seriously in no position to voice your opinion on the situation, seeing as how you're part of the reason why it happened. I'm not saying you were obligated to go to the damn tournament, but it was most certainly within your ability to attend, you chose not to for reasons that I really don't care about, but the point is that you chose not to.

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This is just silly. Plank not paying out Pound V is very significant. It hurts the ENTIRE COMMUNITY whether they attended it or not. Why? It gives everyone less incentive to trust TOs and major tournaments. Players will be less encouraged to go to tournaments if it is shown that even our most prestigious TOs cannot be trusted. Unlike John Keough (Con Artist behind Game Unicon also known as SNES), Plank was one of our number. This makes things harder for TOs everywhere, and makes people more skeptical about traveling to nationals. Everyone has a right to voice their opinion on the matter, since it certainly pertains to Smash, and this is the place to discuss things which pertain to Smash, and our community.

Am I saying that the people who trained hard for this tournament to win, and did just that, don't deserve their money? No, of course not. It's perfectly acceptable for them to expect to get paid for their talents & hardwork, but no one should have been relying on the prize money because nothing is guaranteed, so not receiving prize money from this tournament should not put anyone in a position worth suing over, much less suing one of our own.

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If someone stole my money, I would certainly sue. I agree that people shouldn't rely on prize money, but that's because there's a chance a player might not win. Regardless, these people rightfully WON their money. They have a right to pursue it when it is not paid to them. To suggest otherwise is silly to me. If my friend steals from me and disappears, I would take legal action against him regardless if he was my friend. He's clearly showing that he's not very friendly by stealing from me. Even if he just stole the money to get out of his own debt, it's still stealing.

Let me ask you this: If I borrow your laptop, break it by accident, then steal your credit card to buy you a new laptop, am I doing the right thing? NO.

Plank took a risk with this tournament, not something I agree with, but he did.

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Mutual agreement here.

A risk that was not to benefit himself, but he did it for the community, he put together what he anticipated would be the largest (or close to it) tournament to date. And if you would just for a second imagine what it must have been like for Plank to see the marks he set not be met by a community who's general laziness, or lack of motivation, or whatever you want to call it, is becoming ever more apparent I think you might feel a touch of empathy.

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If Plank didn't steal from the winners, I wouldn't have hesitated to send him money from my own pocket. Also, as you said, no one is obligated to go to his tournament, so I don't know why you are demonizing the community for not going.

Look back to the *pound* series, and ask anyone who attended and everyone, if not the vast majority will comment on how great it was. I've never heard a negative opinion on the overall experience of the pound series, or any national, regional, or local tournament for that matter. Because for most of us, when we go to these tournaments, it's not to win money. We're going because we enjoy playing the game, hanging out with people who share our common interest, learning, challenging ourselves to become better, getting to spend time with people who excel at this game and hear them talk about it. Hang with friends we've made through the game that we haven't seen in a while, catching up, having fun.

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Actually, I think Pound IV was my least favorite national, but I enjoyed Pound V adequately.

At least that's the way it is for me, and in my opinion the way it should be.
Now don't get me wrong, I have every intention of becoming the best melee player. I'd much rather win than lose, but that doesn't mean that I don't take away just as much from losing as I do winning.
I'm going for, as most people are, the experience and the social aspect of hanging out with the smash community.
*P*5 ran me $600+, and while I wish it could have been cheaper, I don't regret any dime I spent there because it was amazing.

Thank you plank, and shame on ya'll for turning your back so abruptly to someone who's put more work into this game & community than 99% of you can claim to.

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I spent very little on the trip, and still I see where wrong is wrong. I have done MUCH for this community, and that does not mean I turn a blind eye on someone who has done wrong. Before you accuse us of turning our backs on Plank, notice that we are here, and he is not.

Xyro77 said:

Pierce, This is not in any way/shape/form the PLAYERS fault. Plank KNEW that next to no one would obey the "4 person per room " rule(no one does EVER) and thus should have had a back up plan(why the hell would you put faith into the MASSES to do the right thing?!?!). Plank pretty much gambled, lost and now has to deal with it. As a TO with huge amounts of exp and resources....he freakin blew it HARD. The sad part is, he knows better than this.

