Banana Ken Says SBO was the Worst Tournament Experience He Has Ever Had

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa lets all hate SBO!

“What can I say to my friends and colleagues, to everyone with high expectations of us on Facebook or Twitter?”

LOL holy shit, this guy is a sperg.

Flattering picture

USA got screwed…again

I’m sorry but I really don’t see the big deal here. Instead of losing their first match as ‘official top 32′ they lose their first match outside the tourney. Big deal. If someone can explain to me why we’re throwing a pity party just for this I’d love to hear it. 

also that thumbnail picture is PERFECT.  He looks like how he writes.

Did ya’ll give 100% fighting the Kuwait team? if so then at least you tried your best and thats really all you can do

I don’t see the point of losing first round, or pre-first round they still lost their first match? sorry that you didn’t get placed in the brackets bro, maybe you should have beat Kuwait so you could have had the chance of getting beat by another team.

ITT: a lot of folks don’t understand that it’s kinda shitty to place in a tournament only to lose your place in a match that’s not actually part of the tournament.

It’d be like taking an English class, passing all the quizzes, tests, and papers, but since you got an F on a Biology quiz, you flunk the English class.

Is that dracula in the picture?

SBO obviously discriminates against foreign teams and people defend them.  If Evo put all the japanese players in the same pool and made them fight each other you’d all shit bricks.  Goddamn anime pillow fuckers (no offense to anime pillow fuckers who aren’t defending SBO, I guess).

Probably what happened was that it was an honest mismanagement on Tougeki’s end, but due to typical Japanese xenophobia and disregard/contempt for gaijin, the decision makers decided that BananaKen and Hsien should be happy with whatever decision they made regarding the issue.

Sure SBO made a mistake, anyone makes mistakes.  The problem is how they handled their mistake and tried to hide it amongst the public and sweep it under the rug like some lowlife douchebag that cares more about false impressions and public opinion rather than the players and integrity of the tournament.

This is an instance where the coordinators show that they have hubris and ego but lack dignity and grace.  Beyond their lack of characters, the mistake isn’t just a simple “mistake.”  They intentionally let Daigo’s team participate for the last minute qualifiers that they shouldn’t have been a part of due to the official rules.  That bumped everything around and bumped the US team off the top 32.  

The coordinators cared more for the public impression of the tournament and really wanted Daigo to be in and were willing to use unjust and underhand means of doing so and at the cost of other players that legitimately worked hard and abided by the rules.  

Ironically their actions have hurt their image more by trying to get Daigo to play, especially when he obviously didn’t bother to attend the regional qualifiers to at least qualify for last minute qualifiers. 

Sure SBO made a mistake, anyone makes mistakes.  The problem is how they handled their mistake and tried to hide it amongst the public and sweep it under the rug like some lowlife douchebag that cares more about false impressions and public opinion rather than the players and integrity of the tournament.

This is an instance where the coordinators show that they have hubris and ego but lack dignity and grace.  Beyond their lack of characters, the mistake isn’t just a simple “mistake.”  They intentionally let Daigo’s team participate for the last minute qualifiers that they shouldn’t have been a part of due to the official rules.  That bumped everything around and bumped the US team off the top 32.  

The coordinators cared more for the public impression of the tournament and really wanted Daigo to be in and were willing to use unjust and underhand means of doing so and at the cost of other players that legitimately worked hard and abided by the rules.  

Ironically their actions have hurt their image more by trying to get Daigo to play, especially when he obviously didn’t bother to attend the regional qualifiers to at least qualify for last minute qualifiers. 

Never understood the SBO hype.  I wouldn’t drive to Irvine for a single round, single elim tournament, least of all fly to Japan.  

If only he was smiling then it would be a perfect troll picture

While scanning some jp message boards and such for reaction I stumbled across a comment that highlighted something I should have caught myself. I hadn’t even realized the irony of them posting an apology on their FAQ page. Pretty appropriate, I’d say.

f-ck SBO. 

And to the fcktards saying that losing R0 is the same as losing to R1, fu.

How do you expect BananaKen and Hsien plus team Kuwait to play to their best in a single elimnation format when you’re f-cking told 10 minutes (or less) that you won’t be able to compete in the tournament itself? I can only imagine the stress and emotions these players had to go through in a foreign land with the barrier language at all trying to get reason why they’re being screwed over by this tournament.

To BananaKen and Hsien: Mad props to you guys. With the money that you guys invested, if it were me, I would have flipped chairs all over the venue. $2000+ is not cheap and the time that you had to invest over there cannot be brought back.

