April 2008

Addressing The Situation - by Tony Mera

Ok here's the deal; I arrive in SJC Columbus and I'm still working on last minute changes to my deck. I see Jae Kim, and he comes up and greets me just like all the others players. He tells us he has been teaching some language or something. At this point I still can't make the decision about what to side against macro. Knowing that Jae has good creative ideas, I asked him what he would side against macro. 'Burial from D.D. or more Escapes From Dark Dimension, If you're playing a dark deck'. He also said Dust Tornado. I thought a lot about this and said to myself well obviously, considering the fact that I already sided that. I wanted to know what else, so I asked him again. This time I said please choose between the two options. He told me again 'Dust Tornado, side three Dust Tornado's.' Now I know from experience that you can't side three Dust Tornado's against anything that attacks. You might open with a combination of Dust Tornado, MST, and Heavy Storm, get beat down by the smallest monster, and lose because you kept drawing Magic and Trap destruction. So I figured maybe this guy just really doesn't know any better, and he would be crazy enough to side a massive amount of Dust Tornado's and Twisters and get beat down by D.d Survivor. From that point on, I realized that Jae, really isn't that good.

The tournament starts. I'm undefeated after round four, and have to play Jae Kim. I admit I was a little nervous at first, just because I know he lives in California and the California players are good like Adam corn, T, and WTC. So I walk with Fili Luna and I tell him who I'm playing, I shrug and say well it's time to "separate the men from the boys". As I sit down to play Jae Kim, I remember the question I asked him before the tournament. Then I realize, whatever he is going to play, he will exaggerate it. I knew this because of my Marco question I asked him earlier. The way he responded to the question, I used this to my advantage. Forgive me if I leave out minor details, but the match went as follows.......

I won the dice roll. I started with DaD, Trap Dustshoot, Strike Ninja, and Stratos, and I forget the rest. I summon Stratos and search out Dasher. Then I set Trap Dustshoot and end. On his Standby Phase, I Dustshoot him, He has Phantom Sky Blaster, Cyber Valley, Scapegoat, Morphing jar, Plasma, and Dustshoot. I pick Cyber Valley. He immediately sets three magic and traps and then sets Morphing Jar face down and says "go." Ok, this is the important part. Since he set jar and Dustshoot, he's obviously going to Trap Dustshoot me if I set a card. I drew into mind crush, and I have about four dark monsters in my hand. Strike, DaD, Dasher, etc and Mind Crush. I think for a moment and realize he's going to chain Dustshoot to whatever I do. So the question is do I let him see my mind crush or do I set it and let him take my Strike Ninja with Trap Dust shoot. I decide to Summon Strike Ninja so he can't Dustshoot it. Then he immediately Dustshoots me. I forget what he takes. I think its DaD actually. Anyway. he sees that I have Mind Crush in my hand. Then I set it and attack the Morphing Jar with Strike Ninja, then I say hit for 1800 with my finger on Stratos and I write it down on my notepad. We draw into five cards. I seen Sky Blaster earlier in his hand, so I knew he's running multiple plasmas; a sort of control deck.

He didn't activate the Scapegoat he set. So I force him to activate them, because I don't want him to summon plasma, I drew into DaD with the Morphing Jar. Then I had 3 darks because of that Morphing Jar. So I Summon DaD and pop his Goats. I special summon Grepher and pitch a dark monster to get more darks in my grave and proceed to destroy all of the tokens. I remember I sent DMOC with Grepher. I have Dimension in hand and Return from D.D. in hand. I still had Mind Crush set. I drew Torrential Tribute and I set that then and I ended my turn. I knew it was over. If he cant kill me next turn, because while I was destroying his Scape Goats I removed power cards like Dasher, DMOC, etc. He summons skyblaster, and then he asked me if I would like to mind crush plasma. I think for a moment and then I say no. He knows I have the Mind Crush set, so he might be trying to trick me. I didn't care if he summoned Plasma, but I needed the 2 cards in my hand, so then he summons Plasma and I think for a minute then I activate Torrential Tribute. He Summons DaD, removes a dark to destroy my Mind Crush and hits me for 2800 and he sets a Spell or Trap and then ends. Then on my turn I ask him how many life points he has. He should be at 6200. He said he was at 8000. I said how? I attacked him with Stratos. He said that I never declared an attack with Elemental Hero Stratos, which I said 1800 and pushed forward my Stratos and took away the life. Clearly any player would have seen me attacking, and then I also wrote it down. I looked at him and said, "oh you want to play like that huh?" Knowing he is just trying to shark me.

