[?] Spades hacking? - Page 219

Before starting... for those of you who don't know, the latest maphacks on the internet block your camera on the last place visited when u are looking at some place u haven't got ANY kind of  vision on, so that if people watch the replays they don't find it so evident that you are hacking. Camera block situations should be taken as moments where the camera is COMPLETELY frozen but no action is being made, they are easy to spot because most progamers are constantly moving around with the mouse, and almost never leave their camera at the exact same spot, if they do, it's just for about 1-2 seconds.

So, probably most of you know Spades as a decent terran brood war player, which was caught maphacking some years ago. Well, guess what, he's back! Apparently, he is maphacking on Starcraft II too or that is the sensation I had while watching his showmatch versus LucifroN last night... after asking for the replays and analyzing them there's no doubt. I understand there can be hackers on low levels, but we must stop at any cost people from maphacking at pro/semi-pro levels. This is what I found on the replays... If you don't have enough time for watching all of them, or you don't want, or whatever go directly to the Tal'darim Altar one, it's the most evident one.

Here are the replays: https://rapidshare.com/files/1864122426/LucifroNvsSpades.zip

EVIDENCE:

Overall: His camera gets blocked NUMEROUS times, much more than any non-hacking player. His camera NEVER watches a place he hasn't got vision of, neither for scouting, neither for sending units, neither because of a missclick, he ALWAYS make the exact counter without scouting properly (as he doesn't even scan) and he ALWAYS take the right positions at the right times without having even seen opponents army. Let's get into the games, make sure you put Spades camera on.

Since the camera blocks are always constant and you can see them by yourself i won't point them out unless they are really determining.

Game 1: Antiga Shipyard.

6:15 When he scouted he didn't see any evidence of fast gas, however, before scanning he already starts to build a bay for defending against cloack-banshee.

9:11 9 sec camera block.

9:30 New banshee from LucifroN is leaving his base, he moves his vikings, that had been waiting at the entry of his natural for over 30 sec to cover his main.

10:45 He gets 2 marines to send them to the xel'naga, however, his camera doesn't move to the center of the map, it gets blocked on his army.

11:02 8 sec camera block

The rest of the game is pure action on the middle of the map, always having vision over his opponent, so there's nothing really weird, just a few camera blocks here and there when he loses control over the xel'naga. 

Game 2: Entombed Valley

2:14 He sends the SCV without looking at where he's sending it and the camera gets blocked for 4 secs. However, he doesn't even look at LucifroN's base when the SCV reach it.

6:00 Even if he didn't even watch it, on the minimap you can see LucifroN had a gas, he had done the EXACT same openning as on game 1, however Spades doesn't make bay, neither raven, he goes directly for a viking and waste ALL his energy on a mule, as if he knew 100% sure cloack banshees weren't comming (weird as he didn't even scan).

7:47 Notice how he sieges the tanks on the EXACT position for not being shot by the bunker

13:42 LucifroN advances 2 marines to kill Spades marine at the right of the map, would be obvious to think that LucifroN's army is comming behind, however spades doesn't move his army for about 30 sec.

14:10 LucifroN's army is getting out of his base to that spot, Spades doesn't see ANYTHING, but he sieges his tanks right in the elevation and move his marines out of his base and puts them next to the spot LucifroN is going.

20:30 first scan to LucifroN's base in the whole game!! Spots all his army and the third cc.

Game 3: Shakuras Plateau

3:55 He sends out 4 SCVS to his natural, WITHOUT having seen the marine, and WITHOUT having scouted.

5:08 Most accurate scan ever, however, he doesn't even select the barracks to see what building it is, and he doesn't even look at the third cc.

15:05 Would be obvious to think LucifroN has the mid control, but he moves his tanks to the xel'naga without any kind of fear.

16:20 Look how he watches whole LucifroN's army, just in the border of the fog of war.

20:05 He moves all his marines to the spot where LucifroN is going to attack, eventhough he isn't controlling the xel'naga and he doesn't know if he's gonna come that way.

Game 4: Metalopolis

2:50 He selects his SCV and make it go back to his base, however, his camera is blocked on his barracks for about 5 seconds.

6:00 Again, despite not having scouted, he isn't making any kind of cloack-banshee prevention as he did on the first game.

7:20 He starts to move his army towards the position LucifroN's drop is comming without having seen anything, he changes the direction up to 3 times in less than 5 secs as LucifroN moves his medevak.

Game 5: Tal'darim Altar

8:00 He had been making a lot of hellions for some early aggression, but right after LucifroN closes his natural with depots, without seeing it he stops making more, starts making tanks and starts killing his 3rd base rocks.

10:50 Despite having a marine and a Barrack to spot any kind of drop, he doesn't see LucifroN's drop comming, however, he leaves all his hellions on his natural instead of having them around the map which would be the most normal given that you haven't spotted any drop comming. JUST in the moment where the medevaks appear on the minimap (and without having seen them with the camera) he moves his hellions to stop the drop.
12:30 Camera gets blocked on the border of the fog of war.

14:00 Despite having his army on LucifroN's natural, LucifroN manages to sneak through it with his army. Spades doesn't see it, but yet he sieges 2 tanks on his natural and moves a hellion that had been still for over a minute to the xel'naga tower.

16:30 He hides a group of Hellions at the 9 expansion, at 16:44 his camera gets frozen on the border of the fog of war, to spot LucifroN's army comming that way, he tries to hide the hellions better, so that if LucifroN moved to the xel'naga he didn't spot the hellions. He then realises LucifroN's army is gonna come that way for a drop instead of going to the xel'naga and he runs away with all his hellions, miracly avoiding LucifroN's army.

17:00 Despite having seen LucifroN going to a drop through the 9 expansion he leaves ALL his vikings and ALL his tanks on his natural expansion.

18:20 He unsieges ALL his tanks, and starts to move to his third, without having seen LucifroN move to there.

19:00 He rapidly moves again to his natural, right as LucifroN's army is comming.

21:10 He starts to move back all his vikings and a pair of tanks to defend agains the unseen drop of LucifroN comming to his main base (of course, leaving a decent ammount of tanks on his third to defend against the little group of units LucifroN has there, however he completely unprotects his natural expansion, as there are no LucifroN units around.

22:57 Curious 7-sec camera block right before LucifroN's drop came over.

24:30 again, he unsieges all his tanks on the natural and 10 sec after that he selects all his army, to start moving to his third RIGHT in the exact moment where LucifroN come in.

25:15 He unsieges all the tanks on his main base leaving it unprotected to any kind of drop and moves all of them to his natural, right where LucifroN is comming with all his army.

