Tournament Promoters and venues to avoid!

Bisonopolis

With the popularity of SF4 there's been a sudden influx of scammers trying to make a quick buck. Whether they're advertising a certain prize for the winner and not paying out, or they are just running all around shady operations, nobody wants to get scammed. This thread is to help make sure everybody knows which promoters to trust and which not to. I'll edit the list when appropriate so be sure to let me know if you got scammed, who the person is, and how it happened, in this thread. Lets keep these people out of our community.



Because of recent event's I've decided to change the way this page works. I'm going to add stipulations to this so that if tournament promoters and event coordinators can be removed from the list and redeem themselves. I'm also setting up a stricter rule set for adding promoters to the list.

Rules for being taken off the list -

You must send me a message with a request for removal and evidence supporting that request - http://www.shoryuken.com/private.php?do=newpm&u=89929


If a promoter wants to be removed from the list they must provide us with evidence that they have run two events in which the problems they have had in the past did not occur. This means that if a promoter runs an event in which some money got mixed up and wasn't paid out to the winner but they run two later events in which everything runs perfectly they can be taken off the list if they provide evidence from attendee's that there were absolutely no shady dealings going on. BUT if that promoter at a later time again has issues with payouts and is put back on that list that is PERMANENT! They will never be taken off the list. And I can guarantee you will have issues with attendance from that point on.



Stipulations for Being added to the list - I will edit this list as appropriate

Each of these stipulations must have some kind of evidence backing it up if a promoter or organizer is to be added to the list. I will not add anyone to the list on baseless claims. If someone claims they were not paid what they are owed that IS evidence so far as I am concerned but if a promoter can provide evidence otherwise than they will be removed from the list.

- Has promised a certain prize and not delivered it
- Has promised a certain cash payout and not delivered it
- Money from the pot has disappeared with no explanation
- Workers who have been promised money were not paid
- Venues who were promised money have not been paid
- Tournaments were canceled without warning ( Meaning people showed up to an event that the promoter had not announced was off. Obviously emergencies do not count.)
- Obviously shady dealings. (EX: Allowing losers bracket buybacks that do not go towards the pot, Removing players from qualifying teams without that players request, tying women to chairs and robbing them at gunpoint.)


Tournament Promoters
GPX Gaming - Florida - http://shoryuken.com/showthread.php?p=8839450&page=23,[url] http://shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=235042&page=6[/url]
Game Wars - Florida - http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=196637
NYPWND - New York - http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=195882
Planet Zero - Texas - http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=158247&highlight=SBO&page=2,http://shoryuken.com/f25/san-antonio-tx-58939/index472.html#post9337281
John Keough - MA - http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=209429
BLANKA707 - Nor Cal - http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=213551&page=11, http://sites.google.com/site/kiriyamakazuox/home/blanka.mp3?attredirects=0&d=1, http://sites.google.com/site/kiriyamakazuox/home/blanka2.mp3?attredirects=0&d=1,
Todd Greene/VSA - Florida - http://www.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=197094&page=4
KOOPA1981 - Texas - http://shoryuken.com/f25/harlingen-thread-revised-50741/index660.html#post8980457,http://shoryuken.com/f25/harlingen-thread-revised-50741/index660.html#post8979406,http://shoryuken.com/f25/harlingen-thread-revised-50741/index660.html#post8979472,http://shoryuken.com/f25/harlingen-thread-revised-50741/index660.html#post8983180,http://shoryuken.com/f25/harlingen-thread-revised-50741/index661.html#post8986266




Venues to avoid

Game Table - New York/Long Island - http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=213482
The Wyndham Hotel and Resort Little Rock - Arkansas - http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=197094&page=3
Hangar Athletics League (HAX) - CA - http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=216026

Niko9193

This should get stickied

Akae47

NYPWD shame on you

Vestax

Wow that is some pretty shady shit.