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False. I agree that Plank's plan was foolhardy at best, but to say that it's not in any shape or form the players' fault as well, when they quite obviously stole from the hotel, is blasphemous.

Still, the fault does indeed lie mostly with Plank. Stealing from the pot is not the right way to go about remedying the predictable situation. So I definitely agree with every other aspect and the main point of your post.

Double post. Infract, infract, INFRACT!

yeah, umbreon, waiting may seem okay, but money is pretty time sensitive

Flayl said:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98709&page=1

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The difference here is, most people here would not put themselves in this situation in the first place. While I agree that it's likely that most people MIGHT also steal, I cannot condemn people for what they might do, only what they have done. I'm not letting Plank off the hook because others might've also stolen the pot if they screwed up. That doesn't mean it's okay for him to steal the pot. It's still wrong.

Umbreon said:

it's probably better for him to dip and avoid the scene when people are heated over it. him replying to posts legitimately only gives ignorant posters an opportunity to **** storm harder. the rational people generally understand that things did not go according to plan and are generally alright waiting it out for answers so long as they get them. all thats really going on is that he's doing himself and the moderation a favor by letting it cool off first.

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Except he outright said he's not paying, so it's not a matter of biding time.

Pierce7d said:

If someone stole my money, I would certainly sue. I agree that people shouldn't rely on prize money, but that's because there's a chance a player might not win. Regardless, these people rightfully WON their money. They have a right to pursue it when it is not paid to them. To suggest otherwise is silly to me. If my friend steals from me and disappears, I would take legal action against him regardless if he was my friend. He's clearly showing that he's not very friendly by stealing from me. Even if he just stole the money to get out of his own debt, it's still stealing.

Let me ask you this: If I borrow your laptop, break it by accident, then steal your credit card to buy you a new laptop, am I doing the right thing? NO.

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It's not the same.
If you steal my credit card you're taking it without asking, we all voluntarily gave Plank money to attend his event & enter his tournament.

I didn't sign anything agreeing as to how the money would be used, I gave him money so that I could enter the tournament & be at the venue. How those funds were allocated were up to him. The way I saw it was that venue fee's and expenses to run the tournament would get paid out first and foremost, and any money past that would be divided up into payouts to the winners.

I don't even see a case being made against plank.

I'm not trying to excuse his actions, it was poor planning on his part, but in that same regard if you're going to put money into something and expect return on it, nay count on return from it, maybe you should stand on something a little more concrete than an assumption.

In a perfect world Pound5 would have been as large as planned and everyone would have had a great time and the winners would have gotten payed.

But attendance got split between other big tournaments announced after P5
People canceled and got refunded money (which plank did not have to do)
People promised to show up and didn't
People crammed into hotel rooms instead of doing as plank instructed
Attendance was not met, room quota was not met, and because of all this not enough money was generated to pay the winners.

If legal action is seriously something you were considering, maybe we should just start making all entrants sign contracts when money transactions take place regarding behavior, attendance, tardiness, payouts, and the like.

If you're going to expect plank to be in debt to the winners because of an assumed payout, then why not expect the community/attendee's to be in debt to plank for not showing up/cramming rooms.

This matter is so serious and involves such a large sum of money that plank should have posted some screenshots of receipts imo, to give proof to the community exactly the charges he was facing. I'm not saying he's lying but that would have helped his cause. A lot of people could also see his reasoning for not logging back on to SWF as a cop out for not having to answer any more questions. Hopefully today he'll man up and fill us in with another post. We can't really jump to any conclusions yet... for all we know the hotel made a mistake and everything's fine (yeah I know, highly doubtful, but just saying, we don't know the truth yet).