25:35 After seeing all the tanks there LucifroN moves back and start to walk to Spades third entry. Spades decides to unsiege 5-6 tanks and send them to his third without having seen anything again.

29:35 LucifroN is comming for Spades third, again, he hasn't seen anything. 5 seconds after that LucifroN lift half of his units into 2 medevaks, then Spades select all his vikings and moves forward to try to kill the unseen medevaks.

30:40 He unsieges ALL the tanks in the main despite LucifroN having been dropping there for a while and moves them all to his natural,right where LucifroN is comming.

31:10 he scans the xel'naga right in time to see LucifroN's army moving to 9-expansion (probably in order to drop). However LucifroN is just tricking him, and moves back to the xel'naga once the scan is over. Spades doesn't unsiege ANY tank to try to prevent a drop in the main and just keeps them all on his natural.

32:15 he scans his thirdbase entry to spot ALL LucifroN's army, he hadn't previously scanned there at any other point on the game.

32:50 he moves with ALL his army to his main base, where a BIG drop is going to come, and without having seen anything.

Game 6: Daybreak

4:30 He puts his third command center right in position, without even knowing if LucifroN was going for 2 fast cc too (otherways it would've been a suicide).

15:45 He moves around trying to defend the entry where LucifroN may come in, then LucifroN decides to leave and he goes after him.

From here on, he has whole map control so nothing really matters, eventhough there are a few more camera blocks here and there.

Game 7: Shattered Temple

6:00 Remember game 2 and 4? Spades went for a viking to prevent uncloacked banshees or drop. This time, however, he makes raven-viking without having scanned and thus, not (supposedly) knowing LucifroN is going cloack banshee.

7:20 He moves his marines and his raven to the location where LucifroN's banshee is going (He doesn't even know LucifroN is going banshees).

14:30 He goes to his natural entry with almost all his army to get a good position to fight against LucifroN forces (which he hasn't seen yet).

16:55 Instead of leaving some tanks on his main, fearing another attack from LucifroN on that spot he sends all of his army next to the golden, right where LucifroN is going, and suddently unsieges to reposition his tanks when LucifroN is moving.


That's all, I think it is more than obvious that he is hacking, specially considering he was already caught hacking on broodwar... whatever, you guys judge, it's our duty to make this game as clean as possible.

"2:14 He sends the SCV without looking at where he's sending it and the camera gets blocked for 4 secs. However, he doesn't even look at LucifroN's base when the SCV reach it."

That's a big giveaway to map hack... because at grandmaster level, if you don't even have the apm to micro your scouting scv, you should not be in GM. Period.

'hes hacked so many times before that people think hes a fucking piece of shit. obviously he wouldnt do it again!'

Did anyone else watch the replays? I agree that there is a lot of circumctances to believe that's it happend only by chance, but i have to say a lot of the things you wrote in the post are exaggarated and reading too much into maphack but on the other hand some are really suspicious.

I watched the replays more carefully and it looks like a lot of points that OP makes are false, for example 4 scv's at shakuras plateau, he took them after he saw marine in his natural. Also a lot of movement on Tal'darim looks like standard mech play with taking good spots for tanks. Other than that we should assume that Spades is not the best player so moving your army without care isn't anything special. He can also use mini-map to send his scouting worker, i do that sometimes as well. In the end i don't really think it's cheating there is a lot of points that are not true and the rest we can include into luck which happens quite often in SC2.

based on what nerchio said and the fact that the OP is likely personally involved with lucifron

closing this for now, unless another pro pms me (or another mod) and contradicts nerchio

Thanks to this PM I'm re-opening the thread for debate. Please keep the it civil, and remember to have evidence to back up points you're making!

Addition to the OP, looked through a little bit more and confirmed OP's statements and made notes where OP could be wrong. Either way it is really fishy play and he is either stream cheating or map hacking, more likely map hacking because he is reacting way too fast for it to be a stream cheat.


Game 1: Antiga
All of OP's statements true
11:02 camera block - is that sharp jump after the block usual? seems really fast compared to normal screen save/basecam

Game 2: ETBD Valley

Not looking at the base after scouting it is really weird..
7:47 push - doesn't even see bunker before pushing, no scans + perfect range
13:42 - agreed, I would always send 5 marines or so right away or scan to make sure im not in danger.
16:40 - blind 3 medi drop, doesnt scan to see if there are turrets or anything, possibly just really bad play

Game 3: Shak

3:55 common if you go CC first and you are being worker harrassed, interesting he didn't scout at all though..
5:08 Rax 2 + 3rd CC is not in his map vision, only on minimap, most players look around with their camera.. not just their minimap when they scan

IMPORTANT:He scans the correct base without having scouted the other one

Summary: He plays really blind rest of the game, really bad as well, moving armies into spots he doesnt have vision of + never scans after first one. TvT positional warfare requires scans or well placed units around the map, he does not have either. He never goes for any blind 3 medivac drops this game - there are turrets for lucifron he didn't scout.

Game 4: Meta

Everything true, really suspicous at 7:30 where he moves his army towards the hellions without seeing, despite the fact he was moving back and forth in same place 10 seconds ago.

Game 5: TDA

10:50 kind of suspicious but he saw it on the minimap and he already has his hellions hotkeyed - not too important
12:30 he's moving his army + setting rallys over there, not suspicious
17:00 absolutely no reason to keep your viking at your natural once you see medivac + bio going for a doom drop towards your main..
18:20 zero useful map vision at the point, unsieges tanks randomly and then moves to 3rd to kill luci army
19:00: moves back to natural, leaves 0 units behind to defend 3rd even after he realized that he didnt kill the whole drop, then sieges to defend natural + 3rd
21:10 moves his viking before he sees the medivacs on the minimap, moves few tanks + all vikings - not too suspicious but the suspicious part is that he still has 0 map vision, and decides to not defend his natural - no units from luci in sight
-- Stopped watching because it's getting too obvious, wasting my time
Quick Notes: For most of the game he has 0 map vision from lucifron's path of attack to spade's bases. He has a rax on the left for drops + top xel naga but not the xel naga connecting both bases together. Also made 0 turrets to defend his main on the back side, just the top

GaME 6: Daybreak

4:30 this is a really dumb move or he is cheating- he would be dead in minutes if lucifron was doing any other build.