If we're going to sticky this, I'd change the title to Tournament Events and Promoters to avoid! The current title almost sounds like a positive thing. "Tournament Promoters to look out for"

Bisonopolis

haha. Yeah you're right. It could be misinterpreted. I don't know if I can edit a title though. Do I have to ask a mod to change it?

Arkayne17

Bisonopolis, post: 3168174 wrote:

haha. Yeah you're right. It could be misinterpreted. I don't know if I can edit a title though. Do I have to ask a mod to change it?

When you edit your post click " Go ADvanced" and you can change the title.

otter

Oh this thread will require some popcorn.

Demon Jim

Can we throw anybody under this bus in this thread? There is a former promoter down where I'm from that the community has pretty much already turned against for shady bullshit. His tournaments are defunct now but they still pop up once in a blue moon.

-DJ-

ShinBlanka

DEMON_JIM, post: 3168177 wrote:

Can we throw anybody under this bus in this thread? There is a former promoter down where I'm from that the community has pretty much already turned against for shady bullshit. His tournaments are defunct now but they still pop up once in a blue moon.

-DJ-

Warn the people of the frauds sir. We as a community needs to know who are the scammers and who are the good guys.

Hornetajc

In the case of the shady tournament that Sabin won, always look for a tournament organizer to lay out how much a tournament costs with the ENTIRE breakdown. Most tournaments here already tell you the venue fee + entree fee, but when they don't, that should be a red flag.

Whenever they guarantee something like $500 on top, there is always an entree limit attached to it, whether they tell you or not.

Demon Jim

shinblanka, post: 3168178 wrote:

Warn the people of the frauds sir. We as a community needs to know who are the scammers and who are the good guys.

Word. As a tournament organizer myself seeing shit like this go down really pisses me off. I know you definitly know what I'm talking about running FR and all.

Like I said this guys tournaments aren't running anymore so no need to go ape shit on this but I did here that he runs an anime convention now in which he does a tournament for fighting games on the inside. Uploaded is the name stay away from anything with that name from south tx. Like I said it died after I called out the guy and the community stood up but I did see one pop up a month ago which all our players blew off so for now no worries.

Do not get this one confused with the other premiere tournament that is thrown down here we are not affiliated at all.

-DJ-

Bisonopolis

Pretty much list anyone who puts together shady dealings within the SF community. Even if it's rare that they hold tournaments anymore it's still better to list it so that those who are new to the scene have the information they need to avoid getting screwed.

Unknown

dam im new to the forums here. thanks for the info bis.

eric

Everyone is not to be trusted.

Bisonopolis

So far this is only NY tournament promoters listed. But I want this to be a list of all the shady promoters from all over. Just send me the info and what happened and I'll amend the list as needed.

The Pestazoid

I think every player should give every TO one chance to do a good job but if they screw up after that then screw'em. I think it's too close minded to think everybody is the same just because of a couple of bad experiences.

SIKWIDIT510

dats some krazy stuff...will be on the look out..

Hazank0

planet zero is a given from what i have read/heard

Bisonopolis

I need some info about Planet Zero before I add them to the list.

KillerKai

DiZe LAN Center just swindled Watts/Valle/Ken I out of 40% of the pot

Event:
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=199262

Results:
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=202464

The fucker has been hiding like a little faggot too.

Bisonopolis

The list has been edited. Since the owner of DiZe LAN didn't respond to Watts messages and seems to be ducking him they've been added to the promoters to avoid.



May god have mercy on their souls.


haha

Sanji Himura

Bisonopolis, post: 3168188 wrote:

I need some info about Planet Zero before I add them to the list.

They have a history of not paying the players(including Japanese players) and skimming off the top of the pot. And last year, EmoGear(The owner of Planet Zero) took the cowardly way out during the GGAC SBO qualifiers and actually kicked off a member of the winning team, who was from out of state, and inserted his own man(from Houston) on the team.

The Smash community didn't fair too well either.