If only he had made a post about his dilemma before acting, I have a feeling the community would have come together to help him.

what i don't understand, 3, is that you're trying to be like morally outraged at our community for not showing up to a tournament


gee, i was one of the people who were "going to attend pound," but i didn't
although i didn't pre-register or whatever



just because people can't/don't want to go to a tournament doesn't mean that it's a lack of respect, and it's "our fault" that the payouts didn't happen, because apparently if we loved the game enough, there would've been enough entrants and all this would've been peachy

How does it still surprise you that smashers are cheap? When we have enough dedication to put aside sleep, school, health, hygiene, etc. regularly so we can play more smash, how is it surprising that people would try to find a way to go to a tournament on the minimal funds possible? Think about the nature of the community; were you expecting a battalion of professional, grown-*** men? How is it a sudden disappointment that smashers would pack their hotel rooms like boats full of illegal immigrants? LOL!

Another problem I have with your post is that you make it sound like it's a shortcoming of the community to not be as hyped about p5 as pound 4. Plank made exactly all the right accommodations, put the **** right next to an airport, yadda yadda, so why didn't as many people come as pound 4? WTF MANG?!?

You can't really recreate hype, dude. It's not based off a formula (take the square root of distance from hotel to airport....)--even if someone takes every single precaution, that's no guarantee that people need to go, or even to be excited about it. Granted, there are a lot of ENTICEMENTS, but no guarantees. Like Andre 3000 said, "You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can't predict the weather."

I'm sure that people have used this line of thinking before. "What does this show about our community (that the last major didn't have as much attendance as the one before)? WHERE'S THE LOVE MAN?!?" Imagine the post MLG days; FC-Diamond held the record for attendance, with 246 entrants, until Genesis happened. That was a difference of about 2 years.

Genesis had SO MUCH HYPE behind it, it was ridiculous. Revival of Melee was probably one of the most hype-building tournaments ever; this hype funneled into Genesis, because it was the west-coast version of ROM. Also, Armada's performance at Genesis seemed to show that Melee was limitless--a player many had barely just heard of, beating ALL of the american pros whose names we had grown up with? **** was honestly MAGICAL, being there, and watching the perfect come-from-behind, home-team victory, with the most amazing moments we had seen in smash until that time. Pound 4 was big, I think, because it had the hype behind these other events, and we wanted to confirm that our game and our community was as good as we had previously seen.

Things have kind of leveled out, though: after pound 4, it seemed like 2010 tried to make national tournaments more formulaic. Apex? Hungrybox wins over Armada, PP and mew2king close behind. Rom3? Peepee wins over m2k, people predict PP to be one of the best. Wintergamefest, Peepee wins over mango, and also beats a lot of other west coast players who aren't on his level. People predict PP winning pound 5, and he does, although armada is close still, m2k didn't do as well, Axe still doing good, Zhu and macD flying out and getting 17th-9th place like they always do, etc. A lot of tournaments seemed like they were trying to be that "next big event," and it only makes sense that people would get bored of seeing the same thing happen.

But basically, I'm trying to say that the lulls in the attendance of major tournaments doesn't indicate a lack of dedication on the part of the community--you could probably leave it up to straight statistics/chance that this would happen. Plus, even if a dedicated TO like Plank goes out of his way to ensure that the most careful plans and precautions have been undertaken, there's no guarantee that a tournament will have any hype behind it. Hell, every single player could potentially go into a tournament expecting the most amazing things to happen, and **** could STILL be a blowout for whatever reason. There are some things that you just can't control! And I think that enthusiasm/hype/magic/turnout/whatever is one of those things.

So deal with it!

I agree. People have to cancel sometimes, real life johns. The contract was to have the cheaper rooms correct? Cheaper rooms would = Hopefully more people coming. Expesive rooms = Less hype. Less hype, less people, less payout. (Yet, now there probably isn't any)

I think the cost of all this was due to how big the event was. If there was no deal, the rooms would have been even more expensive. ****, I HATED how expensive it was. (Plus, our room wasn't ready when we came, I salty)
If the rooms were at full price, I'd probably have to bail.

