Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

DQed from regionals and BANNED two weeks later (I was set-up)

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PokePop said:
It was supposed to be a humorous attempt to defuse a side argument that was getting out of control.
I wasn't trying to win kindness, just jolt the discussion and bring it back to where is should be.
I'm not really asking for or expecting attacks.
Sorry if you took it the wrong way.
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Fair enough, I originally took it as a "I'm making a joke of this situation (the situation being the original topic)" I jumped to the wrong conclusion based on an assumption, I am sorry for that.
 
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Absoltrainer said:
Fair enough, I originally took it as a "I'm making a joke of this situation (the situation being the original topic)" I jumped to the wrong conclusion based on an assumption, I am sorry for that.
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Oh, no, wasn't trying to do that either.
Sorry for the appearance of that.
 
absoltrainer said:
pokepop, i respect you a lot as both a judge and an admin, but a comment like that is the exact same attitude that gino took when he was accused of stealing the macbook. It didn't win him any kindness and it won't win you any either, just saying. I'll acknowledge you might be privy to information i don't have on this manner, but as a leader in this community, you should strive act as an example. Just saying.

But on topic of "gino gate" as the online community has been calling it.

Please note the following is based solely on how i perceive things:

Gino is not victimless. Whether he actually committed crimes or not is irrelevant. He became an extremely well-known and popular player. By winning nationals, he became one of the "faces" of pokémon. He brought with it the "gino attitude" and the "gino reputation."

now i have never met or interacted with gino, even online. However i can say that for the nine years i've been involved with pokémon, especially about 5-6 years ago when the internet really exploded in the pokémon community, gino has always been a name associated with either "fanboys" or "haters." what i mean by this is that there were always two very polarizing groups. The people who called gino a "mentor, friend, good person, role-model, and good player" and the people who called gino a "lying, cheating, bully, thief, 'cancer on the game.' gino for better or for worse loved the attention, so he fed both groups and both groups grew. Nothing about this is bad. Everyone wants to be "acknowledged" and even negative acknowledgment is acknowledgment. However, i digress, the point is, gino has always been a polarizing figure-head in the pokémon community, he was even featured on some gaming site and in a gaming magazine article at one point (correct me if i'm wrong on that.)

gino attracted negative attention at both the nationals he won and the following worlds. He was accused of things from cheating to stealing. Once again the polarized groups massively supported and attacked him respectfully. Gino took it all in stride and seemingly loved the attention. This is gino's nature. There have been several of these "gino events" throughout the history of the game. Most of these have been typical "poke drama" and dead within a month. The vancouver incident however was different.

The vancouver incident is no different than any other "gino event" on its own. It's general he said - she said. One outside factor made this extremely different however. Jason k. Jason, the three time world champion is just as famous as gino and has just about as much of a fan-base. However jason has no "bad-boy" reputation. His word against gino's non-word (as gino never directly refuted [to my knowledge] that he ever stole the laptop.) gino continued his "bad-boy, i don't care" attitude as he has done in the past. Jason raised an "internet army." everyone who ever had a gripe with gino, or knew someone who had a gripe with gino, or heard stories about gino stepped up to give their 2 cents.

I don't know if gino did any of the stuff he was ever accused of, past or present. I've seen the evidence and i have my theories, but they're not important, because i think that the prevailing issue is gino's attitude and reputation.

Pokémon has had a lot of problems with champions, well-known, and/or famous players getting into trouble. Gino, pablo, martin, the spanish vgc poop guys, con le, the lesage brothers and canadian national champions, just to name a few instances. I had a theory originally that they did not outright ban gino after the vancouver incident because they were embarrassed by all the trouble they had been having with "power players" as we might call them. However i think that this incident pushed gino's reputation from the online community into the more casual community. The online community rarely get "parent mad." if gino's reputation was beginning to worry parents who don't interact with the online community as much as the "young people" do then perhaps that was the tipping point.