16:00 decides to kill rocks, then sees free medivacs at the lower base and goes down there instead
16:05 looks back at his main - camera block - I noticed this many times-- he always looks at his factorys + starport whenever his army is moving to a good place, in this situation- lucifrons medivacs
16:45 he does it again, same spot
One could say he is doing it to make tanks, viking, medivacs etc. notice how he never goes back to his barracks to make units, always looking somewhere else. There is also no reason to look back at your factories and starport, both factories have tech labs and he only has one reactor starport. This occurs many times later but I stopped writing times here.
From here on, he has whole map control so nothing really matters, even though there are a few more camera blocks here and there.

Game 7: Shattered Temple

6:00 Remember game 2 and 4? Spades went for a viking to prevent uncloacked banshees or drop. This time, however, he makes raven-viking without having scanned and thus, not (supposedly) knowing LucifroN is going cloack banshee.

7:20 He moves his marines and his raven to the location where LucifroN's banshee is going (He doesn't even know LucifroN is going banshees). + rallys starport over there

14:30 Sieges tank on high ground out of other tank range + good position to defend, moves marines in main away from range of siege tank (it was in range before he moved it) He goes to his natural entry with almost all his army to get a good position to fight against LucifroN forces (which he hasn't seen yet).

16:55 Instead of leaving some tanks on his main, fearing another attack from LucifroN on that spot he sends all of his army next to the golden, right where LucifroN is going, and suddently unsieges to reposition his tanks to the right, where LucifroN is moving.
Note: 0 map vision

I wish there were more different spawns, antiga is 2 - shattered he got close air, entombed he got close vertical etc. Only games where it was suspicious was Tal darim - he got first scout and Shakuras he scanned the main before even seeing where he spawned. I looked through the replays in depth, not super closely but close enough to look at all the times stated in the OP

I'm not going to read into this because it makes no sense, I think alot of this says i look at there base before scanning or something? Watch vods of my stream, i always look at fog, then scan immediately afterwards. I think this is s tupid people are calling me a hacker to discredit my "close defeat" in a showmatch. Just because my history people find things to discredit me. Pretty pathetic.

I could go case by case defending myself, but this is just sad.

tbh spades you do play super fishy >_< I played that game recently against you and said basically "wtf this is very hackish" and you said "I play you on my smurf a lot and knew you'd do that" which is USUALLY the #1 "I hack and this is how I will defend myself ambiguously" statement.

I'm no hack expert so I will leave this to those that are but you need to know.. it isn't just a few people that have felt odd about your online game play. ddddddd

If you aren't hacking this is unfortunate but the sins of hacking (even in the past) will always impact you. If you are hacking it's pretty over...

90% of the day i believe people are hacking against me on ladder. Big name players as well. Everyone is just hack crazy now. I stream 90% of my games. I didn't hack in this series, I haven't hacked in SC2. If you want to find things that look suspicious, It's easy. Not one person here can "prove" i hacked, because i didn't. And now my sc2 image is destroyed. So I'm thankful for that. Guess it's time to retire after Anaheim.

Defend the points made and I'll apologize and so should everyone. If you're not cheating, you shouldn't be afraid of defending yourself because there is nothing to lose. Either you play really fishy/"dumb" or you had some amazing game sense in the series, if what you are saying is true.

I'm trying to make a career of this, If people think im a cheater, they wont watch me, they wont get lessons from me. I wont get invites. Shit like this tarnishes you, how am i supposed to make money, Next time I do well in something, they will just call me a cheater again. I dealt with this in Broodwar I know how the community is. Unless someone magically makes a program to ACTUALLY DETECT HACKS, i will never been actually proven innocent. I wish this was BW days and they had the hack scanner tt.

Alright, since i respect you, I'll answer all your questions, just give me a few minutes to look over and see.

QuanticIllusion wrote:
Addition to the OP, looked through a little bit more and confirmed OP's statements and made notes where OP could be wrong. Either way it is really fishy play and he is either stream cheating or map hacking, more likely map hacking because he is reacting way too fast for it to be a stream cheat.


Game 1: Antiga
All of OP's statements true
11:02 camera block - is that sharp jump after the block usual? seems really fast compared to normal screen save/basecam
okay so apparently camera block is when i move my map fast or something because im looking at fog of war with some hack? i dont know how to explain this but i dont see anything weird.

What's funny is people dont mention all the little mistakes i make, and missing drops that cost me games, If i was a hacker why would i purposely lose to things like this, wouldnt i see them?
Game 2: ETBD Valley

Not looking at the base after scouting it is really weird..
7:47 push - doesn't even see bunker before pushing, no scans + perfect range
just standard range for a bunker..
13:42 - agreed, I would always send 5 marines or so right away or scan to make sure im not in danger.
he kills marines, and scans, I hold middle watchtower, why wouldnt i prepare for an attack on the right?
16:40 - blind 3 medi drop, doesnt scan to see if there are turrets or anything, possibly just really bad play
no scans were available, i made a move, 3 medivacs can get through a turret even if there was one.
Game 3: Shak

3:55 common if you go CC first and you are being worker harrassed, interesting he didn't scout at all though..
5:08 Rax 2 + 3rd CC is not in his map vision, only on minimap, most players look around with their camera.. not just their minimap when they scan
I'll answer this and whats after together. I needed to immediately know if i need to 3 cc or tech whether he expands or not, my scv scout was late, so i scanned opposite base as well. on minimap its clear he went 3 cc, so it's never going to be a factory, so i immediately went back to my base and put 3 cc down.
IMPORTANT:He scans the correct base without having scouted the other one

Summary: He plays really blind rest of the game, really bad as well, moving armies into spots he doesnt have vision of + never scans after first one. TvT positional warfare requires scans or well placed units around the map, he does not have either. He never goes for any blind 3 medivac drops this game - there are turrets for lucifron he didn't scout.
I played this game horribly positionally, and way behind, I wish i had magic vision to maneuver around instead of getting stomped.

