Hey Ryan,

I've been planning on posting a lot of shit in the forum, when I realized the audience I seek isn't anyone in the forum, really it's just you. This is the first month I've ever had an actual shot at 1st for a month. Before I get into talking shit about anyone else, let me start by talking shit about myself (this is the way I deal with people in real life? before I criticize them, I check myself to see if I should be talking at all). I've been vocal about how I haven't PGA'd hardly at all since July in all my defenses of leekstep's constant accusations. Truth is, this month I have PGA'd twice. The first time was one of the first 10k games of the month (before the point-risk doubled). rnd told me to get on AIM for something he wanted to talk about earlier that day, so I left it on. When the 10k game started, he sat in on it, and messaged me and said, hey let's help each other so we both don't get killed by leekstep. I was like, oh? ok. So I think I finished 2nd or so that game, I forget, but we definitely AIM strategized throughout the whole game. Left a bad taste in my mouth. As this month progressed, a fierce PGE developed between leekstep and I. I was the one to initiate it because he posted more shit about me in the forums and I finally told myself, stop forgiving leekstep for trashing you in the forums all the time, from now on he is completely untrustworthy, and I should pay him back the consequences of twisting my words all the time in the forums. So, I PGE'd him. That meant that my points go down too, of course. I realized this would be a side effect, but I wanted to get the message across that I hated him and would never forgive him a 4th time (after I stupidly forgave him the first three). So the PGE continued, but then I noticed something about leekstep. He changed his playing style and didn't attack me all the time any more. It was sort of odd, but I didn't make a big deal of it, I would continue my PGE. Around this time I started playing a few games with a player named Fiero, and Mikey/rnd/leek would make these odd references saying, hey fleek, oh I mean fiero. Again I didn't make much of it. Then this one game happened where Vohaul, fiero, leekstep, and I were all playing. rnd pops up on AIM and informs me that 1) fiero is very friendly with Vohaul, 2) fiero has been playing as leekstep for a number of games now, and 3) he (rnd) is now playing as leekstep, and 4) we should counterPGA the Vohaul-Fiero PGA. I thought about it and said ok. In the end, my PGA with rnd (as leekstep account) beat fiero after Vohaul had died early. It still left a sour taste in my mouth. rnd was really excited because he was playing an influential account again (this was after you benched him for being a whiny little brat (that's how I feel about Adam most times)). rnd told me, let's keep PGAing, and I was like, no. No more PGAs for me. I tried to avoid sitting with leekstep for the next day or two (rnd in reality), because it just felt weird. I made sure to tell him, this is wrong. Leekstep does not deserve all these points you're winning for him, and I will be pissed as hell if leekstep wins this month because you helped earn him all these points. He kept being quiet about it all. A few days later, the real leekstep came back and claimed the account (I think during this time he had traveled to China, but I don't really know).



To recap so far: I PGA'd twice this month, and I regret that already, especially since it was with rnd. rnd and fiero gained leekstep I don't know how many points (I would guess 10k-ish). I know that's not that many points, and if he wins this month, it'll probably be by more than that amount.



I've tried to explain to rnd and integral why I believe they got banned, and I have not been banned (because I think they're a bit upset about that). My theory on all this is that we acted like a bunch of high school pranksters. We were the in crowd, and somewhere along the way it became the in-thing-to-do to pull pranks on the site, and then all the in crowd would congratulate you and accept you. The peak of this idiocy was the flagfest, and the creations of the fake leekstep accounts after leekstep turned on everyone (I created !eekstep, personally). rnd and I have been polar opposites since that time. I have been honest about everything I did, and have changed my style, and gone back to playing conservamonte and not fucking around with your site. rnd was the other extreme, trying to rile people up, posting shit in the forums, hell he even created that idiotic c0nflict site. I feel bad for integral because (when we first started playing at least) he and I are very similar in personality. Except in places where I have chosen to go against rnd, he has sometimes sided with rnd, and tried to bitch in the forum, or mention c0nflict in some posts, etc?. Really, integral is a good guy, but is too easily swayed by rnd. rnd on the other hand, is a fool. As much as I would like to see yall make up, he is making it impossible. The way he treats the situation seems to be that he thinks you are to blame for everything, when in reality, he is to blame for pretty much all of yalls conflicts. I tried to explain it to him once, when he was using that lame excuse again of 'none of this is illegal because Ryan never made any rules,' by saying you idiot, God never told Cain it was illegal to kill a human, but he still punished Cain for killing Abel. I was like, rnd, surely you realize that the community as a whole defines the rules, and your conscience does too. But he disagrees, and for some idiotic reason thinks this is still all your fault. Needless to say, I don't get along well with rnd that much any more.



