Date is not set - tentative date. This thread is a placeholder for the actual event along. Please read if you are interest in attending but have any doubts or concerns.
**Update** I still plan to host this, but it will not be until late 2015 and could involve Smash 4, if the game goes well
**Update** I still plan to host this, but it will not be until late 2015 and could involve Smash 4, if the game goes well
Hello everyone! For those of you who don't know me, my name is Plank. I know there are a lot of newer players, and I know that a lot of them may have heard of me in regards to what happened at *Pound* 5, so I want to be able to speak to those people directly, before I host another large scale tournament.
I've been a tournament organizer in the MD/VA area for almost 10 years. I began running local tournaments in the area and eventually decided I wanted to do something bigger for the community. I decided to revive the *Pound* tournament series, created by Chinesah.
Side note: The original *Pound* was a one day tournament and was my first tournament ever. It had around 70 entrants. This tournament was my motivation for getting into smash. Even though Chestie and Kaiser went to my high school and played smash, I never played until this tournament. There is something inspiring about seeing so many people from different cultures coming together for such a unique cause. Seeing someone like NEO playing against this kid (at the time) Mew2King and everyone watching/cheering was crazy to me.
http://smashboards.com/threads/2007...ration-closed-singles-pools-first-post.94730/
I hosted *Pound* 2 on June 16-17 of 2007. I believe this had around 120-140 entrants. The tournament received MLG grassroots sponsorship (this was during the time when MLG just dropped smash from the official circuit and helped sponsor a spring of grassroots tournaments across the country). The event went resoundingly well and received nothing but positive feedback.
(can't find thread)
I hosted *Pound* 3 in February of 2008. This tournament had 224 entrants, and was the tournament that Mang0 ran a train through losers bracket. This tournament went a bit late because the venue closed early and we had to relocate which sucked. But i learned from that and made sure this wouldn't be possible at venues in the future.
http://smashboards.com/threads/pound-4-vgbootcamp-debut-two-days-planks-sanity-remaining-50.237419/
I hosted *Pound* 4 on January 16, 17, and 18 of 2010. This was VGBootCamp's debut tournament, and had 347 entrants for melee singles, and i believe around 200 for brawl, around 550 unique entrants. This number was the highest for any melee event ever, and remained that for many years.It was also the best tournament I've ran to date from start to finish. My venue is about 45 minutes from 3 different airports. I arranged a team of friends to provide rides to whoever needed them at airports. I did all the organization to pick up as many people as possible at each airport by collecting flight information. I then charged everyone being picked up a set rate to be transported to the hotel by the venue. There is no public transportation from the airports to Frederick aside from a taxi or airport shuttle, both of which were unreasonably expensive. I organized this for players arrivals and departures. The drivers made a profit, the players paid less, everyone wins. Along with refining all my practices, providing 20+ tv's of my own, and additional preparation, everything went very smoothly. When you wanted to play a friendly, you could turn to any of multiple open tv's. I believe for both games (brawl and melee) combined there was 90 TV's at one point. I will be doing employing all of my practices at future tournaments as well
http://smashboards.com/threads/ta-p...ed-at-www-vgbootcamp-com-bring-setups.278586/
I hosted *Pound* V on February 19, 20, and 21st of 2011. Although I ran so many successful tournaments, this is the one that gets talked about the most because of the way it went down. This tournament had 243 melee entrants, and brawl had 151 entrants. This made about 400 unique entrants. The attendance alone was one of the major issues.
All of my prior events had been growing, and I wanted big things for smash. I hosted the tournament at the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City - less than a mile from the airport. The venue was amazing, and it was right next to the hotel. No team of people needed to hull people from the airport, incredibly convenient, in the middle of DC for travel, only $100 for EXTREMELY nice hotel rooms, the venue was too perfect. I signed into a venue contract which reduced the cost of the venue depending on how many hotel rooms were rented. The contract also billed me, after the event, for any cancelled hotel rooms or no-shows. This is something I didn't catch in the contract which bit me in the ass later.
As the tournament got closer and the attendance was not what I had been expecting, I made sure to be as adamant as possible about people not cramming into hotel rooms, only 4 per room. I had them update it on the event page in extra huge text when you were reserving the room. I knew since the attendance wasn't as high as expected given the rate of growth of my tournaments, I had to emphasize that fact. Unfortunately the room was not met and the cost of the venue increased exponentially, causing me to pay over $20,000.00 total to the venue throughout various parts of the contract.
After doing the final math at the venue, I was going to have around $2.5k for prizes remaining. This would not have been the full pot amount by any means but it was something to work with.