I think gino was banned because he was becoming a pr disaster. Whether it's right or not is irrelevant. Whether he cheated or not is irrelevant. When a company removes someone from their events in an unconventional way such as this, it is usually because they are perceived to be a "threat," to their audience, money, or image. Thus i think gino was banned because he had become a threat to tpci's image.

Please note that my statements were made from an unbiased view. I do not support or condone gino's actions that i do not express any opinion if he committed or not. Like-wise i do not support or condone any actions that tpci may have done. This is simply a theory on why the events unfolded as they have given the evidence we have.
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i had just told jason this today!!!! Omg nuts how we have the exact POV. Literally exactly what I was trying to tell him.
 
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So let's talk about Hearsay for a moment. I read that Wikipedia article so I don't understand why you've come away with that abrupt definition.

r3skyline said:
Anyone can say anything about another person. Am I saying its not true? Not at all. I am just saying, to count a post on a forum as any piece of evidence is stupid.
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The "post on a forum" in question is from Rahul Reddy, who confesses to being taught by Gino how to cheat, trying it in a highly visible tournament, and getting caught. He explains how he cheated and why he cheated. Rahul is known by many in person, so the community can go beyond his "thefleeee" screen name and verify with him in person.

If instead Rahul posted that he heard that Gino taught someone how to cheat for the LCE, that would be hearsay. But in this case, Rahul is present and involved. That would be admissible in a judicial hearing as testimony! And we (acting as jury members in this example) can hear that evidence and make up our own minds of whether it is true or not.
 
I do wonder how much of an advantage looking at the bottom card of the deck is in the current format. Did Gino play cards that would let him draw the bottom card/s of his deck? Would knowing 1 card out of a possible 60 really gain you that much advantage?

And it scares me that a player could cheat or make a mistake in one round and then not be penalized for it until later in the event. It scares me for their opponents who were possibly beat by a possible DQ'd player. It scares me for the player themselves who will always worry if they made a mistake and if a judge is going to DQ them at any point in the future. I feel judges should be as translucent as possible with the players, and not try to hide their actions in hopes of taking advantage of the subterfuge.

I feel a better course of action would have been to penalize Gino in the first round, even if there wasn't a ton of evidence, and explain to him that a judge believes they saw him cheating, that he's already on thin ice and that any accusations are seriously considered. At least nip it in the bud, because to let it linger and possible poison future rounds of the event is not keeping the health of the event in mind.
 
The fact the judges let it happen for further rounds does kinda irk me. I would be furious later on to find out a player I lost against was DQd for alleged cheating.
 
r3skyline said:
Yes, because no witness has ever lied in court!
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I'm going to stay out of the main topic of discussion. I'm going to operate on the assumption that P!P, the judges involved, and Gino know far more about what went on than I do, so I can't really add anything.

I just want to ask this: who is in court? As near as I can tell, no one is confusing the judgement of P!P with that of a court of law.
 
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r3skyline said "The fact that you would even consider heresay as a basis for any type of judgment is ridiculous."

Rahul offered testimony that Gino taught him how to cheat. That's not hearsay. Courts consider testimony as evidence, even though in fact people could lie, which opens them up to perjury charges. Presumably TPCi weighs evidence the same way.

Nothing really left to discuss on that matter.
 
I have no sympathy for Geno. I played him in the last round at Nats this year and had no idea who he even was. We were both 5-3 and fighting for a bubble spot, something he would have been more likely to get with his two buys than I would. So our match started with him being upset that I didn’t just scoop to him. He was incredibly rude and showed no respect for me or the game. Then as the match proceeds, he keeps looking at the top card of his deck during my turn, then tried to tell me it wasn’t a big deal. I should have called a judge, and I regret that I didn’t. Ultimately he beat me after being N’d to one and then top decking the card he had to have to win. At the time I lamented my bad luck, but now I will always wonder if he palmed that card from his discard( had no idea i needed to be watching for that!).