Then I let it go and gave him back 1800 life points, without calling a judge over. It was game anyway even if he was at 8000. I regulate my grave with Strike Ninja and summon another DaD. I remove dark monsters to destroy his set card's and his DaD. Then I activate Dimension Fusion and bring everything that Strike Ninja and DaD removed like DMOC, etc. It was game. He brings back Phantom Skyblaster. Then he puts 2 tokens on the field. I didn't realize he was not suppose to get tokens with Sky Blaster's effect if it was special summoned, which is how he cheated me again. So I said sure get your tokens or whatever (not reading the card.) If Jae is such an honorable player, then why not point it out? I attacked a goat with Snipe hunter and everything was fine. Then I attacked with Disc commander he says I take 200. I had forgot the sky blaster tokens are not 0/0. The ones that he shouldn't been able to have on the field. I end up attacking him for like 6000 and ending my turn, he can't recover next turn then he scoops. I asked him why did you cheat me out of the 1800 with Stratos, not being aware of the Sky Blaster situation at the time. He said that I misplayed by not saying the exact words "I attack with Elemental Hero Stratos" and he proceeds to side deck. I said whatever and called him a cheater. Then he said, "I don't like you very much anymore." I didn't care anymore.

Game two was fairly short. He drew six cards and set one Spell or Trap and then passed. I special summoned Grepher, pitching Dasher, pitching to put DMOC in the gave and something else. I Summoned DaD and destroyed his set Decree, Then monster Reborned DMOC and got back Reborn to get Dasher, much like my featured match when I won my DoomCaliber knight. I attacked for game on the first turn. He lost turn one and got upset.
The next thing I know he's accusing me of cheating somehow, when he's the one that actually cheated me. And Jae if you're reading this, I would like to say you got me all wrong, I have never been friends with Evan Vargas. On a personal note I've always hated him because he's the one who started calling me Stallaway. I never wanted him on Outphase. It was never my decision. I remember we drove to Indy, and I almost left him there because I got so mad at him. I never looked up to you, or have been a Team Savage fan or whatever.

I always asked a lot of people questions which is how I got to be so good. I rate your answers and if it sounds right, then I use it for my own good. In your case with the Macro stuff, it sounded horrible, so I didn't use your idea. I've always been an elite player in gaming alike, whether it's been Yu-Gi-Oh, Fighting Games like street fighter, and Dance Dance Revolution. I always have been the best in my state for all games that I have played, and I have traveled to many tournaments in California, Florida, etc for such games just like Shonen Jump Championships. In fact, Yu-Gi-Oh is the first game where I haven't been able to win consistently because of the "luck" factor. You just remember seeing me when I first started playing, which of course I'm not going to be so good, but as you see. I have risen to be an elite player, and I will continue to evolve as long as I'm in the game. In short I've never idolized you in anyway, and when people use to say 'Jae Kim was so good', I always asked why? I haven't seen you win Shonens or anything, what makes you just so good?

Let's see, he was wrong in what he said because his article was completely untrue. He is mentioning things that I've done in the past for several reasons, like the Des Koalas and Ceasefire. Quite honestly I don't even remember why my side deck was composed of the cards it was, but I do remember every Outphase member pretty much sided the same thing for the same reasons. I remember it had a lot to do with trying to beat stein or get them under 5000 very quickly. Of course it would help in random situations like the Miguel Garcia one. Doesn't mean I intentionally stalled him.
Against Jae Kim, I didn't side anything the whole match. I waited on Jae Kim each game. I mean, the only way I can prove that I'm a clean player is the fact that he was allowed to count my side if he wanted, I piled shuffled both games and he got the final cut just as usual. He watched some of my other matches, and he may say I got the same hands, but my deck is built to get the same hands like, 2x Rota 3x Destiny Draw, 3x DaD, all i basically needed to have was one Rota and one DaD and two random darks monsters. Then I could Grepher with DaD and then summon another monster its already 1700, 2800, plus any random monster such as Snipe Hunter and that would be 1500 more damage. That's 6000 easily and that's saying it was snipe. It could have easily been Stratos or something, and all I needed was 1 Escape, Return, De-fusion, Reborn, Premature, or anything else for game. In other words the deck was consistent. This is why I drew similar hands through the day. I practice spotting game in my hand from a mile away. Also, it wasn't my fault Jason Grabber-Meyer didn't feature me. It's not like I refused a feature from him or something, he just didn't want do it because I was running DaD like everyone else; he's suppose to be more creative with his featured matches.

80% of my matches in top 16 were featured. Every match except the first one I believe, and what they wrote is what happened. Jerome was watching everyone like a hawk. You all know Jerome, the guy that got Emon banned. No one had a problem with anything I did because I didn't do anything, I wasn't even allowed to take my deck from the top eight area. They made me leave my deck every time I left, not to mention all the deck checks I had to endure. Jae Kim is just a sore loser and he's doing this out of spite because he didn't like me very much after I called him a cheater. He shouldn't have cheated me in the first place. I play the game extremely clean.