But still the only person that I nearly hate in kdice is leekstep. Yes I understand that his role in uncovering the cabal activities was a good one (although I'm still astounded as to his popularity for revealing it, when really I was the one that revealed it the whole time, and he just posted what I was saying in chatbox, haha). (You will realize that I am always open and honest about what I do). But the way I see leekstep, is that he is just one of the new in-crowd. He, rnd, Mikeypoo, and integral still tool around whenever they can. They still pull any pranks they can think of. This shit of leekstep getting others to play his account, in my opinion, is sucky, cus multiple people will ALWAYS have more time to play than a single person, and in a non-zero-sum game, the more playing, the more points, on average. That crowd has started to play new harmless pranks, such as they realized that if they share login info (they all have rndaxs and Mikeypoo login info), then they can all log in as rndaxs, sit at a low table, and play 4 people in one account and just screw around. I realize you seem to hate people screwing around with your creation? and if this is so, then I'm upset at how leekstep gets away with murder. rnd is the easy target, yes. But I see leekstep as on equal footing. The guy loves to screw around, and is a full-fledged member of the current high-school in-crowd.



Anyways, the reason(s) I write all this:

1) I'm tired of leekstep getting away with shit.

2) I told rnd that if leekstep gets 1st as a result of him playing leekstep's account, that I would be so pissed that I would out it all in the forums. But then I realized, I don't want to stoop to leekstep's level and go public with shit. Really, the only audience I seek is you, so I'll just email you the insights that I've had this month.



I want to make clear that I'm not doing this because I'm pissed he just shot up 50k in one day and passed me into a solid 1st. I've observed his play and he doesn't try to PGA. Sure, there's a crowd that likes him at the 10k's, and they always act friendly to him, but there's also a small crowd that likes me too, so I don't mind that. I'm just tired of him going public on me about assumptions he has that are unfounded.



Anyways, sorry to waste your time if you find this email a waste of your time. Thanks again for the site, and hope your wife's pregnancy is going well.

Joe G. (montecarlo)

Hi Joe,

I really appreciate the email. It's refreshing to hear about this stuff through email as opposed to seeing it on the forum. I'm glad to hear you have negative feelings about pga'ing. I'm also glad you're not into the high school like prankster stuff. I truly feel that pushes great people away. While I don't want to be oppressive sometimes its my only option.

I can believe what you say about leek. He seems to be rnd's latest pal. Although I'm not ready to outlaw sharing accounts. I think I caused this problem by stepping away from 0-sum games. I may need switch back to 0-sum for all the tables, with the exception of 0 and 100 tables. Of course I also can't touch leek at this point since I have to consider that you may be out to get him since he has a lead - I can't be sure he's actually done anything wrong. But like i said, sharing accounts isn't that bad, on the other hand I consider associating with rnd pretty bad - so if you want to arrange a way to take him down you have my blessing.

As far as your PGA'ing goes I think you have the right attitude. It's a game where part of the fun is winning but cheating over aim takes away that accomplishment.

Thanks again for the email. I'll keep my eye on things.

Ryan

Okay, not sure if you'll respond to this one... apparently what leekstep is quite pissed because whoever created the NOTLEEK account posted the chat that had his phone number in it. I don't know why he (and others) are so worked up about it, but they are hoping that whoever did that will get punished somehow... or at least they can know who it was. They asked me to email you, and I told them I would, but didn't expect a reply. So if you don't want to explore the situation, no worries. Sorry to interrupt your time.

(Ryan)

What are you doing?

Please do not win this month... it will look very very bad.

(Ryan again)

Ok, you have 2 options:

1) Prove that you're over the whole cable/cheating thing and let the top 3 be without you or Dasfury. It looks bad that you hated leek and win once he's gone - ie you need your enemies banned to win.

