"i am positive pound 5 was a conspiracy. i just don't believe that melee's biggest TO would be stupid enough to solidify a deal whose success is entirely dependent on faith placed in the attendants. rumors that he's moving across the country don't make his case any better, either. hats off to plank for not mentioning anything about paying money to the winners in the pound 5 thread; we overlooked this and never saw it coming. it was genius, and because of it i don't see any of you guys beating him in court
that said, i'm not angry about my monetary loss in the least bit. i wasn't even surprised when plank dropped the bomb on us; i'd seen it coming for almost a week. his unresponsiveness on smashboards/AIM made it pretty obvious. regardless, the time i had at pound 5 was worth way more than the ~$300 i'm owed. anyone who came to room 517 should know what i'm talking about.
and i hope everyone else (winners included) had just as good of a time; the place was basically a smasher's haven. the venue was inside the hotel, food was within walking distance, i brought my vaporizer, and the best players in the world were there. how much more can you ask for?
whether or not plank cares at this point, his tournament series has given us something to look forward to almost every year and means a lot to me. at pound 3 my crew and i made a name for ourselves, climaxing with me and jman's victory over chu and chillin. pound 4 was the biggest melee tournament of all time. and at pound 5 i finally overcame my tendency to choke at nationals and ended up doing a great job. as you can see it's REALLY hard for me to hate the guy that's brought me all these priceless memories, though at the same time i'm disgusted that they've all become tied to the biggest scandal in smash history.
as dumb as this sounds, i still believe plank has had a positive impact on our community. i understand that he is a criminal and i'm not trying to justify what he did in any way; i just hope that none of you guys forget how amazing the pound series was and that as a community we forget about this disaster."
-Hax
http://www.smashboards.com/threads/my-opinion-on-pound-5.299159/