Game 4: Meta

Everything true, really suspicous at 7:30 where he moves his army towards the hellions without seeing, despite the fact he was moving back and forth in same place 10 seconds ago.
random chance

Game 5: TDA

10:50 kind of suspicious but he saw it on the minimap and he already has his hellions hotkeyed - not too important
12:30 he's moving his army + setting rallys over there, not suspicious
17:00 absolutely no reason to keep your viking at your natural once you see medivac + bio going for a doom drop towards your main..
18:20 zero useful map vision at the point, unsieges tanks randomly and then moves to 3rd to kill luci army
19:00: moves back to natural, leaves 0 units behind to defend 3rd even after he realized that he didnt kill the whole drop, then sieges to defend natural + 3rd
21:10 moves his viking before he sees the medivacs on the minimap, moves few tanks + all vikings - not too suspicious but the suspicious part is that he still has 0 map vision, and decides to not defend his natural - no units from luci in sight
-- Stopped watching because it's getting too obvious, wasting my time
Quick Notes: For most of the game he has 0 map vision from lucifron's path of attack to spade's bases. He has a rax on the left for drops + top xel naga but not the xel naga connecting both bases together. Also made 0 turrets to defend his main on the back side, just the top
Everything here is just me randomly guessing, and guessing wrong most of the time, where his army would be. He constantly drops me out of position, moves on my 3rd with minimal army there, If I hack I am the worst hacker of all time in this game.
GaME 6: Daybreak

4:30 this is a really dumb move or he is cheating- he would be dead in minutes if lucifron was doing any other build.
I studied his games vs thorzain, he does 100% the same exact build. I took a risk
16:00 decides to kill rocks, then sees free medivacs at the lower base and goes down there instead
i almost decided to kill rocks a few times, and stopped because i know he can see me attacking them, anything else is chance and standard tvt maneuvering
16:05 looks back at his main - camera block - I noticed this many times-- he always looks at his factorys + starport whenever his army is moving to a good place, in this situation- lucifrons medivacs
no? dont know what else to say, there obviously has to be some way of proving this camera block, but because im 100% not doing anything like that.
16:45 he does it again, same spot
One could say he is doing it to make tanks, viking, medivacs etc. notice how he never goes back to his barracks to make units, always looking somewhere else. There is also no reason to look back at your factories and starport, both factories have tech labs and he only has one reactor starport. This occurs many times later but I stopped writing times here.
From here on, he has whole map control so nothing really matters, even though there are a few more camera blocks here and there.

Game 7: Shattered Temple

6:00 Remember game 2 and 4? Spades went for a viking to prevent uncloacked banshees or drop. This time, however, he makes raven-viking without having scanned and thus, not (supposedly) knowing LucifroN is going cloack banshee.
In most his games vs thorzain he opens cloak banshee. however raven wasnt "anti cloak" in this game. I decided to do a 1 base tank marine autoturret allin, but he went fast vikings so i couldnt.
7:20 He moves his marines and his raven to the location where LucifroN's banshee is going (He doesn't even know LucifroN is going banshees). + rallys starport over there
this is common play? i leave units at front and send units to back of base as well. I know you are smart enough to understand this concept.
14:30 Sieges tank on high ground out of other tank range + good position to defend, moves marines in main away from range of siege tank (it was in range before he moved it) He goes to his natural entry with almost all his army to get a good position to fight against LucifroN forces (which he hasn't seen yet).
you dont want to be caught in your base by someone trying to do tank pushes, common play
16:55 Instead of leaving some tanks on his main, fearing another attack from LucifroN on that spot he sends all of his army next to the golden, right where LucifroN is going, and suddently unsieges to reposition his tanks to the right, where LucifroN is moving.
Note: 0 map vision
random game flow, he also catches me out of position quite a few times
I wish there were more different spawns, antiga is 2 - shattered he got close air, entombed he got close vertical etc. Only games where it was suspicious was Tal darim - he got first scout and Shakuras he scanned the main before even seeing where he spawned. I looked through the replays in depth, not super closely but close enough to look at all the times stated in the OP


Most of my openings and builds were based on his games vs Thorzain in scan invitational. If you watch those you will see he does same exact builds on same exact maps which worked out to my favor as well. I know LucifroN is a better player than me, and I cut alot of corners playing him hoping to gain advantage. It worked sometimes, other times i lost for blatant errors in judgement. I wasn't hacking, nor have I hacked in SC2, and I trouble someone to find definitite proof because it isn't out there.

The majority of scans in my play, I scan minimap, then a second later click to location, which can account for off center views which you claim is camera lock. Other times i actually view fog of war then scan. this is all evident if you watch my stream vods.

As a former team mate of spades I felt it was necessary to chime in.

Spades has attracted a lot of attention, good and bad during his sc2 career. Yes he hacked in BW, this is confirmed. It is the past.

He has not been proven of hacking in sc2 as of yet and I fully believe until a 100% conclusion is made by someone of some official status I.E. Member of a neutral client (TL or something similar) with no vested interest; everyone should keep the negative comments to the affirmative to themselves.

Nothing is confirmed. Innocent until proven guilty...right?

I have not looked at the replays yet because I'm at work but will be sure to do so when I get home.

The fact that this article was allowed to be put out before a 100% conclusion was made is repulsive. Simply by posting this on TL Spades sc2 career (even if the hacking allegations are completely dismissed) is completely tarnished.

You have directly affected his livelihood and means to generate income 1 post count "drolets". I sincerely hope you've done your research correctly.

EDIT: As a sidenote

It is my personal opinion that spades did not hack. Anyone at even a competent skill level with hacks can take down huge names. Take someone with TOP NA skill and give him a maphack? He wouldn't of lost.

Honestly nothing in the OP made me raise my eyebrow except:




Also it's my understanding that this was a 'showmatch', in which I assume was streamed? I'm not sure how so many people are looking past that if that is the case.

My posts were an addition to the OP, some of my comments wont make sense unless you have the OP side by side with it. That being said, your risky build orders can be credited to the fact you actually studied him, so I won't nag on that.

Much of your defense is credited to "I played bad, so I took risks" or "I got lucky"
I don't want to debate every comment you made even though I don't agree with it, so I will just point out things that I think are really suspicious.

One thing that I will stand on is that on Game 3 Shakuras, Your scan on his base was perfect + your scv wasnt even at the other base yet so there is no way anyone good would blindly scan the way you did, watch the replay (others) the scv wasnt even at the natural ramp of the horizontal base but you decided to scan the main/natural of the cross base.

Game 4: Random chance, I can see this happening because it happens to every pro once in a while.

Game 5: Can't really say much bout your comments, really vague comments against a lot of good points provided by the OP atleast.

Game 6: Your comments can be valid but I still don't understand why a player of your caliber(in theory) would be looking back at their base to make tanks and viking for ~10+ seconds

--Your comments weren't very helpful in defending you but I also can't prove your points wrong because they are so vague. I'm going to say that I am undecided but leaning more towards the cheating side because of a lot of luck in a bo7. If there are other replays people should really post their analysis and the replay itself, I have a bo3 series between you and another terran player but the replays have some chat I don't think the public should know, so I will keep these + analysis until I find a way to clear the chat logs.