2) You obviously have friends that are easy to play with (its not just luck as you say) and you have gained a lot of points as a result. If you decide you want the win then I'll be doing a friend adjustment to the top 25. At the moment you have around 50k that would be adjusted.

You still seem to have some connection with the old cabal group. I'm very serious about removing each of these players unless they remove themselves first. I know you want to win but your reputation is somewhat tarnished and a win won't be respected unless you clean up the past.

Hope this makes sense.

(me)

can i offer up a third option? (this is just me thinking that people like me)
can you take a poll of the top 25 who are not biased (i.e. take out das, wish, sam), and ask them if they think i deserved the win this month? and make your decision based on their opinions?

if not, i take option 1), cus thats my personality :) .... i always take one for the team. but please dont penalize das for this, he really wasnt a part of it at all.

thoughts?

really my reaction to your 2 options was to initially get worked up and try to defend myself cus ive worked so hard and so fairly for this. but, im a peaceable kind of guy, and i can honestly tell myself, dont get worked up. my first goal for the month was to take down leek, and whether or not it was due to me or rnd/int, leek has been taken down, and im content with that. how i finish is just icing on the cake. so im open to discussion on your decision-making, but im cool with whatever you decide.

(Ryan)

I know that you have a good rapport with the top 25 and this has a lot to do with your lead. This is essentially the poll you mention. However if I took a poll of everyone else in KDice you most definitely would not be the favorite.

Every connection with rnd/int has to die. This month is the official death of the old cabal. I finally have some time to police properly now that my book is done. You're telling me you're done with that and I can have a bit of faith in that however the rest of the players at KDice deserve more than faith. If they see you win they will think rnd/int or others helped and the cycle continues. I hope you can see this is much more important to me than allowing you a fair win.

I'm glad you'll do #1. I know its a sacrifice but it's important to the death of the cabal. You can even make it public that you don't want to win to show that you're not a cheater and not part of the old cabal. The upside for you is that you'll be able to play in future months with much less persecution.

#2 wouldn't be good for you and would be very bad for das too since stats show you alone have helped him get 50k - he would drop quite a bit. People who rely on friends more would get hurt more. I would rather take a preventative measure (ie not allow seating with high correlation friends) than this.

The common thing in both options is that you would not be 1st. I know it sucks, but just like you guys did quite a bit of social manipulation to screw around I have to do some to fix the damage - I believe I have a license to be somewhat unfair here.

I appreciate that you're down to earth. You do know how to play well, without cheating, and I'm glad you can keep your ego in check.

Ryan

(me)

ive got a basketball game i have to go to now. i wont be email/kdice until 8pm at least. i will tank appropriately then.

in other news, i would really like to share with you my perspective on the cabal, back at the height of its power, so you get a better idea of what it was. i think your view of it now is skewed a bit by leeks twisting of truths.

(Ryan)

I'd be happy with simply letting Linch pass you (montecarlo 2nd, and das 5th).

For the people who believe you about not cheating they will say you deserve 1st and this cheapens the win for Linch. For the people who don't believe you or are on the fence they will see that you don't want the win if people think you cheated and they will respect you as a player more.

Make sure you say your true opinion if you post things publicly.

As for the cabal, I knew what was going on before leek posted about it. I'd love to see if there's anything I don't know however.

Good luck at basketball.

(standard walloftext)

i thought it would be appropriate to email you what i plan on posting in the forums. if you would like me to edit sections, just give me a heads up.

Title: January's #1 Loser

The characters (in alphabetical order):