Enough of that, here is the evidence of his wrong doing:

PZ's SBO caper: http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=158247&highlight=SBO

The Smash Community's problem: http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=6080360&postcount=14228

Bisonopolis

edited

Krayzie Bone

Bisonopolis, post: 3168190 wrote:

The list has been edited. Since the owner of DiZe LAN didn't respond to Watts messages and seems to be ducking him they've been added to the promoters to avoid.



May god have mercy on their souls.


haha

Guess they didn't want to be on the list...

Blitzbeater

Game Wars is South Florida based not NY

Bisonopolis

Fixed the Gamewars location. I didn't realize I put NY instead of FL.


And the DiZE LAN issue's been mostly resolved. The issue seems to be just a big misunderstanding and they're most certainly on watch. They screw up again and they're on the list for good.

Josh-TheFunkDOC

Did WCG ever pay Arturo for getting 2nd at that cyber club thing? I remember before Evo he was still trying to get that money.

I recall that MLG used to have issues with paying players back when they were doing Tekken & Soul Calibur tournaments. Wouldn't throw them on the list right now, but just FYI.

...

Alright then, enough with the maybes, here is a certainty: I would definitely add DancingFighterG to this list. In case you don't know, he's a tournament director in Colorado who, I shit you not, begins every single one of his posts with "Yo, this is DancingFighterG." He's involved with something called the National Video Game Association and its annual anime/gaming convention, NVGA Supercon.

He has botched a number of tournaments in the past, to the point where much of the Colorado scene refuses to attend his events, but what really cements his place in this thread is his handling of SC4 Nationals.

At first, this was supposed to be a more collaborative community effort, but somewhere along the line it was placed under the control of DancingFighterG and NVGA, who wanted to make the tournament a centerpiece of Supercon. Supercon seemed like a convenient location with a convenient date, and DFG was a long-time Soul Calibur player with roots in the community, so it all sounded like a good idea at first. He promised a guaranteed prize pool of at least $4k, and even said that with sponsors it would likely be more.

At the actual event, however, all kinds of major problems arose. For the sake of brevity, I'll only mention the two that outright qualify as "shady":

1. Going against the community's wishes, DFG allowed anyone to enter Nationals for $20. To understand why this would be shady, you have to realize that Nationals was an SBO-style event with regional qualifiers used to determine the final bracket. Some players flew out to qualifiers, or drove to three different ones before finally making it in, so this was basically a giant "fuck you" to those people.

Since some very strong non-qualified players (e.g. French, Koreans) traveled to this event, the community had voted to run a last chance qualifier where the top 4 would move on to the actual Nationals bracket. But DFG just ignored all that and let anyone in. This was probably done to make the turnout look a little more impressive and to fatten the pot. The latter is an especially important point because...

2. ...remember that $4k+ prize pool I mentioned? Yeah, try like half of that. The actual payouts ended up being $1k for 1st, $600 for 2nd, $300 for 3rd, and $100 for 4th.

If you're interested in reading more about these and other ways DFG & co. fucked up (Loud techno music & flashing bright lights during tournament matches! Waiting hours in between matches!), take a look at THIS THREAD. The first couple posts and the last two on that first page are a nice start, and it only gets better from there...


EDIT: Oh yeah, since most of SRK doesn't care about Soul Calibur, I'll give you another example from an HD Remix tournament at Supercon. In the words of another Colorado player:

"Please know that DFG does not represent the Colorado fighting game scene. There was a small HDR tournament for example, at Supercon, and a player from CO won that. He didn't get the $250 pot that was listed on most of the Supercon promo stuff. I guess there was fine print somewhere in that horribly-designed website that explained the intricacies of the payout, but that's just horrible crap in and of itself. This important information shouldn't be hidden away like that.

Since our local winner of the HDR tournament was not only local but knew enough to be able to confront DFG, he was able pull teeth and get some winnings, but still not $250."

Bisonopolis

I'm not sure if Arturo ever got paid out the money he should have won.

SirKanchi

Damn, that shit is crazy

nano5896

Any tornament scams in California?