I'm not on any particular side, but I think it wasn't fair to Jason for what was happening to him. He was being accused with no way of defending himself. Jae Kim is a good player, and writing up articles like this is fairly easy for him. My point is that you can accuse anyone of cheating. You can accuse any single player you want and make up some fake story. Most people have tons of friends in the game. Let's just say I get 100 of my friends to say "x" player is a cheater. I can get my friends to tell all these lies, and then "quote them" and then ask "Pro's" what they think of him. I'm also sure most Pro's do not care if another "Pro" is banned or whatever happens to him as long as he's not on their team. What happened to Jason was just a band wagon effect. People claimed he cheats, and then the messages kept coming in. Some people are probably lying, just so they can say they contributed to Jae Kim's article and make him happy. What I don't get is why they only crack down on Jason Halloway. Why is he the only one being accused? Can't we all remember the other tons of people who are consistently better than Jason Halloway? If we accuse Jason Halloway of cheating, wouldn't that mean every other "Pro" must be shady as well. I mean, this is a game where having friends will make or break you. If you have friends, let's admit, you're not getting accused any time soon.

What makes the "Pro" teams so good is that they are almost untouchable. You can't even accuse them of cheating without getting ready for a flame war. Why did Jae Kim pick Jason out of all the people he can address in this type of statement to? It's clearly obvious that he is sore about the match. Weather or not he thinks Jason actually cheated or not is a whole other story. His reaction to his loss must of effected him greatly. Even though Jae Kim is an extremely great player, he does have a really big ego. Who doesn't in this game anyways? He wanted to get back at Jason and what a perfect way by just ruining his name. I do not support cheating and I've always been against it. I just don't agree to do it as Jae Kim went with it. You don't call someone out on the Internet. He should have done this at the event and had done this personally and found out what he wanted before all this mess. We can't prove Jason is cheating, and we can't prove Jae Kim is a saint who never lies. We also can't prove any other time when someone accuses someone of cheating.

This is not the first time Jae Kim has accused someone of cheating. If you look back three years ago on the Pojo forums, Jae Kim accused some people of cheating. That was when Jae Kim was at his Prime and declining a little. Jae Kim just returned to the game and yet again he is declining and we see another cheating article. We have to think about it, if this was the right way of going about it. People say it's a sacrifice and it was the right step towards making cheaters aware that they will be caught. The truth is, this is insignificant. People who cheat will keep cheating. This article will not affect anything but what people think of one man named Jason Halloway. This has affected him greatly in what people may think of him. Why ruin a person's name without hardcore evidence? Quoting people that are your friends and people who hate him isn't going to cut it. "Pro's" who claimed he cheats don't care. Do you really think they care? No, they do not care when another "Pro" goes down for the count. It's just another person to be better than and claim a bigger ego by getting him out of their way.

I'm not writing this for my entertainment or yours. I'm making this article to prove that cheating can't be proved by accusations. If you want to prove someone is a cheater, you need to get it on tape or some kind of hardcore proof. You have to prove to the Yu-Gi-Oh community that "x" is a cheater by video, etc. Yes, now people can keep an eye on Jason. What's that going to do? It won't do anything. The Yu-Gi-Oh community has to realize this was a savage attempt to call out cheaters in the game. This wasn't a message to the players, it was a public hanging. This was a terrible thing to see. We do not have to go about this in this kind of way. I just want to help you people understand that there are much better ways than doing this like Jae Kim did. You can tell a head judge at any local, regional, or SJC if you think a player is a cheater. Just put up a logical explanation. Then that Head Judge will make sure to let the floor judges look out for any suspicious behavior by this player. Watch their game's as soon as you can. They can't cheat if people are watching them play. Tell all your friends to watch player "x" play as soon as they can to stop that player from cheating during that match.

Obviously, when I said video tape your evidence it sounded a little odd. You really can't get that opportunity most of the time, but that's the kind of evidence it takes to really show a person is really a cheater. Ok, well if you happen to be watchnig him playing. Just video tape it from behind, look at it and see if you find anything suspicious. Things like his sleeves, his shuffle, or anything like that. A video is better than any article accusing people of cheating. Recently as an example, I went on a team thread and called "x and y" cheaters. They responded how I assumed they would respond to what I said. Then they had people on the thread who agreed with me right away and people who disagreed with me, which were some of the people who knew them. I'm not sure what that proved to you people, but it proved the same thing that happened with Jason Halloway. I do not know If Jason is really a cheater or not, but I can tell you that this wasn't the right step in making things right. This was not taken care of in a professional manner by a player who is widely known and respected.

I hope some of you have learned something here and I hope I didn't write this for nothing. I know I may get flamed for speaking my mind, but if that's the cost, so be it. I'm not the best player in the game or even close, but I like the game and I find that cheating, stealing, and lying have to be taken care of to keep this game enjoyable. If we can work together and find a better solution to proving people are cheating, we can put more cheaters on the banned list. Jae Kim took this in the wrong direction. Was it worth losing your metagame position for this kind of behavior? It wasn't and should be taken care of in a professional manner and I hope people have learned this was not right at all.