so i sat at the 21-player members-only tourney today.

1st game:
teal got 1st (i still forget his name, hes a noob who leek insists is an alt.)
i got 2nd
sam got 3rd
ching got 4th
this is how it went down: teal had a nice connected start, but with a couple islands that got early large stacks. sam was between one of these stacks and teals main base. i was sort of in between too. sam asks if i can leave a 2stack island of his alive so he can connect to it next turn. i say, sorry, hell no, and eat the island because i dont want to give him that favor (doesnt matter whose stack that was, i wouldve eaten it to keep them from connecting it). teal pops up the ginormous 7stack on the other side of sam. sam immediately says 'dont worry teal or brown (i was brown), i will flag to both of yall'. this puts me in a tough situation, because now teal has sams vflag, but he doesnt have mine. so i think, hmm, teals logical move now is to run that 7 through me, since sam is now a safe neighbor for him. so i thought i was forced into vflagging as well. so i wait a split second to see if i build a magic 7stack too to block teal. i dont. so i immediately say, dont worry teal, ill flag 2nd, nice win. teal decides not to connect through us, since he already has our vflags. however, now teal is effectively a meat shield, so while sam and i build slowly, nex starts hammering at teals main base, which isnt that strong any more since a lot of his builds were going to his other 2 islands. ching gets stacked up too, and is poised to attack someone (we'll never know who), and then sam attacks ching the turn before ching can attack safely, and cuts ching. ching and nex try to fight off teal and sam and me, but to no avail, and they slowly start to go down. ching is wondering wtf why are sam and monte 2v1ing me, apparently he wasnt paying attention to the chatbox or the map, because frankly it was very obvious and loud when sam and i vflagged for 3rd and 2nd. nex does fairly well against teal, and knocks his main base down to 2 territories. i tell ching, sorry dude, you can have 4th if you want, but the top three have already been decided. at this point ching asks if he can fight, and we leave him alone and i say sure, ill let you fight for 4th. ching fights for and gets 4th over yellow who was in a corner behind him. ching flags 3rd now since he is bigger than teal (nex had died by now since sam came down and beat him down for teal). ching is upset because we tell him, again, sorry ching, you cant have 3rd, you cant even fight for it.

at this point tons of people come in to the gallery and see this situation: sam huge and in 1st, monte 2nd hugest and in 2nd, flagged. ching 3rd largest, flagged 3rd. and teal with like 3 bases, none larger than 2 territories, and unflagged. everyone sees sam and i attacking ching and everybody goes into a blind rage as to why we are giving ching 4th when clearly he is flagged for 3rd and teal is wrecked the fuck up. we try to explain, but the moblike gallery wont have any of it, and insist that sam and i are pga and cheaters. we kill ching, ching gets 4th. sam sits out, and takes 3rd. im already flagged so i get 2nd. and teal, who had 3bases and looked horribly weak, gets 1st.

the reason teal got 1st is because of his imposing 7stack in round 3. because he didnt pwn sam or me down when we declared vflags, sam and i definitely owed him 1st, and said so in chat several times throughout the game. so noname teal new player (who leek claims is an alt) gets 1st. sam gets 3rd since he vflagged to me, and i get 2nd. ching looks like he got screwed into 4th, but really ching wasnt paying attention to the chatbox or the game enough to realize that vflags were going up.