CoMik: friend of the cabal, godfather of the anti-cabal. Hasn't really competitively played for a long time, but still commonly listed among the best.
integral: a sad excuse even for a Canadian. One of the original members of the cabal. Many list him among the best ever. Some would see him as rnd's right hand man.
fiero600: a newer player on the site, very nice girl.
JeremyS: a newer player on the site, a quick study. Very vocal, and very insightful.
jpc4p: a fellow UVA Cavaliers fan. Original member of the anti-cabal.
leekstep: original member of the anti-cabal. Loves attention, loves creating conflict. Not many would name him among the best ever, but he knows that really he is the best that ever has been and ever will be, and anyone who disagrees is a PGA cheater.
Mikeypoo: original member of the anti-cabal. A gossip-queen and a prankster among the top players.
montecarlo: original member of the cabal. Hates leekstep with a passion. Loves resolving conflict.
rnd: original godfather of the cabal. kdice's very own Frankenstein's monster (perhaps with CoMik playing the role of Frankenstein?). Very aggressive, very focused and determined, very domineering, the largest type A personality in kdice (he owns the golden ego medal). Also acknowledged by the players as one of the best ever. 3v5 wins come naturally to him. He hates Ryan, because he thinks Ryan doesn't do a good job with the site or the game.
Ryan: the developer and maintainer of the site. kdice is a side project of his, as he is always writing books about toolkit applications and also giving time to other projects of his, such as gpokr. He is known by some as a benevolent developer, as he has been actively listening to the players and how they would like to see the game and the site improved. He is known by others as a shoot-first-ask-questions-later personality, quick to judgment, and oddly silent when asked for reasons as to how/why he made a judgment. (My personal feelings: as someone to whom coding doesnt come very easily, I really respect Ryan for taking the initiative and developing a thriving community based on multiplayer dicewars). Ryan hates rnd, as rnd is quick to disrespect Ryan's work and enjoys pranking around in the community.
Vermont: a debatable member of the cabal, since he hated rnd. Very respected member of the entire community, not just the top players community.
Vohaul: one of the most respected kplayas on the site. If anyone can obtain an honest response to A/S/L, it's this man.
wishbone: original member of the cabal. A firecraker of a personality, can get angered quickly and respond quickly and offensively when he feels offended.

Act I: The First Two Weeks

I had finished December waiting for a 5k game that never happened, so I never had a shot at 1st. January got off to the usual slugging-through-low-tables start (I've never donated money to the site or my wife would be a terror). I jumped up to 3rd at one point, but I never had enough time to play more than a handful of games each day. JeremyS made the startling insight that the game was no longer zero-sum, and therefore whoever played the most would win. That combined with the lower-risk-than-usual tables meant that I realistically didn't have a shot this month. Ho hum. I realized that my two most trustworthy co-players were jpc4p and Vermont. Leek started his standard attacks on me cheating. And he started to attack Vermont too, which I didn't appreciate. He angered us so much that we went to a 10k table to discuss the situation, and it was at that point that I decided never to forgive leek again for all of the mud he had slung my way over the months, and all of the times he has defamed me publicly because of his unfound assumptions. I would PGE him for the rest of the month. Vermont decided he would PGE leek as well, but sadly he didn't have the stamina to continue the PGE for more than a couple days, and finished his month playing 2.5k games. But now it was my time to stop letting leek just walk over me, and to finally make him pay the consequences for all of the actions he had taken against me over the months.

Act II: The Menagerie of Bannings (plethora or cornucopia didn't seem the right word)