PelvicThrust69

Bisonopolis, post: 3168170 wrote:

DancingFighterG - Colorado http://www.8wayrun.com/f51/nationals-what-went-right-wrong-t4430/

Let me explain something about DFG. DFG is in it for the money, plain and simple. He was attempting to do some sort of "Franchising" thing where the person hosting would give part of their "profits" (because clearly that's why you host tournaments, to make money) to him, and he'd pay the higher ups. Essentially he was proposing a pyramid scheme, in addition to a ton of shady shit like requiring a certain number of hits on the website to come from an area and legally binding documents, etc.

Honestly I expect that a lot of the missing money that didn't get paid out to prizes went straight to his pockets.

ElderGOD

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=209429

Apparently there are still thousands of dollars to pay out...

networkingyuppy

Oh man, Unicon 2009 was scammed by jerkoff Keough? That dude is going to love prison sex.

Magnus02

I hope these mother fuckers rot. Good job on compiling the list thus far.

shiryu22

Incredible that that John dude tried to rob some lady at gunpoint.

Henaki

Bisonopolis, post: 3168197 wrote:

I'm not sure if Arturo ever got paid out the money he should have won.

iirc second place prize was a camera, which he never received.

even if he received it now, its value would be... like 80-150 dollars.

Bisonopolis

Henaki, post: 3168205 wrote:

iirc second place prize was a camera, which he never received.

even if he received it now, its value would be... like 80-150 dollars.

really? a camera? wtf?

moadib

shiryu22, post: 3168204 wrote:

Incredible that that John dude tried to rob some lady at gunpoint.

Yeah he screwed us over, and we brought him a ton of equipment, staff and games - lost $1800 of our equipment, and it took me 8 hours of negotiating with him on the phone to pay out to Legacy for their flights to MLG Dallas - this dude didn't cover their winnings and tried to hide it by removing the post, but Triforce had the info saved.

That was a mess...

Between my company, the hotel the partner from Game Universe he screwed over and the winners he owed money to - he must of snapped which led to this incident.

Here's the video link of his holy crap fantastic voyage to jail...

I called Empire after this happened and I think my words to Tri were "brotha, I don't think he ever sent any checks" I told Triforce "he's got arrested" Triforce replies "Don't beleive that shit man, he is lying to you" LOL I laughed and told "no, no he is in jail - here is the video"

We all got screwed by this guy. Up until before this happened he was trying to get money scammed out of some of the folks who sponsor us on our shows...O_O

Not havin' that!

Anyone else have any other news on the Keough RapeTrain

Henaki

Bisonopolis, post: 3168206 wrote:

really? a camera? wtf?

yeah cash prize and a tv for first? (i believe justin did get the cash, not sure on the tv) 2nd place was like a camera, 3rd place was something else, i wonder if nestor ever got his prize.

moadib

Gonna have to ask Justin, I could of sworn all of those were "Checks" to be delivered at a later date, which of course, never occurred.

Unknown

disclaimers

Hornetajc, post: 3168179 wrote:

In the case of the shady tournament that Sabin won, always look for a tournament organizer to lay out how much a tournament costs with the ENTIRE breakdown. Most tournaments here already tell you the venue fee + entree fee, but when they don't, that should be a red flag.

Whenever they guarantee something like $500 on top, there is always an entree limit attached to it, whether they tell you or not.

YEA always READ what you sign BEFORE you sign it. geez

the44show

NYPWND OWNER, post: 3168210 wrote:

YEA always READ what you sign BEFORE you sign it. geez

So you PLANNED to scam from the beginning? You advertise $500 in the beginning and then basically tell them "you're not getting it" in the disclaimer, true.

Henaki

NYPWND OWNER, post: 3168210 wrote:

YEA always READ what you sign BEFORE you sign it. geez

fyi the safety disclaimer you made is 100% illegal and makes your entire contract void, scumbag.

or maybe you should actually hire a lawyer to at least make your scams legal next time.