2nd game:
elfmaster gets 1st.
just_jack gets 2nd.
sam gets 3rd
i get 4th
ching gets 5th
this is how things went down:
sam and jack are in the north, elf is huge in the south. ching is trapped to the west of the middle meeting area. im trapped to the east of the middle meeting area. its clear from round 5ish that elf will clearly win this game. i am weak and south, and i tell him no worries, and i will help him if he wants. he says sure (even though he honestly didnt need my help). at this point, sam and jack counter, and start coming south. i would give them a 20% chance of winning the counter, give or take. as sam is passing by ching, he demands that ching flag 4th or else he will kill ching (theres a good chance that ching wouldve joined elf and me, and critically cut sam later in the game). ching obliges and flags 4th. sam and jack continue trying to get south. elf has like 12, i have 3, sam has like 7 and jack 6.... give or take. at this point it dawns on me that elf will probably win. it also dawns on me that elf will probably give me 2nd. i think, hell, this will take forever if elf is going to give me 2nd, and this is a 2nd round game where points arent that important yet, so screw this, i dont want to see a large jack and large sam get pwnd down just for me to be the bitch 2nd. (although honestly i feel that i wouldve earned the 2nd since sam and jack tried to fight against elf, whereas i tried to help him, but w/e). so i make the following offer: sam and jack, if yall flag now for 2nd and 3rd, then i will flag for 4th, and not demand 2nd. they both agreed (i think because they knew that elf would indeed give me 2nd). so they flagged, and i flagged 4th. at this point, ching is once again caught in the headlights of a fuckin gayass monte chatbox scheme (i admit im wicked when it comes to chatbox pwning). so elf kills ching, while ching the whole time is like, this shit is shitty, i flagged 4th before monte did, i deserve 4th!!! once again, the gallery comes in halfway through our game, and most of them draw the conclusion of 'ching is getting screwed.' but really, i dont think ching was getting screwed, i think he just got outplayed in the chatbox. honestly, ask anyone who has played me, i use the chatbox more than anyone else in this game, which is why people either love me or hate me.

3rd game: i get sat down with a whole new crowd, i get a really nice lucky start, chances are i will be at least top 2 this game, good for monte. i take one turn, connect some stuff, look stronger... and then BOOM, i lag out. i try reloading for the next 15 or so minutes, to no avail. i try logging into gpokr (it worked once), then nothing worked. i jump on aim to bitch about how much it sucks to get lag just when i was about to take a nice standing in the tourney. the one thing that was in the back of my mind was that one of the last things i remember seeing before i lagged out was:
Ryan is here
so i grow suspicious, did i just lag out, or was i lagged out because my play from the first two rounds was misinterpreted? conspiracy theories abound in my head. vermont tells me to calm down, that its probably nothing (verms is always a good calming influence). 15 mins later or so, i can reload kdice again. ofc, this is immediately after i have lost all my points in the tourney for lagging out. i tell others this sucks that i lagged out. then someone says, 'oh, elf lagged out too.' and im like... waaaaait a sec, elf was the one that helped me in the previous game! then i look real quick to see if sam is still in the tourney,.... nope! (i dont know if he lagged out or just lost). and then someone else who is there says, hey monte, how many points did you have before you sat in this tourney? i was like, i dunno, around 3600. they say, well look now, youve been reset to 2500. wtf. so i dont know what the hell happened. if indeed i got reset to 2500, i was never given a chance to defend myself, so here is my defense: my recap of those two games. i dont care who was fuckin teal in game one or who was fuckin red in game two, i woulda truced them because of my position, i have always played the game that way, to be nice to big neighbors. i dont trade friendly favors. i fuckin dont. ok done with that rant.

now, i stayed around teh tourney to watch the conclusion. when it got down to 4 players, it was murti, mona, and 2 more not as well known players (sorry you two, i know youre not noobs, but you also havent been as well known as murti or mona). mona was 4th and short-stacked behind murti, murti had the commanding 1st. everyone said they wouldnt attackin him (everyone was shortstacked compared to murti). red/green decided to fight for 2/3. when one of them was knocked down to 3 territories, mona stole his 3rd flag. so now there were two 3rd flags. i was in the chatbox and said i would guarantee that mona gets 2nd before this happened. well, she flagged 3rd (3rd means she could play another round, 4th meant out of the tournament). red and green both tell murti, waaaait a second, neither of us deserves 4th here. and then murti makes this amazing statement: mona is my sister. then he proceeds to take out either red or green, i forget. same EXACT situation that cody got banned for yesterday. exactly. 4 players left, one player deserves 4th, but is gifted 3rd because they are wellknown by the 1st place player. this is shit. i tried to tell this to murti and mona, while insisting that im still a friend of theirs, yes, but that this gameplay has to stop. in the end, they denied it all, and insisted that mona earned it because she didnt attack murti. murti also started to insist that the whole: mona is my sister line was just a joke. well, joke or not, the action taken was to reward mona, and eventually, guess who got 1/2 in the tourney standings? yeah.

anyways, officiating in tourneys, as it stands now, is completely stupid. i played a non-favors game, and it was misinterpreted as a favors game, mostly because the person i happened to truce was also a wellknown player. meanwhile, murti says in chatbox that he gives a favor, and nothing happens. can you tell im frustrated by how these tourneys are policed?