So it was either better experience (since it was his last one) or just a big tournament with less people due to super expensive rooms. Also, I don't like not being near food markets. I don't want to eat at restaurants all the time. TO's, take note of this. It would help. : D

I just think he wanted more people here. This doesn't look like a situation where he hoarded the money to himself, yet he relied on people coming, that was a mistake. We all should learn from this as a community.

I also feel bad for the winners. I would say to try to act a little more mature, but you have a right to act the way you are acting because this was a mistake on his part.

You all must find a way to pay the people/organizations back who have lent you money to get to va or stay there for now. I don't know about suing. But if Plank has a job, then I think it would be better for your relationships with him (and his with the community) to check with him regularly and set up a payment plan. It seems that suing would have us lose too. But why is he unfriending people on facebook? Hopefully this is temporary. I think he should face the whole community instead of unfriend people. He took the risk, now he must be there for the people who lost out due to his mistake.

Everyone who didn't win: Don't forget, that the winners also may have to find ways to somehow pay people back, like Armada. So don't call them whiners or *****es, they are having a stressful time now. Both Plank and winners are probaly feeling like ****. Even if the winners didn't NEED the money, I'm sure they'd feel partial stress because they worked hard to get it. It would be like working a whole week at a place and noticing the place was phoney, and your check bounced. How would you feel about that? Oh, you'd be fine with that, eh?

Also, we should try to learn from HIS mistake as a community. For example, I am starting out to be a TO myself (I already hosted one tourny) and I just realized how scary that is. Damn. Although I'm a cheap ***, so I'd try to get a good and cheap venue, and make sure that the venue fee covers the cost. Like, I'd want a flat line fee for the venue, that's it. OH HEY ITS LIKE... $200. So I'm like "K, so that's $10 per person in hopefully a 40 man tourny" If like 37 came, I'd pay the rest myself. Also, this reminds me that we should also be very careful with the money, and make sure no one is near it. Trust me, I'll tell my staff to stay at the damn ****ing table, ****. lol. (They gotta work on that) Although I had instances where they weren't there and I had to get up (I'd double back tho)

@Plank: Please make a thread of how you are thinking to solve this issue. That might help people ease their minds and at least see you are putting an effort to end this money issue. Also I guess you realize the risk of bigger experience or just bland experience but usual pay is now too big. Also, let's be realistic and not choose an expensive hotel the next time you host. Also, why was this your last tournament again? (I think players wouldn't mind a cheaper venue) You seem like a great guy, so I hope you come on the boards and post more. Don't try to evade the smasher's wrath. Instead post a thread, asking about thoughts for you to help patch things up.

Moral: NO REFUNDS. Pre-reg is great and all, but you gotta make sure people don't cancel on you. FFS, why was it pay room when you leave? So dumb

Pierce7d said:

The difference here is, most people here would not put themselves in this situation in the first place. While I agree that it's likely that most people MIGHT also steal, I cannot condemn people for what they might do, only what they have done. I'm not letting Plank off the hook because others might've also stolen the pot if they screwed up. That doesn't mean it's okay for him to steal the pot. It's still wrong.

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How on earth did you think that link was about Plank? It was obviously meant for people criticizing the people who are legitimately angry.

Donation thread for justice! How much is justice worth to you? Let's do this like adults, and go for the right way, which is justice small court. Let them decide and make the punishment or payback call. That is just so much better than going there and kicking his ***, it's not right in my mind to do so. Police and justice departments should take care of criminals, not us!

Ranmaru said:

You all must find a way to pay the people/organizations back who have lent you money to get to va or stay there for now. I don't know about suing. But if Plank has a job, then I think it would be better for your relationships with him (and his with the community) to check with him regularly and set up a payment plan. It seems that suing would have us lose too. But why is he unfriending people on facebook? Hopefully this is temporary. I think he should face the whole community instead of unfriend people. He took the risk, now he must be there for the people who lost out due to his mistake.