I am a bit sleepy so it won't be as detailed as i would like it to be although i will try my best. To start off, i am not a friend of Spades and i don't even know him personally i guess we never even talked. If he hacked i'd be the first person to shout it out and i am glad that this topic turned into some kind of a discussion(but only a few people say reasonable things and only those should speak that saw the replays).

http://drop.sc/191488

Here you got a replay of mine in TvT that i played just a few minutes ago to act a little bit like Spades (pretty much 0 looks at the fog of war , etc.) and some weird action as well with army movement. I could make the scan at some point look even more weird but i didn't have the time to play another TvT(basicly you scan via minimap and after that you look there).

To say a few more words about the Lucifron vs Spades itself. I rather concentrate on the game itself than the camera locks which are really hard to judge for me. Things to note from most of the replays: Spades like a variety of tank/viking/marine openings either 1 or 2 base.
Shattered Temple
This game is not suspicious for me at all, Spades goes double gas before factory which definitely indicates a heavy gas play(in this case a raven) which partially countered cloak banshee of Lucifron.
Antiga Shipyard
I feel like Spades didn't see too much so he decides to play safer and goes for the engineering bay and the 9:30 move with vikings is not weird at all for me since he sent them in the place where the drops usually take place or tank/medivac lift. The rest of the game is standard TvT(remember than to move units around you don't actually need to look into fog of war, you can move them 'screen by screen' or by mini map).
Entombed Valley
OP Suggests that it's the exact same build than antiga, in fact it's not because antiga was a fast expand build and on this map Spades goes for much later expansion which means he has faster viking and doesn't need to go for engineering bay(it's risky i agree but not needed as well) sinc he is on 1 base. The only thing that is suspicious in this game is that he stops Lucifron's push on the right through the small valley. He had marine there before but he moved his army to defend that stop after few seconds which was weird to me but it's not really that big of a deal.
Shakuras Plateau
The 4 scv move was almost the same second as the marine appread which is kinda fast, but we also have to accept that his scv building CC was dieing so taking 4 scv could be a little bit exaggarated play from him. Moving his tanks in the mid game could be just bad play, everybody does such moves from time to time, you can't actually control every single move in the game and be sure that it's safe. 16:20 i don't really think it's watching Lucifron's army move, it rather looks like a bad move with his mouse(he had some problems when he played).
Metalopolis
As i said, Spades like a lot of tank/viking openings so nothing weird happend here, except the moves of his army around 7:30 when Lucifron is dropping hellions into his main. I have to say thought that it's very little to read from to say that he's hacking or anything, could be just indecisive where to put his army. The OP is saying something about scv at the start of the game, he can just fall it back from Lucifrons base by using a hotkey.
Daybreak
Not much to say but standard marine/tank TvT. I'd argument his build from the fact that Daybreak is not a map you see a lot of pushes because coming through your side to another one takes a lot of time so taking risks paysoff.
Tal'darim
There is a lot of points that OP suggests but a lot of them are simply false. I don't understand what he was trying to say because i see Spades making hellions all game long. Also most of the time you don't really want to rush in with your blue flame hellions against 2 base terran(can't harass anyway with their army there). Also why would he go around the map with his hellions if there is nothing to do and drops against mech are very popular? He just kept his army in the main, that's all and there is nothing more to it, controlling the xel'naga would give him time to react. I'd say that the weird moves of his army come from the fact that not many people move into your natural but rather your 3rd. Tell me who would rush in against mech into sieged natural? That's too big risk that's why you'd rather put some tanks in ur 3rd spread in a line.

Guess ill have to play all my matches against your biggest heroes with a camera behind me seeing both my screens. So next time i do okay and still lose against a top player you wont try to destroy my career by making up bullshit.

I have a team, I have sponsors. My career is basically crippled now, even if completely absolved. The OP was out for my blood, and this is how easy it is to destroy someones career. It's impossible for someone to find proof i hacked, because I didn't. It's all circumstantial nonsense, that can't be proven either way. If you want to find suspicious actions, just turn on first person view for anyone in any game and you will find some. I'm being screwed over by this fact, and I hope someone finds an actual foolproof method to detect hacks so this is avoided for others in the future.

So how do i recover something like this? I would know to know how.

there was no money on the line, it was just a showmatch for pride.

And another thing, I think its purposely reasonable for people to question players, and to investigate hacking, cheating, and abusing. I just think its pretty stupid, I am instantly labeled a hacker because some 1 post decided to label me one, everyone jumped on the bandwagon, without clear proof or anything.

if theres no concrete proof of him hacking then the OP deserves to be banned for life because this is the worse thing that u can do to a player, i still didnt get a chance to look over the posts/replays but if its true then spades's professional career is pretty much fucked and even if hes not hacking the damage has been done to his image, tournament organizers will never invite him to a showmatch after seeing something like this

dont post threads like this unless ur 100% sure that u have concrete evidence(i.e: ingame action proofs), u can suspect someone of hacking through gameplay alone but thats not enought evidence, its just a good starting point to start a case against someone

edit: and if ur going to accuse someone of hacking through gameplay ur going to have to analyse more than 7 replays, even if he looks like the biggest hacker in those 7 games its not a big enought sample. u need to analyse like ~100 replays

Not nearly enough evidence to be considered hacking. I have known Spades since the beginning of SC2, and in the time I have known him there has never been any evidence of him hacking at any time (this includes games played with, watched, observed, seen irl, etc). Spades has invested far too much into SC2 to do something as dangerous as map hacking. Once again someone sees some weird coincidences and blows it out of porportion without any regard for the reputation of a player.

ahh fuck I just watched the replays and analyzed them carefully, I like Spades he's cool dood, but im now pretty convinced he hacks for multiple reasons, there are some really really obvious proof here. he did hack before in bw and denied it so his word can't simply be enough for me this time around. T_T son, im dissapoint.

Someone posted something about if you cameralock you can't perform other actions. Show me an instance where I am "looking at my production for 10 seconds" without performing an action. This never even close to happens.

I actually have accused spades b4 of hacking / called him out on it during a game I played on my stream before. He was former teammate so I gave him benefit of the doubt, but it seemed painfully obvious that he was gaining extraordinary perception in this game from ladder:

http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=264521

A few things make it painfully obvious. First off, he's doing an exact mirror build off of zero scouting which is incredibly rare to happen. But that's not where the lulz come.

I then end up getting contained, but I decided to purposely "bait" him a couple times and see how he reacts during this contain to verify if he's hacking or not.

Every high level TvTer can verify how questionable and suspicious the decisions are from 13:00 min in this game during the contain.

