Pound V- Discussion, Donations, and Prevention

First off I to make it clear that all other threads about Pound V discussion will be closed (Video discussion or whatever is fine. Talking Soley about the payout issue stuff). While I recognize that it is important people have a place to talk about what happened, there only needs to be one thread for that. It is too difficult to follow, too difficult to moderator, and clutters the boards (this is smashboards not poundboards afterall) otherwise.



So we wanted to take a minute in an official smashboards capacity to acknowledge what happened and talk about things going forward.


This will be the only thread and this thread will be moderated. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but keep it civil, and follow forum rules.


So anyway, what happened is unfortunate. Ive known plank for awhile, and even though I cannot say for certain, I do not think he had bad intentions or was trying to scam the community (if people feel otherwise you are free to discuss that, but again, keep it civil). That however does not put him in the right, or absolve him of this. No matter how good intentions you may have as a TO you have a responsibility to the community to make good decisions in terms of running and organizing your tournament. And not signing yourself into something that could leave players out to dry is part of that. And at very least if you are going to try to ballpark numbers you need absolutely communicate that with players. $6000 is being put up for the venue, if enough people do not come we wont have enough and there might not be a prize pool. Before players spend their money and time to travel to an event they deserve to be told this.

This is not the first time players have suffered. Throughout the years of smashboards there have been everything from outright scams to miscalculations or poor judgement that have resulted in players not being paid.

We are, and will continue to be, discussing ideas to help prevent these types of things from happening in the future. Already, we will be starting a black listed TO thread (located here ) and we will also be assigning an official role from the BBR and MBR. Someones whos job it is to spend some time going through the tournaments out there, talking to TOs, seeing how their venue fees are being accounted for and trying to make sure what is happening, the tournaments we are featuring, are in the best interest of the community. Those that have red flags will not receive stickies, and might even contain warnings within them from the BBR/MBR official. I do not expect this will stop it from ever happening again. Its just not reasonable. But hopefully we can take steps to at least minimize it. And if anyone has some ideas to this ends we would be happy to hear them.


Back to Pound V. At this point it seems likely that players are not going to be paid from the event. Because of this we will be taking official donations. If everyone can just contribute a couple dollars I think we can go a long way towards getting the players what they earned. I will keep a list of everyone that donated, how much, and edit that into the OP. There will be transparency and everyones donations will be accounted for. No one player is more deserving of donations than another player. They all traveled, worked their way through the tournament, towards earning a certain place. All the donations received will be divided up according to the percentage of the total prize pool we receive. Donating parties will be credited within the OP so everything is transparent

So lets say the Ally was supposed to get 12% of the total prize pool based on his singles and doubles placements. He will then get 12% of all the donations we receive. I will hold the donations for roughly two weeks. If anything happens between now and then where the players end up being paid I will refund everyones donations. List will be updated every few days.

Donations:
The paypal account is jv3x3@hotmail.com . Please try use the personal transfer option so no fees are taken out and include your smashboards username in the thread so I can give you credit in the OP.

I realize some players have already been getting donations. I hope they will be honest with the amount when it comes to this or put those donations back in the prize pool. If you have donated to a player I would appreciate you pm to let me know. So I can make sure everyone receives the right percentage from the communities contributions.

Thanks all and hopefully this can be a wake up call to everyone (be it a TO, Player, or Smashboards Staff member) and we all can make better decisions going forward. It also gives us a chance to come together as a community and come back stronger.



Dontations

MLG_JV - $20
vVv ChiboSempai - $5
Super Smash Land (4nace) - $15
hungrybox - $5
adumbrodeus - $10
Cook - $5
smakis - 5 EUR
Dazwa - $20
Axe - $5
dimitris - $25
ToS (Chibo & Talwind) - $20

first

play xenosaga best game ever made

also, plank, I really don't like the decision you made regarding this, to be quite honest

Placeholder - And you can see Planks response about prizes here

Pretty boss.

At least admin/staff is helping to prevent this problem. Gosh.

We're long overdue for a blacklisted list IMO. Its a great idea
SRK has a similar one. Posting this just as a reference for an already existing one. http://shoryuken.com/f7/tournament-promoters-venues-avoid-197094/

Thank god someone finally created a joint paypal donations thread with the premise of paying out according to percentage of winnings. I suggeested that a long time ago but people were to busy raging.

on another note, its.....interesting that you ask people who have already recieved donations to put their money back into the total pool. I mean, armada already has like $600 bucks, is he really going to split it with the other 20 or so people who need money? interesting indeed.

I'm looking forward to were this goes.

