Explanation about what Happenned in the Ting Open casted by @BaseTradeTv

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I am writing this message to explain what happenned 2 days ago during my matches on the Ting Open casted by BaseTradeTV

I had to play in a group format against the players Reality Hydra and Solo.
Reality against solo and Hydra against me in first matches.

Hydra is in korea so we had to play on NA server. But not exactly NA server, this is where the things are a bit more complicated and there is a lot of misunderstanding.
Starcraft 2 LotV introduced new servers in NA, there are servers on East coast and servers on others area.
All these servers give a different ping for players. For European players NA east is playable but a bit laggy, which is the server on which people usually play in tournaments when there is one player from Europe and one from America.
Hydra and I had to chose between playing alternatively on Korea server and Europe or playing all the games on NA central. We decided to play on the same server for all the games because switching between KR server en EU server would have produce terrible games where one opponent can micro and the opponent can do nothing.
I didn’t know how terrible is the NA central server before playing, to be short, it’s unplayable I have a ping of at least 200 ms on this server.
I won the first game against Hydra then he adapted very well and played 2 early pool build that I can’t hold because I can’t micro my drones/zerglings properly thanks to the NA central server. So I lost against Hydra then I had to play against Solo

Solo and Hydra are both zerg players and I was going to play Solo then if I win I had to play Hydra or Reality. In case I play Hydra in the next round I want to be sure that he is not prepared against me so I don’t want to use my best builds against Solo.
In the first game I played a weird mutalisk build on 2 bases where I lost. Solo played very well which I didn’t expect so I was thinking about playing my best builds for the next matches.
ZombieGrub, the admin of BaseTradeTV, told me that I will be playing again on NA central if I win Solo because both players (Hydra and Reality) are in Korea.
So if I want to win my group I will need to win Solo then have almost 3 times a build order win against Reality or Hydra. I decided to keep my good builds secret and not play my best build against Solo to surprise Hydra in the next round.
In the second game against Solo I played a pool first build with drone pull and spine rush. It is a very risky build and sadly Solo had the hardcounter to this because he went for a 1 base play.
In that kind of situation most players don’t expect their opponent to do 2 times the same crazy build, so in the third game I tried the same build and he went for a 1 base play again so I lost again.
I lost 3-0 against Solo and I am out of the tournament.

2 days after the tournament Rifkin wrote this to the community :


“Ruling on Firecake:

Firecake was contacted with almost a full 24 hours to provide a response, but has chosen not to (relevance of this statement in a moment to do with punishment). For those who don't know, while it wasn't publicized, after the qualifier incident for this tournament, he was given a formal warning / strike against him for his previous actions regarding sortof. This in mind, Firecake during the Ro16 chose to throw games, provide public misinformation via twitter, disrespect the fans, the broadcasters, and most importantly, the sponsors of this event. It is this last point that concerns us the most, as it's become more difficult over time to secure sponsorship for Starcraft 2 in general, and to have the amazing, generous folks at Ting treated this way by a player scares us of future involvement with him. We do not want to risk accusations of match fixing, letting the fans down, or deal with general misinformation from this player in the future. Thus, firecake has officially been banned from all BaseTradeTV related events for the next 9 months. He was offered the opportunity to have this sentence significantly reduced in exchange for an apology & explanation of his actions, but chose to argue instead.”

Let’s take every points one by one.

Firecake during the Ro16 chose to throw games

This is wrong
I explained why I played very risky build against Solo. Yes I would have probably win Solo by playing my best builds but it would have lower my chances to win Hydra after and if don’t win Solo AND Hydra I earn nothing.
I did the exact same thing in the previous group stage where I didn't play my best builds in my group against Reynor Solo and Pengwin in order to hide my builds to my opponent in the WCS (serral).
It is a very common thing to do among pro players, you keep your best builds for the important matches.

Firecake provide public misinformation via twitter

Rifkin is talking about this tweet :
https://twitter.com/FireCakeSc2/status/707631906175766528
I said that Rifkin told me the games of the loser finals will be played on NA central. Rifkin didn’t say that but ZombieGrub did.
My bad, I am sorry, it is my mistake.
Sometimes it is really difficult to know who I am talking to in games, most casters are sharing their accounts. The only thing I remember is someone with the tag [BaseTrade] or [Caster] answering my question, if it’s not Rifkin it must be ZombieGrub.

Firecake disrespect the fans, the broadcasters, and most importantly, the sponsors of this event.

This is wrong
I am a player my goal is to play, I did my best to win the group but I failed. End of the story.
I didn’t insult fans, my opponent, the brodcaster or the sponsor.

Many people asked me questions about this drama, I will answer some of the questions that people ask the most :

FireCake, why not forfeit your match against Solo instead of playing bad games.

I was thinking about forfeiting my match, I think my chances to win Reality or Hydra on a bad server were very small, but most importantly I couldn’t show good games to the viewers.
Players are not allowed to forfeit in tournaments organized by BaseTradeTv, SortOf got banned from doing so 3 weeks ago.
Also, many people were looking for this group so I decided not to forfeit and I think it was the good decision.

FireCake, on twitter you said this “I am asking for a drone and instead the server cancel my upgrade”, how is it possible ?

I was playing with a lot of delay so when I hold a button it takes a long time before an action is performed by the server.
But some actions are performed on the client side like selecting and army and are not affected by the server.
This lead to some desynchronization between actions that I want to perform one after the other and thus lead to misplay such as canceling an upgrade instead of making a drone.
In order to prevent these misplay I have to perform action, wait and check if the action is performed correctly, then proceed to do the next action… If I do this my play is way too slow.

FireCake, you knew you will have to play on NA server in this tournament, why does suddendly its not ok for you ?

As I said, there are many different NA server, I can play on the NA server east (which is the one people use usually), but on the others it is not playable.
If I knew before the tournament that I will have to play on this server then I would have never play this tournament.
BaseTradeTv doesn’t have specific rules about this, the only rules about the servers is this one :
“BaseTradeTV reserves the right to change the rules at any time.”
So I can play the tournament and hopes for the best or don’t play the tournament.
If you are a full time player, what do you choose ?


Conclusion :

I am sorry for the fans that were looking for these matches, I wish I could have play well and deliver nice games but it was not possible.
I don’t really care about my ban of the BaseTradeTv tournaments, after this event I was not going to play in their futures events anyway because the servers they use prevent me to make good games. However I feel this is a very unfair ban because I didn't throw my matches and followed all their rules.
I hope this explanation will help to forget this episode and move on to something more interesting.

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