F-ck SBO. I’d say boycott that sh-t anyway. 

so much salt here, gonna have to check my pressure

Yeah, I’ve hated SBO for years, so I’m not really defending them, but looking at the situation rationally… 

You have for some fucked up reason one more team than you thought. 
You had advertised a last chance qualifier for months (years, if you look at it as tradition). 
SBO was never meant to be an international tournament in the first place, but they eventually offered “foreign spots”. 
Team Kuwait was late.
Okay, so first things first, you have to attack the “33 teams” issue. A 32-team bracket is very easy. Pairs of teams match up and it all comes down to one champion, no byes necessary. But a 33-team bracket isn’t easy. There are a few options. 1) You could disqualify one team under the reasoning that that particular qualifier never happened… but disqualifying any team at this point would be extremely unfair – that team was never given the chance to requalify. What about the last-chance qualifier? Again, this is unfair to Daigo’s team. Remember that the last-chance playoff is a tradition. He could have conceivably been procrastinating until the last-chance qualifier to try and get into the tournament, perhaps as a strategy – that qualifier obviously has all the “best” players gone. To take away the qualifier at the last minute would have been a waste of all those months. Daigo had every right to refuse a playoff. 2) You can divide the bracket into four smaller pools of 8 teams, but have one pool with 9. That one extra team is going to get a bye (perhaps by random draw). Then the next round another team will get a bye, and then you have ONE round robin playoff to determine the winner of the pool (this would have been my choice, but the distribution of the byes would still screw the teams that didn’t have them). 3) You can distribute 31 byes and go with a 64-team bracket. 4) You could google “tournament bracket generator”, find challonge.com, enter 33 dummy teams, single elimination, and randomized seeds  as the criteria, and go with the result – a “zero round” (basically the same as a 64-team bracket with 31 byes). 5) You could go round-robin or Swiss, but that takes EXTREMELY too long.SBO went with #4 (whether or not they googled for a solution, I don’t know). They already had their brackets set up, and this was in all honesty the easiest way to solve the problem. They probably had time restrictions on the venue to deal with as well. So the next problem is, how do you decide which teams play the zero round? Also remember that SBO is a Japanese tournament with foreign spots. SBO may have taken the stance that “this particular spot is a foreign spot, so have the foreign teams play for it”. Kuwait was late, so putting them there is a no-brainer. I would have done this spot round-robin to make it a matter of “the best foreign team” (I don’t know if there were more foreign teams and I don’t care enough to look it up). This is effectively what #2 is, with the round-robin used as a qualifier rather than a finals. Maybe they went by whoever got there first didn’t have to play, and Taiwan got there before Banana Ken. I don’t know the facts, just what was written here. But the reality is, whoever lost that match was going to be pissed. If Taiwan had played instead of Hsien and Banana Ken, this article would just be written by one of their members (and possibly in another language).They could have redrawn a 64-team bracket, but why bother? Effectively, a 32-team bracket with one zero round is the exact same thing. They could have gone with pools and done two byes. But then whoever didn’t get a bye and lost would complain about the ones that got byes.They could have gone with pools and had a round-robin at some point. A team was going to be pissed no matter what. SBO just went with the quickest possible solution – a “zero” round. Yes, they fucked up big time by having 33 qualifiers. But they can’t go back in time and NOT hold a qualifier. That “option to refuse and force a forfeit” thing, I can’t understand. I’m hoping that the true intent was lost in translation. But other than that, this was the fairest solution for the time constraints. 

Yeah, I’ve hated SBO for years, so I’m not really defending them, but looking at the situation rationally… 