On January 18th, I sat down at a 2.5k table, and lost almost 1k points, which I thought was ludicrous. I quickly discovered that Ryan had decided to change the risks at the tables to what they had used to be in previous months. Personally, I was delighted with this change, because a) I like higher-risk, higher-reward situations, since my truce-often-and-early strategy works better then, and 2) I now had a chance to jump up the standings as a result. Vohaul was one of three people who, at the time, were heads above everyone else in points. Vohaul was incensed at the change, since his lead was basically instantaneously shrunk by 50%. A very animated debate broke out between Voh and Ryan about the fairness of the change, and the fight quickly escalated. Mikeypoo, Vermont, and I were all in the audience, and tried to interject whenever possible to keep Voh and Ryan cool-headed. Voh started insisting that he would rather have Ryan reset his points to 0 than play the rest of the month with the higher-risk changes. Mikey, Verms, and I told him a couple times to not say that, since, based on experience, Ryan mutes/bans/resets people when they ask for it, and he is upset. Voh insisted one more time and Bam! Voh had 0 points. Voh left in an outrage. (Mikey convinced Ryan later that night to give Voh his points back, but Voh didnt come back to the site for a few days due to frustration, and never made a run for 1st after he came back). Later that night, while everyone was discussing the possible effects of the midmonth change, leek offhandedly mentioned that he thought rnd (who had 20,439 points) would now win the month, since the change would only increase the amount of AIM PGAing. rnd realized shortly thereafter that for some reason he could not sit in a game any more. He tried proxying in from a different IP, still couldn't sit. rnd was officially banned from playing. shortly thereafter integral realized that he couldnt sit either, and was officially banned from playing.
rnd never loses. He will never allow anyone to trump him. So he set about looking for a way to get back at Ryan. integral just got bored, and wanted to play. They schemed up a plan with leek to get leek #1 for the month. rnd wanted this to happen so that on February 1st, he could post all over the forums bragging to everyone how he just won another month, and he is still the king of kdice, and basically slapping Ryan in the face. integral leaned more towards seeking revenge on leek (recall that everyone in the cabal was pretty pissed at how leek gained so much fame and popularity for outting the cabal, but then went on to cheating worse than they ever did, and never got blamed for any of it). int wanted to get leek to 1st, and then on January 31st, tank his account all the way down, and laugh as leek watched hopelessly. Regardless of how it would end, they realized that the beginning was to gain leeks trust, and to gain him as many points as possible. leek and I were doing our typical PGEing whenever we sat with each other. But then something changed, and leek started being nicer to me on the tables for a few games. And then I sat at a table with Voh, fiero600, and leek. And then rnd AIMd me. He went on to tell me that he was leekstep. I was like wtf. He said leek had been lending his account out to others he deemed worthy, and that leek was looking for someone to play as him when he went to China. Apparently this was the first game that rnd would play as leekstep and leek was judging his style. rnd told me to PGA him against Voh and fiero, because he thought that they would PGA. I told him ok (this was one of the two games that I AIM PGAd in January). I told rnd that if he helped leek to get a 1st for the month, I would out the fact that rnd was sitting as leek to the community and to Ryan. rnd said not to worry about it, that leek wasnt getting 1st. It was at this point that rnd and int borrowed some friendly people's accounts and PGAd leek from 120k to 220k over a weekend. I grew suspicious that something was going on (none of them included me in this scheming because I was 'acting crazy' this month). But I didn't conclude there was any cheating going on, because, hey, I had my own 75k gain in 3 days. I was upset enough to decide to initiate communication with Ryan. So I decided to email him, basically informing him that I now hate leek, and I am trying to exact revenge on him, and that he needs to understand that leek and rnd are working together, and leek was letting rnd play as leekstep. Ryan responded with, thanks for telling me, I can believe that, but I'm not going to punish leekstep based on what you tell me, because I know you're biased against him. But if you want to take him down, you have my blessing. So, that response felt good, I mean, I had Ryan's ear at least. But there was no way I would have enough time/effort to take leek down, and I didn't expect him to slip up in any obvious way. So I just kept playing my PGE game with him.