JPOBS said:

Thank god someone finally created a joint paypal donations thread with the premise of paying out according to percentage of winnings. I suggeested that a long time ago but people were to busy raging.

on another note, its.....interesting that you ask people who have already recieved donations to put their money back into the total pool. I mean, armada already has like $600 bucks, is he really going to split it with the other 20 or so people who need money? interesting indeed.

I'm looking forward to were this goes.

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Would be a nice gesture. Dont think any player is more deserving of their prize money than another player. But I am not going to force them to do so or anything. Its their decision to make. I just want to at least know how much they got so when it comes to paying them out everyone receives a fair amount.

Interesting, Thanks for helping out JV.

This is really good

MLG_JV said:

Would be a nice gesture. Dont think any player is more deserving of their prize money than another player. But I am not going to force them to do so or anything. Its their decision to make. I just want to at least know how much they got so when it comes to paying them out everyone receives a fair amount.

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yea true and I agree fully. popularty contests aren't cool especially when they all worked just as hard for their would-be winnings.

I did not go to Pound V.
What sort of venue would cost that much money?

Ballin, very nice hotels in up-scale areas will cost a lot. I can't see more than 15 grand personally though.


I really enjoy that JV is doing this and organizing the staff to help fix this problem, it's the best thing to have come from this yet. As much as I absolutely hate everything that happened, the decisions Plank made, his decisions as a TO, the missing money from my calculations, I absolutely sympathize with the players and would be absolutely destroyed spiritually if this had happened to me. Just sent my donation of $5, enjoy it you guys, you earned it.

This is actually a good idea.

I personally believe that Plank main problem was not miscalculating and hosting a somewhat unsuccesful event. The main problem is the way he handled it afterwards. The smash community is quite understanding, and Plank has done a lot to help out the community. I think if he would have came forward and said to everyone that he miscalculated and there was no money for the players. If he would have asked us (smashers) to please help him out with whatever we could to pay out the prize money, I am preety sure the smash community would have came together and helped him, as long as it was a one time thing. Mistakes happen, and this was no exception.

However, instead of doing this. He preety told the community that it was his money and he could do whatever he wanted with it. ( Even if this was true, that was not the way to deal with smashers who are supposed to be his friends and came to his tournament) He then went ahead and erased people from his friends list. This was not the way to deal with this.

So there it is. The problem was not the unsuccesful event, it was the way Plank acted afterwards. At least that is my opinion.

good job =) i approve.

buut...i don't particularly like the part of putting the donations back into a big pool. those donations were made to one person in particular, not to the prize pool at large. i also don't think the prize winners should be put under an obligation to pool their money together.

what would be better, i think, is if you do it your way AFTER factoring in how much has already been donated to each individual. not by making it a lump sum of all donations. that would have been good in the first place, but now that stuff has been donated to particular players, i don't think it's fair to those people to ask them to put their money into a larger pot.

but, i don't know how exactly you would go about doing this. unless you know how much the entry fees were in total. but i don't think we do.

(if we did, you could figure out how much player X should have gotten, subtract their donations total from that, take the remaining number and determine what percent of the pot that would be, give them that % of the money from this thread)

that said, i really don't mean to criticize cause it's VERY good that you took the initiative like this and set up a realistic, straightforward way of solving the problem. i just think that that one part of it should be changed.

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edit: just in case it could be useful i'll clarify it now

total entry fees (so the pot) is $10000
player X wins 25% of the pot
player X wins $2500

player X receives $2000 in donations
$2500-$2000 = $500
$10000/$500 = 5%

player X is given 5% of the total money from this thread

Thanks JV

Now we can all kiss and make up.

****ing finally.

No?

But we can thank JV for doing this.

MLG_JV said:

Donations:
The paypal account is jv3x3@hotmail.com . Please try use the personal transfer option so no fees are taken out and include your smashboards username in the thread so I can give you credit in the OP.

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Can someone explain how to do the following underlined part and what it means? Or how to donate with paypal in general? I've never really used paypal before and want to donate the correct amount.

Hopefully everyone can find it in them to donate one or two dollars even if you dont have a lot, as big as the community is every small amount can make a huge difference. Very nice job JV + smashboards staff, good to see the owners step up.

MLG_JV said:

And at very least if you are going to try to ballpark numbers you need absolutely communicate that with players. $6000 is being put up for the venue, if enough people do not come we wont have enough and there might not be a prize pool. Before players spend their money and time to travel to an event they deserve to be told this.

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Quoted for truth. Regardless of everything else, Plank scammed the community simply by withholding this information. And given his payment priorities I'm certain the reason he did was to help his own coffers from the debt he foresaw, to him the truth = less people, and less people = more debt for him. All at the expense of the personal debt for the winners who expected payment of course.