First, note the perfect placement of his tanks just outside of the range of my already pre-sieged tanks...could be luck, but suspicious to start.

Next, I purposely make a viking flower as if I am going to leap frog tanks to gain vision over his tanks. Spades has zero vikings.

13:23, he looks where my tanks are, send a marine forward, standard to confirm, but he has no scans, and he doesn't seem to be afraid at all of my tanks moving forward at all...

13:30 he gets energy to scan now, that every high level TvT would save if they want to keep this contain up, otherwise they may just retreat without vikings for vision.

13:34 HE MULES, still not saving scans...leaving every tank sieged still, while knowing that I have the viking advantage for vision, notice my tanks have not moved an inch and he is not worrying about his tanks at all even though he knows he has no way to get vision...WTF?

13:41 This is where my detective work comes in. I make a viking flower pretending that i am about to leap frog my tanks forward. But I leave all my tanks purposely sieged in the same spot. He obviously is looking through the fog of war and sees that I have not moved them, every good player here throws up a scan, but he knows they are in the same exact position as before, so he does not move his tanks away, and he used the mule. He does walk a marine forward though.

13:50 He has a scan available now.
14:09 Another marine moves forward
14:30 Notice this is the first time that I unsiege any tanks near the contain, and what I plan next is to purposely feint a leapfrog forward and then insta-move back to see if he insta-scans.

Keep in mind, every single instance before this that I have viking flowered as if leapfrogging forward, he has never reacted at all, no scan.

14:36 I make the final "bait" move here and I purposely do not viking flower to see how he reacts. The instant I move the tanks forward he insta-moves his screen to that location, insta-scans, and I did not siege because, like I said, I was already suspicious at that point and was curious how he would react.

Incredibly suspicious imo...some would say incredibly obvious as well. I was streaming at the time, and even more curious was spades was immediately on my stream out of no where to immediately defend himself...-_-

Oh I remember when you accused me of streamcheating avilo. Your fans all started yelling at me and I came to stream to defend myself. I made all my points really clear, you see me getting tarred and feathered and come to bring up something already counter explained. Pretty fucked up. Anyways I've said all I can. I'm just going to focus on preparing for mlg/wcs. Hopefully this will all blow over, I don't want to fan the flames.

Also, it's hard to explain points in games when you aren't actually playing them. Theres dozens of little things affecting your decision making constantly all game long. Anyone who plays at a high level cuts corners and does things purely based on feel. Sometimes you are right and people can say it's suspicious. The other times you pay dearly for misjudgement. In my games you can clearly see there's a big mix of both. I took a lot of risks, a big part of the game is trying to anticipate what your opponent is doing, when I play top players I try even harder to take risks, as do many other players

Spades -- why don't you just go and grab your last ~60+ games from your NA ladder account? Don't cherrypick replays, just grab a bunch of them, upload them and let people go through them. If you're not hacking, this will basically completely exonerate you -- there will definately be comparisons to your match history to ensure you aren't excluding replays, and it's a sufficient enough sample size to remove the random "luck" movements.

Is there a reason why you haven't done this yet?

I don't have a personal contact with him for various reasons, but I'd rather stay impartial in this thread as an accusation like this -- even if it's wrong, has very detrimental effects that no-ones deserves. If anyone is able to contact him for this, it'd be a good idea..

I'll consider posting all my ladder replays when I get home. But even when you see I don't hack in those 50 games, people will just say "oh he only hacked vs lucifron" so I'm not really sure how it would change anything

My last 50 something ladder games, none left out. includes 2 warmup games i played vs SanghooLeeMD right before the showmatch.

https://rapidshare.com/files/624275372/New_folder__4_.rar

https://rapidshare.com/files/511877116/5.rar

the next 50 or so

I havent played any relevant tournaments, I've been just streaming all my games and not doing much besides that.

yea the admins should check to see if the OP has any under accounts on TL

There was nothing on the line in my showmatch vs LucifroN, there was no prize or anything. This is why I said it wont matter what i post, because you can argue this point.

I just want to say, I am extremely upset about this. This hurts my career, as well as my mental state. If you have it in your mind that someone is playing suspicious, It's hard to remained unbiased. You will see suspicious actions everywhere you want to. I ask you go find some replays of your favorite top players, break the replay down and analyze it and I gaurantee you will find suspicious actions. Starcraft 2 is a game of limited information and what you do with it, as well as how you fill in the cracks. A lot is guesswork, experience, and just feeling while you are in the game. Can I accurately explain every suspicious moment? No. I don't know what was going through my mind at that exact moment, you just react on instinct among other things. Did i make some great "questionable" decisions? Yes. Did i make some terrible decisions? Yes. I hope people can remain objective and give me a fair chance when evaluating my play. I made a terrible mistake in the past, and I know it hurts me immensely here. I almost want to just skip Anaheim and retire. But I've decided I know when I'm right, and I'm not going to roll over and die. I don't expect a conclusion resulting in my innocence, or my guilt. So I will just continue playing, and over time I think I will be able to change my tarnished image, and hopefully turn some of you around as well.

As for the people sending me PM's, thank you for your support and understanding, I really appreciate it.

I am playing very badly. I'm watching the screen. I really wish some hacker would come and clarify how all this works so I dont get called out for some "screen lock"

did you stop listening after they said i saw units with my barracks. also why move my whole army and let him kill my 3rd for free, i wouldve left more behind if i was hacking.

It won't matter, mob mentality is working against me. I will never been "proven" innocent. If they want to find suspicious actions they will, and all of their fans will take everything they say as fact. They keep saying i camera lock whenever i go over fog of war. And other times they say "here he is looking in fog of war" If i had camera lock how am i looking in fog of war. This makes no sense and contradicts itself. I knew no good would come of them analyzing, because anything except 100% innocence, condemns me.

Well, while it's bad form to throw someone under the bus, I'm just going to do it because all this came out and I have a fact that actually matters.

Spades stream cheated during showmatches that he played while he lived with me at what was the Reign house. It's a carry over from the stream cheating that many Koreans do in the Korean prohouses (Both Spades and Artist have confirmed with me that Koreans frequently stream cheat in team leagues and showmatches against foreigners out of pride).

If ever I saw it happen when I was in the house, I would immediately try to stop them, but I know on occasion it still occured, most notably in a match Spades played against Gatored last year.

About maphacking, I have no idea and have no opinion on the matter other than either option wouldn't surprise me.

I would want to say though, that cheating occurs way more than people realize, and I actually would not be so hard on him for this evidence, even if it is true. Players better than Spades actively cheat, particularly stream cheat or simply ghosting, because of how easy it is.

