Early July:
The status of the cabal was uncertain: BCMattEagles and RND were IP blocked by Ryan for impersonating me on the site. Integral, Wishbone, Montecarlo, X LUCK X, XCRobin had phoenixed or retired.

That just left three prominent cabal members to worry about: riser and dasfury and Vermont. (BCM and RND managed to play many games this month despite the IP block, I guess they have some knowledge of using a proxy server to alter their IP address).

The general population of kdice was happy with me for revealing the unfair tactics used by the cabal: http://aplayr.com/kdice/kdice/forum/topics/integral%20rnd%20montecarlo/. It was easy for me to find people to work with in the game. The remnants of the cabal and their PGAs were trying to sabotage me, but I was playing enough games to overcome some bad finishes. I was in first!

Second Week of July
Sinth began a heavy campaign of PGAs, private IMs, and playing with proxies (I didn’t notice any simultaneous disconnections or lags to prove if it was Sinth or his teammates that was controlling the proxies). Sinth’s teammates at this time included AlmogBitten, BigJumblies, SodaPop, RND.

Riser, BCMatteagles, Dasfury moved into contention also. They were aided by the usual cabal network of PGAs and Riser was using proxies.

At this time, I began to mobilize the anti-cabal (now just WayneRooney, Cabbage, Mikeypoo) with some clear goals: BEAT THE CABAL! It only took us a few days to realize that we could utilize the same techniques as the other cheaters and finish with the top 4 spots.

Leekstep WayneRooney Mikeypoo and ShamosM (Cabbage) all had accounts over 2250, and we had another 10 or so over 2000. I knew that Cabbage and WayneRooney were capable of proxy cheating, but I don’t know if they did it for the initial run.

We began to PGA, especially me and WayneRooney, and we were just doing amazingly well. I assume the games with Wayne didn’t involve proxies, and we were just doing really well. WayneRooney, Mikeypoo, and Cabbage were top 20-25. I was in first!

Mid July
Dasfury BCM Riser fell behind. Even cabal members RND and XCRobin were supporting me. There was no cabal, there was no competition. People were happy to see a leader who didn’t cheat. I was approaching 250 games, most of them (but not all) without any instant messaging, PGA, or any cheating. I was in first!

15th July
An end of month scoring reset seemed like a reality, and pretty much anyone with a good elo considered making a competitive run for the month. Our four team members were all top 25 and we had 4 of the top 5 elos. Most of the cabal members had returned, and it seemed like the end of the month competition was going to be tough.

It was obvious that it was easiest for our team to earn points by going on “runs”. If we all tried to accumulate points at the same time, the guy with second elo would earn just .33 points per game instead of .5 per game if he were in first, the guy in third would only earn .25 points per game instead of .33, etc. If we were to achieve the goal of all four of us earning 30 points, then we needed to cooperate.

Mikey and Wayne and Cabbage worried that after helping me win July, they wouldn’t have an opportunity to win in August. I was mainly interested in keeping the four of us at the top, ahead above the cabal all month… so I agreed to a fair competition amongst the four of us at the end of the month.

Since his elo was a few points higher at the time, I told Wayne to go ahead and his his position to earn 25-30 points as quickly as possible. I thought this would discourage other people from competing. Our group worked to get WayneRooney first place as often as possible. Cabbage and I would sit with our high elo main accounts to give Wayne the maximum score available. At times we would even use proxies when we ran into a large group of cheaters.

Wayne’s elo kept climbing and his behavior became odd. Wayne was just interested in playing a few games each day and getting his elo higher. He became scared to use his main account unless he had lots of PGAs/proxies sitting with him. Instead of playing lots of games and earning lots of points, Wayne decided to sit selectively. Wayne was still very active in sitting alternate accounts to assist the team, but he would never sit WayneRooney.

It became frustrating that WayneRooney was not earning points. We were still concerned about the cabal making a run. Wayne was not only blocking our earning potential with his high elo, he wasn’t able to support us by sitting with his primary account. Despite the fact that we were giving him an elo boost when we sat with our primaries to assist him.

I was also frustrated that Wayne was sitting on obviously unbelievable elo (2350+) and unbelievable winning percentages (over 30% firsts). I wanted him to get his 30 points quickly, then work his way back to legitimate-looking numbers. This would also give us an opportunity to earn points.

I started to notice a ton of proxies, our team began to implement this tactic in our play. Mikeypoo strongly objected to the use of proxies, but it was a tool that Wayne Cabbage and I would use at times. I reported some use of proxies to Ryan, and he deleted the accounts. I was in first!

18th–20th July
Proxy abuse got worse. I began to build a database. It is nearly impossible to identify who is controlling each of the proxy accounts. I could identify the people the proxies sat with most frequently, and the obvious PGA partners for the proxies, but its hard to identify the person controlling each patsy account.

I had more games played than anyone, I was in first place. I realized that I didn’t have the time to play this many games each day. The only way I could keep earning points at a high rate would be by using proxies or PGAs and selectively playing games like Riser and WayneRooney.

At this point I became unhappy with the game, realizing that I would need to cheat for myself in order to keep pace with the other cheaters. I continued to report obvious proxy abuses, such as Sinth and Riser. I “retired” from the game (reduced my playing time from 15-20 per day to one or two per day). I was in first!

22nd July
I reported myself for using proxies in an email to Ryan. I hoped it would convince him to implement the new scoring system, or undertake some other technological changes to fix the game. I was in first!

28th July
RND caught WayneRooney using a proxy when he noticed that 5 team accounts were in the room, but the team only had 4 members. It didn’t help that WayneRooney’s best previous month was 15% first and 15% second, and this month he cheated so bad it was 29% first and 21% second. I told RND that I was going to wait until August 2 to release the details of our scheme.

31st July
RND makes a post from my Leekstep account releasing some of the details of our scheme because he felt “if there was a chance that Ryan was going to do something it had to be done before the end of the month.”

Conclusions:
Nobody ever finished top 2 without cheating: heavy use of Private Instant Messaging, Proxies, Lots of PreGameAlliances, etc.

PGAs, IMs, Proxies are like steroids in baseball. If they arent testing for it, then you might as well do it. Especially if you want to be a star. The cabal is no worse than the anti-cabal or the Sodapop Gang or anything else.

It sucks playing a game that you need to cheat if you want to win!