He can call a pity party all he wants, but the game doesn’t need him. I say good riddance.
 
r3skyline said:
The fact the judges let it happen for further rounds does kinda irk me. I would be furious later on to find out a player I lost against was DQd for alleged cheating.
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I'd rather have them get enough evidence of him doing something to make sure he is in fact cheating before making a decision. Otherwise, plenty of people will begin to be thrown out of tournaments for anything remotely close to cheating even if it was a clear accident. Yes, having them take awhile sucks for the early players, but you can't DQ a player without efficient evidence.
 
You caught an opponent looking at the top card of your deck more than once, and didn't call a judge? Sounds like you need the pity party. How does a player like that even go 5-4 at a big event? It's beyond me.

That, or you're just lying to get more people into the hater camp.
 
Then there better be some type of compensation for those with losses against DQ players. It is completely unfair. Its a lose lose!

As for the "testimony", you cant be serious about it. Nothing would be weighted for the accused and any person who felt wronged could just come forward and say anything. shoot, because I know austin kulman I could say he taught me how to stack cards and use the hindu shuffle to cheat my way to win tournaments.
 
The extra prize didn't happen, it was an example of something that could have happened but didn't. I gather it's supposed to be an analogy to what actually happened, but it has too many significant differences from the actual events to work.
 
I would pay close attention to homeofmew's post on this subject at hand. Being that Tina is/was a well known cheater and is/was frowned upon by a plethora of players here in the Houston community. (I added in "was" because I do my best to not pay attention to her anymore when she makes her appearances at the local events.)

Now to stay on point here, if what FincastlePokemon2 said is accurate then it would have resulted in a DQ regardless as soon as a Judge saw it happen. Now whether or not a judge did or didn't see anything I think most of us agree it was unprofessional of them to let it go on for rounds and not do anything about it. Obviously they should have intervened on first notice of it.

However for arguments sake let's say the judge made up the lie of seeing you cheat, well unfortunately there is no way we can disprove him or her or them for being a scummer and for that I have all of the feels for you.

So unless the judge/judges decide to take back their words (which I'm sure they won't at this point because of how big this is getting, and it would make them look like complete fools now) it seems like you are stuck =( .

I can't imagine what you are going through having invested so much time, effort, and money into this hobby but I wish you the best of luck and hope that the ruling gets over turned in some miraculous way. I don't feel a LIFETIME Ban is justified however apparently Pokemon does. I feel like being suspended for a year alone is already a rough penalty, so a lifetime ban just blows my mind.

Final Note: Anyone else Read the Official Letter and think of Ross from Friends when you read the Program Managers name?
 
r3skyline said:
Yes, because no witness has ever lied in court!
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You seem to be good at finding links on the internet. Reading comprehension, not so much.

So two people pointed out to you that you do not understand what hearsay is, and your response is well, people can lie...

Its pretty clear that you are arguing backwards from a conclusion rather than applying any kind of rational thought to the matter. If you want to believe that Gino is a babe in the woods and there's just this massive conspiracy of players and judges who lie to get him banned from the game, then I guess no one can help you. Don't run out of tin foil, aliens might be involved next.
 
FunnyBear said:
You seem to be good at finding links on the internet. Reading comprehension, not so much.

So two people pointed out to you that you do not understand what hearsay is, and your response is well, people can lie...

Its pretty clear that you are arguing backwards from a conclusion rather than applying any kind of rational thought to the matter. If you want to believe that Gino is a babe in the woods and there's just this massive conspiracy of players and judges who lie to get him banned from the game, then I guess no one can help you. Don't run out of tin foil, aliens might be involved next.
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Geezus christ! :facepalm through my face!:

Reading comprehension? Uhh....Yes, i understand quite well what you and others have stated and what heresay is. To me, what someone says on an internet forum, is heresay.

NEVER did i state anything about a conspiracy or how someone was set up. Now you are making stuff up. I guess your basic literacy skills need some polishing if you want to try and put words in my mouth. Never know what it'll do for you in the future.
 
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