You have for some fucked up reason one more team than you thought. 
You had advertised a last chance qualifier for months (years, if you look at it as tradition). 
SBO was never meant to be an international tournament in the first place, but they eventually offered “foreign spots”. 
Team Kuwait was late.
Okay, so first things first, you have to attack the “33 teams” issue. A 32-team bracket is very easy. Pairs of teams match up and it all comes down to one champion, no byes necessary. But a 33-team bracket isn’t easy. There are a few options. 1) You could disqualify one team under the reasoning that that particular qualifier never happened… but disqualifying any team at this point would be extremely unfair – that team was never given the chance to requalify. What about the last-chance qualifier? Again, this is unfair to Daigo’s team. Remember that the last-chance playoff is a tradition. He could have conceivably been procrastinating until the last-chance qualifier to try and get into the tournament, perhaps as a strategy – that qualifier obviously has all the “best” players gone. To take away the qualifier at the last minute would have been a waste of all those months. Daigo had every right to refuse a playoff. 2) You can divide the bracket into four smaller pools of 8 teams, but have one pool with 9. That one extra team is going to get a bye (perhaps by random draw). Then the next round another team will get a bye, and then you have ONE round robin playoff to determine the winner of the pool (this would have been my choice, but the distribution of the byes would still screw the teams that didn’t have them). 3) You can distribute 31 byes and go with a 64-team bracket. 4) You could google “tournament bracket generator”, find challonge.com, enter 33 dummy teams, single elimination, and randomized seeds  as the criteria, and go with the result – a “zero round” (basically the same as a 64-team bracket with 31 byes). 5) You could go round-robin or Swiss, but that takes EXTREMELY too long.SBO went with #4 (whether or not they googled for a solution, I don’t know). They already had their brackets set up, and this was in all honesty the easiest way to solve the problem. They probably had time restrictions on the venue to deal with as well. So the next problem is, how do you decide which teams play the zero round? Also remember that SBO is a Japanese tournament with foreign spots. SBO may have taken the stance that “this particular spot is a foreign spot, so have the foreign teams play for it”. Kuwait was late, so putting them there is a no-brainer. I would have done this spot round-robin to make it a matter of “the best foreign team” (I don’t know if there were more foreign teams and I don’t care enough to look it up). This is effectively what #2 is, with the round-robin used as a qualifier rather than a finals. Maybe they went by whoever got there first didn’t have to play, and Taiwan got there before Banana Ken. I don’t know the facts, just what was written here. But the reality is, whoever lost that match was going to be pissed. If Taiwan had played instead of Hsien and Banana Ken, this article would just be written by one of their members (and possibly in another language).They could have redrawn a 64-team bracket, but why bother? Effectively, a 32-team bracket with one zero round is the exact same thing. They could have gone with pools and done two byes. But then whoever didn’t get a bye and lost would complain about the ones that got byes.They could have gone with pools and had a round-robin at some point. A team was going to be pissed no matter what. SBO just went with the quickest possible solution – a “zero” round. Yes, they fucked up big time by having 33 qualifiers. But they can’t go back in time and NOT hold a qualifier. That “option to refuse and force a forfeit” thing, I can’t understand. I’m hoping that the true intent was lost in translation. But other than that, this was the fairest solution for the time constraints. 

Screw Japan, We show them so much love in the states for them to just sit there and disrespect our players and other nations players. SCREW JAPAN!!!!!!

This entire situation is BS. They already had a a spot in the tourney and the 33rd team should have never qualified. I’m not buying SBO’s “we made a mistake” excuse. How hard is it to count to 32? It seems pretty obvious that this whole scenario happened because SBO wanted Daigo in the tourney.

The difference between losing in Round 0 and Round 1 is that Round 1 is actually in the tournament, which BOTH teams had already qualified for in their respective countries. Anyone who can’t see that is either an idiot or trolling. Anyone who hasn’t heard fubarduck speak on the issue on the wake-up shoryuken podcast needs to go hear it before commenting. Their treatment of BK and Hsien was outright disrespectful. They literally gave Daigo and team Taiwan the option to force BK and Hsien to forfeit.

I dont see the big problem here. So the bracket ended up having one team too many and they made a match between the lowest placed qualifier and this team to play against each other and this Banana Ken and Hsien lost that match. They are salty because they lose a match to make themselves the undisputed 32nd team. Just sounds like a bunch of whiners to me.

shit’s weak

I demand the pinky finger of the persons responsible to be delivered to Banana Ken in lieu of $2000 compensation.

I don’t see how anyone would want to go back to SBO after this. I wouldn’t. Hell, if I ever became good enough to contend in it, reading about BananaKen’s experience would still make me seriously consider staying home.

Im not a lawyer and Im not gonna pretend to know much about law but can he sue for this?

I don’t see the point, they still played a match inside SBO, just not inside the 32-team brackets. They still got the experience the other american teams had, of being in Japan, being around top players, playing top players in and outside of the tournament. They still lost their first match like all american teams.
Yes it is annoying that they got treated like low-tier, but other than that, it didn’t make any difference as far as I can see. I can understand his grief, but I feel that’s it’s more frustration in the skill-area than a well-founded complaint.

And those here hating on SBO, please. Why would you even bother following it then? Sorry that the teams you were supporting lost. Get over it already.
SBO is harsh, and it doesn’t represent true player skill due to it’s format. True. But if you would compare it to StreetFighter, it’s the closest you can get. Once chance, one shot, one victory. Winning that is true romantic heroism. That’s why it’s great. It’s not EVO, it’s not a FT10 feature, it’s SBO.

Hmm… I’m not sure what SBO could’ve done different.  They accidentally invited 33 teams to a 32 man tourney; no matter what they do someone has to play an extra match.  

Hmm… I’m not sure what SBO could’ve done different.  They accidentally invited 33 teams to a 32 man tourney; no matter what they do someone has to play an extra match.  

I half agree with the rusty guy and the other guy. I;m not clear on if kuwait and the us team were both not included. did kuwait have to argue too? if not, then kuwait wasn’t in emotional duress. in my understanding kuwait was in the top 32, and then sbo said here play the us team first. and might’ve been mad, but they were part of SBO regardless. but US wasnt part of SBO regardless.

i dont see how they could both be excluded cause that would mean there were 34 teams for SBO and knocking each other out would still leave 33 teams?