What shock me the most here is that Pheo is being tourbanned under such ridiculous stuff. This man is one of the most competitive oriented players currently on Smogon, he has being improving very fast over the last year, playing a lot of major tournaments, not with outstanding results but he's not a player you can ignore.
What happened is that he was in a rush at the end of a cycle, and he decided to forfeit turn 1 all the games he couldnt win, to be able to search the maximum amount of game possible and, in his opinion, maximize his odds at a qualification. If you ask me that's a competitor mindset.
Now, after that happened, the TD team decided to tourban him, under the reason of matchfixing and letting his friend qualify or something like that. That's completely absurd and I'll show why :
1) He forfeited versus multiple players, probably not even taking care of seeing who he was paired against but just trying to see if he could win the game before the deadline or not.
2) Forfeiting early ( and by that I mean even at turn 0 ) is a common strategy at the end of ladder seasons in other games. As an example, Priest vs WarlockControl is a 80/20 or something absurd matchup in favor of Warlock in Hearthstone, and a lot of priest players adopted the strategy to forfeit even before their first draw to gain time and research a game asap.
" Participating in OLT means the games on the ladder are treated as tournament games. This includes playing out the games you start and not forfeiting turn 1. This is especially important close to the cycle deadline as even one game can be the difference between qualifying or not. Intentionally or not, Pheo' forfeiting helped two players to qualify since they didn't have to actually play their games. This isn't acceptable. All qualifying players should do so fairly without outside assistance like this.
Result: Pheo' will be tourbanned for 3 months for throwing important games. "
Here are the ban motives, let's unpack this. First, all ladder games you make under an OLT alt are considered tournament games. That's right, and it's a good thing, nothing to say about that.
Then, saying it includes not forfeiting T1 is beyond stupid. What you expect from someone during a tournament is to try to win the tournament, if you think forfeiting T1 can help you wiin the tournament I believe you should forfeit turn 1. OLT isn't like ST or Classic, time management is an integral part of the required skill, almost half of the TDs didnt play Pokemon competitively for a long time so maybe they need a reminder, but preparation is a part of the game. Preparation is the work you do before your games in order to maximise your chances at winning a tournament. Choosing a ladder team and not playing the games that rational perception of gain is negative ( you could also say negative Expected Elo Value ), is a strategy you make to win the tournament, therefore it's competitive and punishing the players who make such a choice, being for a part of or an entiere circle is actually hurting the competitive integrity of the tournament.
Then I agree that the games close to the deadlines are especially important , that's why you should let the players choose their strategy, especially during those games.
Then about qualifying fairly. When you load a team, it's because you are confident that you have positive expected value of elo with it, therefore, if your opponent forfeits turn 1 because their MU is bad, you didn't benefit assistance, you got rewarded for your strategy.
Now let's end with some question for you. Let's say I would search a game near the deadline to snipe a friend and I forfeit the game T1 because " yeah i don't wanna play this MU gg " , if I didn't signup for OLT, I'm still participating in a tournament game, should I get tourbanned for fucking with the tournament integrity ? You would have no way proving if I just load the game by accident, or just didnt want to play a losing MU vs a friendwho is playing OLT, or just if that friend isn't my friend and I'm lazy to play that MU, being friend with the person isnt even required to forfeit a game and should probably not be taken into account. What if I'mon an alt ? You're gonna altcheck me ? Nah, I think we can safely say that you can ladder how you want if you didnt signup for OLT without risking a tourban.Then, why the competitors, the people who have ALL THE REASON TO TRYHARD AND DO EVERYTHING THEY CAN TO WIN, should be punished and unable to play tournaments jsut because they use the strategy they want to use ?
For all those reasons, Pheo should be unbanned, he probably won't because competition is a word that is missing on Smogon nowadays, it's just about clout, being a clown and taking decisions about stuff you didn't experience in years, but at least, I voiced an opinion that I know a lot of players think, and now you know it too. Hopefully that makes you think, and if it doesn't, then I hope Smogon will wake up someday and we will be able to play Pokemon in peace again.
Have a good day.