Re : Mishlef
Situation : Mishlef brought one Pokemon to the last game of his series vs pqs. This is pretty blatant gamethrowing by nearly any reasonable interpretation of the rule. Two factors make this case difficult to ignore compared to past instances you might be familiar with. Firstly, this is quite late in bracket and would certainly qualify as a high stakes match. Secondly, it's pretty difficult to argue that someone tried to throw a set that they won; throwing a game five, on the other hand, makes your intentions pretty clear.
Result : Mishlef is banned from 1v1 tournaments for three months.
Good morning Tournament Head Boat (phiwings99), today we will be doing some analysis:
1.
First off, for the sake of argument, let's look up the official definition for throwing given by Oxford Dictionary.
If you look up "throwing definition" on Google and look at the 7th definition (the one gaming-related) we see the following:
2.
Throwing as a regulation for Tournaments and Competitions is always properly defined because it varies depending on what game or competition it is being regulated for, so let's see what the official definition for throwing is in the Smogon Tournament Rules and General Guidelines.
This matches the definition given by Oxford Dictionary but also adds in the equation the opinion of the Tournament Directors, given that they are the ones who will be judging on a case by case scenario
3.
With that premise in mind, let's see what the Tournament Director and more importantly the Tour Head that is handling this situation thinks about throwing
While this message doesn't specifically describe boats?'s opinion on the definition of throwing, it certainly shows that he mentions the definiton of "sequence of plays that can only be described as throwing" as reasonable and applicatively favorable.
4.
Here are some messages from the culprit at fault. While the word of the culprit itself is not enough to exempt himself it gives us the perspective of his reasoning for said sequence of plays
We'll route back to this reasoning later
5.
While I am not a big fan of taking screenshots out of context, I would like to emphasize how useful and important precedent is generally, and specifically for said TD's "discretion"
Now then, let's look at some precedent:
These, Three, Replays, of Eriey using a single pokemon in a Seasonal
These, Three, Games, where Joker 1v1 and Rosa brought Magikarp to a Premier League match (even higher stakes than a seasonal) and got off scot free.
This instance of Tol bringing only two pokemon to a 1v1PL series and promptly being 3-0d by Regieleki. "But he did that accidentally!" Did he? are you sure you can trust the words of a man that definitely didn't bring a bad team intentionally to boost his friends' crow crumbs record? If we believe Tol, wouldn't we also believe Mishlef when he said he wasn't throwing?
Whatever the fuck this was (still mad).
This Xander game doing literally THE SAME THING but WORSE since he not only revealed set but his set wasnt even a lure for anything and it had like one move and not being punished because it was only round 1
There are quite certainly more cases of this kind of propaganda fuckery with "throwing"-related moments but I think this assortment of replays makes for a fair amount of precedent (none of these cases were punished)
CONCLUSION
1. The biggest thing that concerns me is that this happened in a game 5 situation, which means Mishlef had been actively trying to win up until that point and was one game away from doing so, if he were to have intentionally wanted to lose the game to benefit pqs by making him go further in the bracket he definitely wouldn't have done so in a game 5 situation
2. The legitimacy of the strategy is to be taken into account and should not be subjectively judged by a single individual. Whether you agree or disagree with its efficacy, 1v1 is a game of strategy and wits made to take advantage of these kinds of situations, things like your team losing to a certain Pokemon on purpose because your opponent will think it was actually a bait, bringing Pokemon that are UR because your opponent will have no idea what they do. Mishlef believed he wasnt gonna be able to bring a normal team and outpick pqs in a standard 1v1 match, so he decide to use a gimmicky method to win, which would've won had pqs had a different team structure.
3. Making different tournament decisions based on how late in the round the seasonal game happens is a terrible idea, since every single game is gonna have an outcome on the end of seasonal and will ruin the tournament experience in the same way. This basically tells me that it is allowed for someone to get boosted to a higher round by people throwing against him unless its a round high enough for the TD to care enough to make a call? It sounds almost as ridiculous as it actually is.
4. Deciding to tournament ban a player because of a strategy that is "objectively unoptimal" is extremely flawed because it enables punishments to players that simply play bad. I have seen a fair share of teams/sets/plays that were strictly and objectively BAD like the famous
Arctic losing Mawile vs Diancie by clicking Metal Burst 5 times in a row in a Worlc Cup match. This is a "sequence of plays that one could only feasible describe as throwing", but that is because the player in question is just
unfathomably fucking bad, not because he wanted to lose on purpose. The key component behind these instances is
intent. Did the player decide to lose intentionally to favor one of his friends or did he lose the game because he simply made poor decisions or didnt know any better? This is an incredibly important point that was failed to be taken into account and was actually dismissed by one of the very few people that had any say in this decision.
The game 5 of the Round 11 of Seasonal series is not a "sequence of plays that can only be described as throwing" strictly because it is extremely easy to describe that series of actions as something different than throwing: an unoptimal strategy to win by capitalizing completely on the builder instead of the picking variable, an attempt to cheese a victory from an opponent that is better than yourself, a gamble on the opponents's mental state and clearmindedness to try and win the game in an unconventional manner. All of these definitions are valid and each one of them has an absolute end goal: to win the game.
This game did not constitute throwing in any way, shape or form and the decision to tourban Mishlef should absolutely be reverted.