But then this one odd game happened with leek. This one night, the monte vs leek PGE teams were wishbone/monte vs. leekstep/cadpilot. wish was getting fired up saying that they were PGAing, but I was like, dude, calm down, they're just playing friendly because cad likes leek, and theres nothing different from that than you liking me and playing friendly towards me. cad would protect leeks small stacks and let them build up, he would even roll attack wish like crazy to keep wish crippled... nothing out of the ordinary really, given the context of the PGE. But hen in the first round of one of the games, cad attacked leek to connect, but the attack was a 1v2. Everybody was laughing at it, except for me, and I was like... wait a sec... where have I seen that 1-die attack happen before? And then I realized I had seen it a couple days before when I saw rnd/int/poo tooling around on a 0 table with the rndaxs account. They had discovered that they could all log in as rndaxs, then sit down at a table, and all three of them could control the account. It was pretty funny looking, because half the time they were cussing each other out, heckling each others' poor rolling skills or strategies, and someone was always mashing the 'End turn' button to force them to skip their turn. But during their playtime, they realized that if two of them happened to command an attack from the same stack on two different territories at the same time, the first attack would roll successfully (an 8v8, say), and then the second attack would register, but there would only be one die left in that territory, so the attack would roll off with only 1-die attacking (a 1v8, say). So then I started to go crazy. There were two people playing as the cadpilot account. wishbone guessed that cadpilot was a proxy, but that was a naive guess. My guess was a little closer to the truth: leekstep found the ultimate way to disguise a proxy. The easiest way to spot a proxy is to look at the account history: the proxy account is always a new player, since they were just created as a proxy recently. However, cadpilot is no new player, he's been around for a long long time. Ah ha! If you are friends with someone and they give you their login info to an old account, you can proxy into that account, and no one will think it's a proxy, since it has such a long kdice history. Smart leek, smart. Well... as I said, my guess ended up being slightly naive too. It turned out (according to what int told me later) that there was no proxying. It was simply leekstep playing as cadpilot, rnd playing as leekstep, and someone else (probably cad) was logged into the cadpilot account at the same time. The two people logged in and playing as cad clicked an attack from one territory into two different ones, and the 1-die attack happened. I emailed Ryan back excitedly, because I thought I had found my damnable proof that leek was cheating. I also explained to Ryan that my primary mission for the month wasn't to get 1st, but to take down leekstep. However, Ryan did not respond for a few days.
And then, on the morning of the 29th (I forget the exact date), I woke up to find that the leekstep account, which I had last seen at 220k+ points, was nowhere in the top 25. I looked him up, and found he had 20,439, which happened to be the exact number of points that rnd had been banned at. I checked the forums, and there was some chatter going around about it. Regardless of why it happened, I was jubilant on my way into work that day. Leekstep had been taken down (perhaps due to me?), and now a noncheater was going to win the month. When I got to work, I tracked down Linch, fin, kam, das, and offered them all good luck in the last couple of days. We were all quite happy with the situation. Then I started trying to track down the story of why leek got banned. Turns out that rnd had a change in heart somewhere along the way, and decided he wanted to take out his revenge on leek instead of take it out on Ryan. So rnd had logged in as leek late the night before, found Ryan in a chatbox, and then derided Ryan nonstop, proving to Ryan that, indeed, it was rnd behind the leekstep account, and he bugged Ryan enough until Ryan decided, BOOM, leekstep account gets knocked down to 20,439 (but not banned apparently). At this point leekstep started going crazy in the forums accusing everyone of every kind of cheating, and admitting to nothing of all of the cheating he had pulled off under his account so far in January.