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I dunno man. I'd unfriend people too if they were spamming my wall with hate messages. Thats pretty immature and NOT the way in going about in when you're trying to get answers from a situation. I can only imagine thats what happened

well for one, all hotels are pay when u leave.

but can we stop with this donation bs? all it does is excuse plank's actions and encourage theft

Donation for law court costs, not to players I mean. I think that encourages people not to steal, or take others money. With that we also show everybody, that we do not accept this kind of behavior, and that it is indeed punishable act. If we won't donate to law costs, then the winners who sue plank, will just lose more money maype.

Laijin said:

I dunno man. I'd unfriend people too if they were spamming my wall with hate messages. Thats pretty immature and NOT the way in going about in when you're trying to get answers from a situation. I can only imagine thats what happened

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True. Yeah it's not right to be immature about it. But still, I'd like to see him post and let people know that he's trying to situate this. (You know, be visible)

People protecting plank are silly.

if this were ANY OTHER COMMUNITY, no one would even think of defending him. Would you let the house take the pot in poker because of it going bankrupt? Thought so.

i still think the most effective way is just to hunt his *** down

3 said:

It's not the same.
If you steal my credit card you're taking it without asking, we all voluntarily gave Plank money to attend his event & enter his tournament.

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Pierce7d said:

He stole money from players. This is not an opinion, this is fact. When I registered for Pound V, I purchased a venue pass, and tournament entry. The venue pass is Plank's money to do what he wants with. He is charging me to be permitted to the venue that he rented. Naturally, most of this money goes into paying off that rent, but the money is Plank's.

However, when I purchased my Tournament Entry, it was already agreed that this was not Plank's money. As the tournament director, he is responsible for the money until he pays it to it's rightful owners (the winners of the tournament) but it is not his. Shaving any money off the pot is very dishonorable. Taking the entire pot is STEALING.

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3 said:

I didn't sign anything agreeing as to how the money would be used, I gave him money so that I could enter the tournament & be at the venue. How those funds were allocated were up to him. The way I saw it was that venue fee's and expenses to run the tournament would get paid out first and foremost, and any money past that would be divided up into payouts to the winners.

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Pierce7d said:

However, when I purchased my Tournament Entry, it was already agreed that this was not Plank's money. As the tournament director, he is responsible for the money until he pays it to it's rightful owners (the winners of the tournament) but it is not his. Shaving any money off the pot is very dishonorable. Taking the entire pot is STEALING.

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3 said:

I don't even see a case being made against plank.

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Did you even read my post?

3 said:

I'm not trying to excuse his actions,

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What are you trying to do? Please, explain your intent clearly.

it was poor planning on his part,

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YUP

but in that same regard if you're going to put money into something and expect return on it, nay count on return from it, maybe you should stand on something a little more concrete than an assumption.

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Please clarify a situation where someone expected a return of money they didn't actually earn. No one came to Pound expecting it to pay the bills. However, after the tournament victors were decided, they had EVERY RIGHT to expect their winnings. Also, if the concept of "The pot is comprised of the entry fees" wasn't relatively concrete, this game's competitive scene wouldn't exist.

In a perfect world Pound5 would have been as large as planned and everyone would have had a great time and the winners would have gotten payed.

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okay . . .

But attendance got split between other big tournaments announced after P5

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okay . . .

People canceled and got refunded money (which plank did not have to do)

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But he did it, that was HIS CHOICE. Also, I'm pretty sure he guaranteed a refund.

People promised to show up and didn't

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okay . . . stating intention of attendance and not coming is detrimental to the planning of any event, but one of the reasons WHY we have pre-registration is so that this isn't an issue. This is something the planner of any event should know to compensate for.

People crammed into hotel rooms instead of doing as plank instructed

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So far, this is the ONLY legitimate counter-argument I've seen. Regardless, this doesn't justify Plank stealing all the prize winnings.

Attendance was not met, room quota was not met, and because of all this not enough money was generated to pay the winners.

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The money generated to pay the winners is SEPARATE from the money generated to pay tournament expenses. This is why VENUE FEE and TOURNAMENT ENTRY FEE are listed as TWO SEPARATE FEES. The tournament entry fee PAYS THE WINNERS. Just because Plank screwed up does not give him the right to steal money from the winners. It means there wasn't enough money to FUND THE TOURNAMENT. As the person who rented the venue, this is a debt that PLANK has incurred.