Example - Leenock was over a player's shoulder at MLG Providence helping them during a game, giving them hints in Korean.

It's pretty common.

Just so we're clear on something. The only ones that have any right to judge Spades here is the WesternWolves. It was our showmatch and he's our player. We're his sponsor, we're the admins

I got a serious headache watching people try to market this whole mess for viewers clearly looking to make Spades look bad.

So for the record, WW hosted the showmatch, Spades is on the WW team, WW is looking into these accusations, WW will consult experts and WW will release a statement after a conclusion has been drawn.

Oh and as a bonus, WW would love to know who actually posted this disaster in the first place.

Lol really, it was Artist, when did this ever happen. If anything people in the house would randomly say something during a game they were watching. I never had 2 monitors open and stream cheat or anything. Why would you say something stupid like that. So stupid.

Time spent in multiple Korean prohouses. They both told me it was standard in Korea and even more wide spread there than it is here. The exact scenario was, I asked Artist if Koreans cheated, he shrugged and said "Yes. Korean standard." It was almost a joke, but we discussed it more later. There's a completely different view point of it there. I had to explain to Artist how badly America and Europe thought of it and stress he could never do it, it would be the end of his career if he did. It took me like 30 minutes to really make it clear how unacceptable it was to everyone, and to me personally.

Even i know a few gamers that stream cheated during when i frequently played playhem and stopped playing because playhem didnt put any delay(I even requested them to put some delay) on their stream a while back.

Today's been a perfect shitstorm for esports Between witchhunts and people acting after old "falling outs", not sure the truth matters (1/2)

I'm not sure we can keep Spades on the team regardless of whether he cheated or not. Congratulations, a career ruined. Be proud (2/2)

theres a silly amount of coincidences and funny little moves that wouldnt hold water on their own but taken as a whole are pretty suspicious. that on top of the screen movements and apparent screen blocking, particularly in comparison to his play when hes streaming and not hacking, its a pretty convincing argument.

I liked most part of CatZ stream, I regret that they put so much weight onto the "magic scan" though because;

1) You don't always see the center of the scan when you pull it off on camera (as they claim)
2) It wasn't their strongest piece of evidence

IMO: And people have previously stated this in the thread, the strongest piece of evidence I find in all this mess is the fact that in a 7 game series, Spades never once looks at the fog of war UNLESS he's actually clicking in it (which disables the camera lock? If I understand this correctly). However, when watching his ladder games/streamed games he watches the fog of war quite a lot before even clicking there. How you all of a sudden start playing (seemingly) by using the minimap only, and the only time you ever are in the fog of war is if you're right clicking in it, when you on ladder or when on stream constantly check the Fog of war, is just too weird for me.

TT1 mentioned one stream that we're creature of habits, you don't suddenly stop doing things that you were doing in fifty, probably hundreds of games before. If ANYONE has a reasonable explanation to why Spades isn't looking at the Fog of war even once in the bo7 series against LucifroN, I'd like to hear it.

during my time at the Reign house, I played a good amount of games with Spades, and observed him playing Artist (Korean terran) many times as well. The results were extremely one sided for their TVT's (I would estimate 90%+ winratio in favor of artist in the inhouse games vs him) Spades said frequently that he could not win TvT, and had frequent outbursts of frustration when playing against Artist.

As the weeks passed, it seemed spades motivation to play decreased more and more. During this time he would spend a lot of time playing LoL, CS, and Poker. while myself and Artist would compete in Playhem and play on the Korean ladder (artist won 16 playhems while he was in the house, what a boss) practice became more and more sparse between us, he consequentially dropped out of GM due to lack of play (this was season 5, where he ended the season rank 36 in his masters league) after a few weeks of stagnation, he announced he was returning back to Florida, and left just days after announcing this to frank and the rest of us.

You can Imagine how surprised I was when season 6 opened, and he achieved a staggering 257-84 win ratio, putting him at rank 1 GM with a 75.37% winrate, comparable to the best NA terrans such as: EGdemuslim: 280-79 (77.99%) Select: 274-51 (84.31%) EGthorzain: 141-40 (77.90%) this drastic turnaround seemed very fish, given his previous history and the stream cheating that I witnessed in the Reign house. but Given that I was still playing full time and trying to improve myself, I didn't give it a second thought.

Now that all of this has surfaced, I am fairly certain that in the process of wanting to prove himself and break out from the mid tier that so many of us are seemingly stuck, he used underhanded methods to take shortcuts and achieve success that otherwise would have taken a lot of hard work and determination.

tl;dr: hacks

Yea i wanted to focus on the gameplay stuff more but i wasnt there when they were taking notes on what they wanted to talk about so i didnt want to derail the discussion so i just went with it. There was definitely an overwhelming amount of gameplay evidence pointing to him possibly maphacking that we didnt cover and we could have gone more in depth with some of the gameplay stuff that we did cover, like i said i wasnt there when they were planning everything so i just kinda winged it cus i didnt want to interfere too much in the discussion, i went into it more as an observer. I didnt watch the replays beforehand because i wanted to go into the discussion without having any prejudgements so i could formulate my own opinions and see if what they were saying was actually legit or not, and tbh after reading frank's(Mirhi) post coupled with the overwhelming amount gameplay evidence in those games im kinda leaning over towards the witchhunt side =/

that being said im still not sure because the game sample is kinda small but its still not enought to sway me towards his side, im like 75-25 atm

For the record, when I was living in the GOM house. I never saw spades cheat or stream cheat or anything.
He did slack off playing poker but when he was playing SC2 he was practising against people in the house and also I do recall him playing some online matches but he never ever stream cheated.

there was a playhem a while ago where Spades played Golden, I don't remember and don't have replay, maybe it was a semis or finals match
on daybreak spades had no scouting whatsoever and didn't even know if hive was done and started 3 extra starports making like 5 vikings at a time without even knowing about hive or a spire. thought that was pretty funny.

Whenever someone loses a game, bad judgement tends to rage out. This is another case of this. Lucifron lost games, and to who? One of the most underrated Terrans in North America. To this guy(original poster) that had no consideration but to understand how Lucifron can possibly lose games to such a "nobody", he became extremely suspicious. Now I watched all the games for almost 2 hours because to me this is extremely serious. Some people do not realize how hard it is to make it in the North American scene and for this accusation to be possible with opinions and nit-picky suspicions cannot be tolerated. When you seriously convince yourself that someone is cheating, the easiest thing is to FUEL YOUR OWN SUSPICIONS. This does not mean you have evidence. Most of what I see is people using Spades' success in the ladder as proof that he must be cheating or vendettas against build-order losses/lack of scouting. How sick is that... The biggest problem right now is the mentality that North Americans are way to inferior to actually beat good players. This thread desperately needs to be destroyed and the person who posted this should be IP banned.