The tournament went well, and people were happy which is my main goal, but the fiscal fallout is the real focus of this one.
I am at work the next day after the tournament ends, and my bank account is essentially empty, instead of having the prize money remaining. I called the venue only to find out there were a number of no-shows, and a number of people who had hotel rooms reserved for 3-4 days, but cancelled all days except for the first day at the venue. So essentially, people realized I wasn't enforcing the 4 people per room rule after the first day, and cancelled rooms to stay with others. Between the no shows and canceled rooms this drained the remaining money I had for prizes and tapped into my own personal money. This is what happened to the prizes. I ended up paying the venue over $25k due to a bad contract sign. Since the entrants were lower than expected, paired with my mistakes, there were no funds left over for prizes.
This was at a bad point in my life and I didn't take it very well. I had personal issues going on outside of smash, including a relationship I was unhappy in and who was a constant negative impact on my life. I had just screwed up something that was one of the biggest parts of my life and hurt so many people I cared about. I had a lot of supporters who understood, but I let myself get sucked into the negative feedback from a certain handful of people who really made it a point to talk as much **** as possible in various threads and constantly ignore any facts or information I put out. I even showed bank statements of my personal bank account with $20k+ being withdrawn and there being no money. There were constant accusations and questions that piled up faster than I could answer. And these were mostly people who I didn't even know, weren't impacted by the lack of winnings, or didn't even go to the tournament. Again, I was not in a good place and really let these things get to me. I pretty much just withdrew entirely. It was not the right thing to do, and I did want to pay people back, but I was waiting tables in a miserable relationship with no idea what to do with myself. I am not making an excuse, merely putting the information out there and hoping that people can understand I made a mistake. I should've never signed the contract at the venue. I got careless and ahead of myself because of my hopes for moving smash forward and my previous growth. The tournament being smaller than *Pound* 4 was not even a possibility in my head. I have learned and want to fix my past mistakes, and I want to fix them the best way I know how... with tournaments.
To the Brawl players - I apologize for not giving brawl the attention or credit it deserved in many instances. This is not necessarily *Pound* 5 related, but just in general. I have come to understand over the years and see that I did this a lot and talked **** about brawl a lot, but it was dumb. I was a **** about it. I still want the brawl earners to get their money as well, and will still use this as a means to do so. I am sorry. No matter if I like the game, it is still a smash community and that is what is important, people enjoying themselves in a community. That's what I saw when I got into smash at the first Pound, not the game itself. If the game being played that day was brawl, I would've played brawl. I lost focus on what was important. I am sorry to those people who things haven't been great with in the past. Esam, Ally, etc. I personally apologize to you guys and will do everything I can to get your tournament winnings.
Anyone who ever attended my tournaments can agree on one thing... My tournaments were always ran FOR the entrants. They are the number one priority at all times. The player experience. It sickens me to see so many large tournaments with their priorities not straight. In the growing age of E-Sports, it's easy for tournament hosts to get lost in the worlds of streaming, sponsorship, social media, and other new factors we have to take into consideration. These things are all great. I encourage the growth of all aspects of Smash and I think we should take advantage; but we can't forget what makes us. We can not forget what got us to where we are and what the most important thing for any single event is. The most important aspect of any event is the players. The players who come to your tournament and make it possible. You can NOT lower the player experience at the expense of these new variables. I am coming back to bring back the real tournament, for people who want to go to events and play. I want people to want to COME to my event, not sit at home on the stream and WATCH my event. I will always put the effort forth to make the player experience the best it can be. We travel across the country to play a video game. We travel to play all those players we've seen at events we can't attend. To be able to play and meet people from all across the country, all weekend! We do NOT just travel across the country to watch people better than us play it on a screen, because we can never play on a TV! Spectating is great, but it should be a choice. The current status quo of national tournaments is unacceptable and too much focus is being drawn away from the core of people who are making the tournament happen. I am going back to the *Pound* 4 venue where I have connections and will be running *Pound* 6. With enough interest, I should be able to pay back all the winners of *Pound* 5 in one fell swoop. I will be working with other trusted smashers regarding the financial aspects of the tournament. I will not handle the money - only the organization and bringing each individual person who comes out the best event possible. There needs to be a new standard for national tournaments and I'm willing to put forth the work to set it. I've made a lot of mistakes, but I've learned from them all. I hope the community will back me on hosting another large scale tournament, because I am willing to put forth a new standard for tournaments, beginning with one for smash 4
More details incoming soon.Also you can tweet me questions at my Twitter, @ P Plairnkk
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