Bisonopolis

This thread isnt for your bullshit NYPWND. You post in here again i WILL get a mod to ban you.

SweetJohnnyCage

Brad, add Game Table to the list for Tournament Venues to Avoid! Link to this as well:

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=213482

Bisonopolis

Alright John. I'll add them to the list.

Kuma Oni

LOL @ NYPOS trying to defend himself. GTFO here

dolfan305

active gamers. no money to pay out

Bisonopolis

I'm following the ACTive gamers thread right now and there are mixed reactions to it. Im gonna wait and see what ultimately happens with it.

Wonder_Chef

dolfan305, post: 3168217 wrote:

active gamers. no money to pay out

100% wrong. It was only 1/5 of the money.

moadib

Hey Bison, would a Hotel location be a viable listing? The Wyndham Hotel and Resort Little Rock attempted to defraud Little Rock Game Con, and made a direct statement to the organizer - "I don't want kids here, we hate those groups." when I replied for Brandon from Little Rock, why would you work this contract if such a statement is made her answer "If you had an 80 year old person's birthday and they had children that would be fine, but we don't want children here"

They tried to charge Little Rock $30,000 and not let him run his event, and I called them up after going over the contract and stated to them it is illegal (did my homework and called my lawyers to help Brandon) - they told me the contract was not in valid format and would not hold up in court. Also told me that I was right to think that they had to allow them the ability to execute the contract if they are going to charge them the full amount as opposed to a sliding scale charge for not using the space.

After speaking with their GM and the Sale Manager (it took about an hour or so of debate, since I don't work for LRGC and I am not on the contract for them to talk to me) had to get Brandon to tell them I was his consultant.

I got the hotel to drop from 30,000 to 8,000 and allow LRGC to use the space. The hotel then wanted to get everything from them completely up front, which is not normal. Rental fees, food and bevarage - sure. they wanted him to pay for all the hotel rooms, all the way through the weekend.

They charged him for a few of them. Brandon did make a mistake. While he was working his Co-Chair would be available to the hotel and he EFT transferred him money so he could pay for items with his account instead of just issuing cash. That delayed one of the payments to the hotel and they of course retaliated.

I sat with the hotel and gave them my references and my history to see if that would help Brandon (which is impeccable, and I have huge Direct Billing Credit). I wanted to show them the accounts from Brandon and Joe to get the hotel to see their money is there and they can happily charge them. They refused.

10 minutes after this conversation, after I promised short of GPX covering the bill for LRGC they would get whatever is missing, they canceled his event.


I had completely forgot to mention in this thread - Christian Coalition event going on at the same time.

Andre, Sanford and Rahsaan were completely recially profiled by a cop who was sent to us by the hotel - which I dealt with and had to embarass after I sent the boys to the rooms, I told the cop "they have hotel rooms, and you need to leave and to continue in a racist profile will force me to report him" I then yelled at the front desk and told the registration lady she was unprofessional, I was standing a few feet away from her waiting on Joe from the convention to check us into the hotel as well. The bar in the hotel was no more then 20 feet and we were sitting in the lobby, yet the boys were offensive to the hotel staff.

Beyond this I spoke with the sales manager of the hotel and she admitted to me in private (so its not usable in court) that she was surprised Brandon signed this contract (it was a really bad contract).

Overall, I found them another hotel at the last minute and LRGC was able to get off the ground and the event worked out well, but this hotel from my experience, attempted to defraud what they felt from the beginning was an event being run by kids. That said, they still gave him a contract and they cancelled him @ 11:04am Friday Nov 12th 2 hours before their official contract execution time.

Obviously a big problem. We were there as equipment and guest sponsors. You can imagine my surprise.

So I warn other organizers out there from utilizing Wyndham resorts - or rather franchised Wyndham's - its a shame, we just did a huge horror event at Wyndham in Orlando that was great - Corporate Wyndham though.

Sorry this was long winded.