If legal action is seriously something you were considering, maybe we should just start making all entrants sign contracts when money transactions take place regarding behavior, attendance, tardiness, payouts, and the like.

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And what exactly would these contracts say? If anything, that would be fine, if the contracts said "If you top the tournament, you have a right to your winnings, which is calculated as follows . . . number of entrants multiplied by the entry fee, multiplied by a decimal based on the percentage earned by your placing."

If you tried to draw up a contract stating that the tournament entry fee belonged to the tournament organizer, nobody would go to your tournament.

I have no qualms with forcing people to abide to certain behaviors, tardiness (which I assume the penalty would be DQ), etc. This just causes the event to run more smoothly. Actually, MLG DID have this.

How old are you?

If you're going to expect plank to be in debt to the winners because of an assumed payout, then why not expect the community/attendee's to be in debt to plank for not showing up/cramming rooms.

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Are you serious? I'm not just "assuming" a payout. I took my money that I earned with my job, and put it into the pot. This means that I'm expecting this money to go to the winners of the tournament. In exchange, I can ENTER the tournament, and have a shot at that money. This is how it works.

Now, the community IS IN DEBT to the HOTEL for cramming rooms. When you purchase the service of the hotel, they express the number of people you are permitted to have in your room. This means that having more people in the room is essentially STEALING A SERVICE.

Now, Plank made a contract with the hotel, expecting to fill a certain number of rooms, and encouraging us not to steal. However, this was a DUMB IDEA, because it was pretty obvious that people were going to cuddle up in few hotel rooms. It was his decision to make such a foolish contract with the hotel. That does not give him the right to steal money from the pot.

Plank's miscalculation is his own problem to deal with. He can ask for our help to compensate, but he should not steal money from us to fix his problem.

We do not owe money to Plank for not showing up/cramming hotel rooms, because he was not SELLING THE HOTEL SERVICES. We owe that money to the hotel. If the hotel owners were to come in here and accuse us all of stealing from them, I would have no defenses against such accusations. However, right now, I'm more concerned with the fact that Plank has stolen from us.

Mic_128 said:

Not necessarily.

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Fair enough, but Plank is surely not helping his case by completely disappearing, and not even contacting the top players. If he was truly "sorry" as he said, he at least owes the top placers a direct and private apology, and chance to talk to them.

Then again, if I just stole 1000+ dollars from you, I wouldn't be saying sorry directly to you either. How do we know Ally/Peepee/Anti/Armada don't have their own debts to pay? It's in their right to rely on winnings that they, you know, WON.

If Plank was off the boards to not deal with the flames, but dealing with the placers in private, I'd be okay with that. Completely dipping off the map with no proof just makes me facepalm though. I mean, every moment that passes that Plank is not here makes me even more suspicious of the situation. We have no proof of these debts to the hotel, we have nothing except one post.

epic justice to the creator of planking.


seriously though, i am on planks side - legally no formal contract was signed, everybody gave him their money in good faith. turns out that **** hit the fan, and thank god (for plank) nobody signed anything.

i'm a law student - granted a uk law student, but if people in the payout bracket were that intent on a payout, they should have gotten plank to sign something. just saying - i dont think anyone can do jack **** legally and plank has the moral high ground (imo) too, because that money was given to him in good faith. dunno if you guys use that term over in the states.

pissed for PPMD/M2K, i hope they didn't spend alot of money on plane tickets. if that were the case, plank should give them money over time to pay reparations on a personal level. dont bother flaming me, i am sure as **** never going to be able to find this thread again nor bother to check. if you were effected by this on a huge personal level, you learned a little something about contract law

ps to the douche**** above me - you are a douche****.
pps to my account, sorry dude but frankly i stopped caring a long time ago about you

8-)

I gotta pay 1000$ish in something. I sure needed to win some money.

This only happened because Brawl exists.



Nah but seriously, Plank disappearing is incredibly suspicious.