Act III: January 31st

As of 11pm, January 30th, when I was going to bed, I had 180k points. Linch had made a good run that day, and was sitting at 208k, which I didn't think was completely out of reach. I wasn't able to play on the 30th due to meetings all day long at work. So I had about 24 hours to catch Linch. I found that I couldn't go to sleep that night (you know it's bad when kdice keeps you from sleeping), and my wife and I have a policy that if I can't sleep, I'm allowed to go downstairs and play. So I logged on at 11pm, and decided I would try to get to 190k. Things started going my way. I had a string of luckier-than-average starts, and lots of people were playing nice with me. I hit 190k around 3:30 or 4am. Then I thought, hell, I'll play a little longer. I had 200k by 5:30am. And then Linch logged on. We got to play a series of 3 or 4 games together before I absolutely had to stop and sleep for a bit. Honestly, it's not that I outplayed Linch. I just got luckier starting positions. nexon was there playing with us as well, and he started throwing his support behind Linch (I don't mind that type of play at all, I understand that nex and Linch have been friends for a long time in kdice, and nex wanted his good buddy to get 1st). Still, my lucky starts were too... lucky, and I ended up at 208k after those matches, and Linch was around 202k. Then I slept for a few hours. I got into work around 11am, and started playing again around the same time that Linch started playing again. The forums were going completely insane with leek rhetoric, and at that point, integral IM'd me, and proceeded to explain to me exactly how he and rnd had collaborated with leekstep throughtout the month. I felt amazingly vindicated. It turned out that the 1-die attack had indeed been caused by two people playing as the cadpilot account (there had been another 1-die attack later on from the leekstep account, as well). I told int, dude, you gotta shut leek up in the forums, since he spouting all this 'I'm innocent and everyone else is guilty' shit all over the place, so int posted some of his chatlogs with leek in the forums to shut leek up (thanks, int). I continued to play nonstop until 3:30pm-ish. I gained points like crazy, due to two reasons that I can think of: 1) I had people coming out of the woodwork, old friends and new 10k-ers, who decided that they did not want to attack me (and this meshed really well with my truce-early-and-often style of play. I guess at the end of the month, everyone has made their decision as to whom they would like to see win the month... and it appeared a lot of people wanted me to win January. 2) I had one of my luckiest days of starts all month. I always had a strong base to operate out of. At this point, people started congratulating me, but I was like, hold the phone, honestly I don't know if it will hold up... not because I thought Linch could catch me, but because I hadn't heard anything from Ryan yet. And there was a distinct possibility he wouldn't he happy with me winning the same month that rnd/int/leek got banned. Even I could see how easily that could be interpreted as collusion. And then, at 3:30pm on the 31st, I got an email from Ryan. "What are you doing? Please do not win this month... it will look very very bad." Uh oh. I started frenziedly typing a long email back to him explaining 1) everything that I had learned from int about leek and the leekstep account, and 2) explaining how insanely my day was going so far, and pleading to him that I had not cheated all day, and only twice this month (which I had already told him previously). Before I could finish typing him that email, he sent me another one, giving me two options, neither of which involved a 1st for the month. Option 1 involved tanking out of the top 3 to prove that the cabal is dead, and option 2 was to make Ryan recalculate everyone's points using his PGA-sniffing calculations and subtracting all points gained when sitting with your apparent PGAs. I decided I didn't like the second idea (I think everyone will always have their respective groups of more trustworthy friends), and opted for the 1st. I asked him how far I should tank down, and told him that I had a rec league basketball game, and that I wouldn't be able to tank until I got back from that later that night. I found Linch at a table, and told him congrats that 1st was his. And asked him if he could get to 231k+ (he was currently at 225k). He said yes. Then I went and our team kicked ass in basketball, and that was very therapeutic.
Ryan had emailed me back and told me he would be fine with just letting Linch pass me, and I could keep 2nd. I told him that when I thought about it all, I remembered that my primary mission this month was to expose leek as the cheater he is, and my secondary goal was to get 1st. So really, I wasn't that upset about having to take 2nd, because leek had been exposed and my primary mission was accomplished. As a final inside joke for some old friends of the cabal, I decided I wanted to end the month with 231,337 points (das had finished November with 21,337 = 2 LEET, and I wanted to be fun and do the same, except 231,337 = 2 ELEET). Sadly (for me), this process took 1.5 hours, during which my wife got absolutely pissed that I was not going to sleep with her (yes, this is the same wife that is 10-weeks pregnant with our first kid). So, at 11:45pm, I finally got 231,337. In the meantime, leek had gone bipolar again and had threatened Ryan about stuff. Leek had also IM'd me and told me not to tank, that I deserved 1st more than Linch. But really, leek is just crazy. Anyways, everybody ended up happy (excluding leek, ofc). I had brought some measure of peace between Ryan and the old caballers.

Epilogue: From Russia with Love

To use a perhaps abstract and perhaps offensive movie reference, I feel like Sean Connery as Captain Ramius in Tom Clancy's Red October. In that story, Ramius has decided which side he wants to be on (the Americans), and defects from the Soviets. In the final battle, he successfully evacuates his crew and tricks them into thinking that he has nobly gone down with the Soviet sub. Only the Soviet and American military leaders truly know what has happened. I feel that, in my story of January, the Soviets are played by rnd/leek/maybe int. The American is Ryan. And all of the other unknowing people are the crew that naively thinks their side has won, but really doesn't know the whole story. And I am Ramius, who is just trying to do what I think is the right thing (leaving the old cabal ways and supporting Ryan). And I apologize as I have heard that these Tom Clancy movies are naively extremely offensive to Russians since they paint such a pro-USA picture (sorry to Kamikaze Mike, Linch, and any other Russians I've had the pleasure of playing with).
So who 'deserved' 1st in January? I agree with Ryan's logic. If anything, I deserve to get banned for all of my past offenses from May-July (the heyday of the cabal). So, if anything, having to tank from 1st to 2nd for a single month is a very minor punishment, and I accept it willingly. From everyone remaining (Linch, kam, fin, das), I think all of them deserved to win, it's just that Linch had the better streak of luck at the end. Linch is a good guy, and so are the rest on that list. I'm just happy that a blatant cheater (leek) didn't get the 1st, and instead got exposed for the cheater that he was in January. Any month where a non-cheater wins is a successful month in my book.

(roll credits)