Also I nominate calling the black list the Plank list .

At the very least, nobody is beating on a dead tree anymore.

Now let's talk about Genesis 2.

In another thread obv

JV, should the people that won money send their paypal emails to you?

I'll see what I can do regarding this.

Need to make sure I can donate well before I actually do. If I can count me in.

This is just a analogy.

Plank was the United states congress, The Hotel was the Goldman Sachs, and the Winners of Pound V were the American people.

That is all

Thank you for making this thread, JV.

I actually was going suggest a merge and lock on all of those other threads, so that it will look less cluttered on the forum.

CHAiN-ACE said:

Thank you for making this thread, JV.

I actually was going suggest a merge and lock on all of those other threads, so that it will look less cluttered on the forum.

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I honestly dont know why you arent a mod yet.

good stuff stepping up JV.

I really am sorry and I didn't mean to seem callous and seem like I wasn't sorry when I made other posts, but it is tough when from right out the gun I just got instantly threatened and harassed and such before we can even have the chance to discuss any sort of solution. I just got defensive. But I understand and I guess my first post didn't lead on that I wanted to work towards a solution at all, mainly I was just so blown by the situation I was at a loss of what to do at that point. I didn't know HOW THE **** to announce that I can't pay out the prizewinners. You guys really do act like I saw this coming so far ahead blah blah, but I really didn't. It was obviously stupid of me in hindsight, but I really did think if I kept reinforcing 4 people per room and say it would be enforced enough times it would stick eventually. On top of that I would have had money to pay out at least a LARGE PORTION even WITH room cramming if so many rooms were not cancelled/no-shows. I didn't even know about these until the final bill was charged and I woke up and my bank account was nearly overdrawn when it I was still under the impression it should've still had thousands of dollars for payments. This is also how I didn't have a choice of even paying out the prizes, the money was already taken. The hotel took until the 25th to take it which is why I couldn't really say anything about prizes because I was waiting for the final hotel bill. I posted when I realized the gravity of the situation and that the money was gone.... I know I haven't reacted the best to everything but I really am sorry and it's hard for me to not be totally defensive to everyone at this point. Hopefully since things have cooled down a bit I can get out of that mode.




That being said, I really like that JV stepped up and did this, thank you so much. It is good to have a trusted central paypal for everyone to send money to. After a few paychecks hopefully I can get my monetary situation stabilized and I'll make some donations when I can too.

Since I can't really raise the money personally I would also be willing to try and run local tournaments maybe if I can get the college park crew to help me get their venue they used for shell shocked (its free) and I could have monthly tournaments with a $5 venue fee and it could all go to JV's paypal fund....and maybe JV could even verify number of attendance and money donated to the fund so everyone knows it matches up for the tournaments. But that is if people even want me to be doing tournaments at all, I don't even know if most people would go. We already have a lack of entrants in both games in md/va as is and then i'm not sure who would really be willing to go. I know some people are willing to try and work things out (mainly these are the prizewinners, which is what makes me more inclined to want to try), but I know some also dont think I should ever be able to TO again at all. Originally I wasn't going to run any more tournaments, but if people are willing to still come and help pay those winners back I would definitely like to try and host things and make some money back that way to add to the donations. Would people be willing to do something of the sort with tournaments to raise money? If people don't want me TOing someone else could realistically do the same thing, but I would definitely be willing to do it.

lol at anyone who would rather take their prize money and let the TO rot. thats not what smash is about

What Dr Peepee said, the prize winners aren't really mad anymore and if you're willing to host tournaments to repay them back slowly I'm pretty sure they will forgive you for your mistakes as well as the whole community.

Hopefully if this plan takes off, then things will finally be able to cool off in the community, and the prize winners can start to receive what they earned. I was worried that this situation had the potential to be quite damaging, but things are looking up for now.

Well it looks like Plank is willing to do exactly what the prize winners wanted him to. Happy days imo.

I think I've been to all the shell shocked's but 1 and wouldn't mind paying a 5$ venue fee if I came again, although i'd like my 5$ to be donated to melee players who won money as they handled the situation a lot better than the rest of you when your true colors were gonna come out from the posts I saw. Starting with Armada/PP cause armada came from Europe and PP is just manly as hell.

Eggm said:

I think I've been to all the shell shocked's but 1 and wouldn't mind paying a 5$ venue fee if I came again, although i'd like my 5$ to be donated to melee players who won money as they handled the situation a lot better than the rest of you when your true colors were gonna come out from the posts I saw. Starting with Armada/PP cause armada came from Europe and PP is just manly as hell.

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Read the OP. It's divided equally.