Eyey, if it's all the same. I understand it's relevant, but it's easier on me if what I say on Twitter stays there. Saves me from waking up to people I've never heard of posting "boohoo crybaby" and the like. It's not that I feel like what I say is any less public there, but that's followers I don't need if you get what I'm saying. So consider that a personal request, thanks.

Now to discuss the mess at hand. Please note my main role with the westernwolves is as a commentator and the work I do managing and dealing with communities is purely secondary. In the end I only give the guy that signs the budget a recommendation. Sure so far they've always taken them, but in no way does me posting on Twitter; "I don't see how we can keep Spades on the team" mean "Spades isn't going to stay on the team". People much wiser than me sign off on the budget.

That said, I certainly meant what I posted there. Cheater or not, the only way Spades can come out of this with a reputation worth anything is if he proves conclusively he didn't cheat. Now the only thing harder than proving someone cheated is perhaps that someone didn't cheat. There is no way you can explain every action in a game afterwards and no way to prove you Didn't cheat. The best Spades could've hoped for was that people looked at this thread and the circumstancesand reached the conclusion there's not enough there to state he's cheating.

Now there's a few things that really troubled me throughout this. First off the blatantly bogus OP . IP match or not, I'm more convinced this is some cowards alt than anything. If you're going to make huge claims like this, put your own reputation at stake, you're certainly setting out to destroy someone else's. Taking in to account most the points made weren't proof of anything or just false, this went way further than it should have.

Though I shouldn't have to post this, here's how you Should handle a situation like this; if you find someone suspicious, contact 1 the admins 2 the team. They are going to be more suited than you to analyze this situation and are the ones that should if necessary act on this. Now in this case, they're one and the same, the WesternWolves. WW is a team with a wide array of players among several games, they're reputation is what sponsors bank on. Just like any team of this sort, they'll do whatever is needed to ensure their reputation is a legitimate one (obviously does not include creating bogus alts and accusing people). We would welcome that kind of feedback, investigate it to the fullest and probably thank you for it afterwards regardless of what is found!

A team will then generally contact uninvolved players and ask them to review the games. They will review these games in private, not on a stream to generate more sensation and leech the situation for every viewer they can get. If you want to know how far we got with this i we managed to contact 2 mouz players, but before anything could be reviewed, Spades was already getting hung out to dry. It is in no way TL or Reddits job to police players, we are quite capable of that as teams thank you very much.

What bothered me personally is what Mirhi posted and that I really can't get over. I have know Mirhi longer than almost anyone here and I couldn't believe what I was reading. I've known Frank from as far back as when he worked under me in CAL back when I was only the game manager for wc3. Now it is no secret that Spades and Reign had a bad break. They had a falling out and there's no love between the 2. So NOW hearing "oh yeah btw, he streamcheated in Reign" really leaves a very nasty aftertaste. Not only because it seems like he's trying to bury Spades with their being some grudge in the background but also because of the obvious: why the fuck did Mirhi/Reign hide this all this time in the first place. As we might get a first hand demonstration of, if someone in WW is found cheating, the team will act on it and it won't be a slap on the wrist. To make matters worse he throws the results of MLG in question and won't even point out who was actually being coached during a game, so we have to suspect.. every Korean there?

Personally I see suspect behavior in the replays. Can I conclusively state Spades was cheating? No, not at this point. Not until we have pros review the games as they should've been in the first place. Regardless, I personally don't see a way Spades could recover from this regardless purely because of the damage to his reputation. People patting themselves on the back after all this can jump off a cliff for all I care, Spades was never given a fair chance which I think we should regret. At this point the truth won't matter much. Regardless WW will do it's part and do it properly. We'll investigate the matter fully and go from there.


The above user does not wish to receive hatemail in pm or on twitter, thanks for your consideration.

God that really fucking pissed me off. I really shouldn't post when I'm this infuriated, but consider this a lapse in judgement on my part.

If we find out who is threatening Spades, who is still one of our players, don't doubt that our team will most certainly go SlayerS'Jessica on you. Regardless of anything in this thread, show some respect for a fellow human being. Freaking middleschool..

I don't speak for every team, but it is our believe you'd have to be our of your damn mind to try to cover up some kind of hacking/cheating scandal. Trying to hide that someone is cheating is a complete nonissue because then a thread like this would follow regardless. The problem is that we as a team were never given the chance to investigate the issue before a lot of people had already made up their minds, therefor taking away the chance of an objective ans impartial review as well as Spades' right to defend himself to those claims. There was nothing he could've said or done in this thread that would've stopped the lynchmob. The truth didn't really matter anymore and his career would've been severely dented regardless. It is morally irresponsible to handle problems like this in the fashion they were handled here.

If you think I'm a hacker, that's your opinion. Be upset about it. If you think I'm not thats fine too. But i don't need to be getting email death threats of people saying they are going to kill me if i come to mlg. I'm sorry this all happened, I'm going to sleep, in time truth will prevail.

after reading a few of the posts i just wanted to make it clear that im still not sure whether or not he hacks, i would advise u guys to formulate ur own opinions aswell instead of bandwagoning just so u can have fun. watch his series vs luci and try to watch as many replays of him as u can so u can come to your own conclusion. educate urselves yo, this is a serious matte

basic math.. a large sample makes for less variance

Useful video Axeltoss made about the "Magic Scan" and how it's not quite so magical.


edit - Basically, I think we can derive from this that what we see in game is not always what we see in replay.

I'd like to note that his IP actually does match other TL accounts. NrGMonk is still an inexperienced banling and didn't really use the full IP matching functionality we have.

The mods have a decent idea of who it is, and are discussing whether or not to reveal this information. It's likely we'll make a statement on the entire situation (not just the drama itself, but also the way it was handled) in the coming days.

I have watched all the replays and analyzed them quite closely. I believe Spades was cheating. This is coming from someone who did not know Spades was a previous hacker and a personal friend of his. I am dissapointed and irritated. We have had some great games in the past and it just makes me question the integrity of anything he has ever accomplished. I would imagine Spades is a good player without the hacks but I just don't know anymore.

Nobody plays this way, there are far too many instances of fishy+screen freezes on last location. Not to mention the troop movement and scans are just out of this world fishy. In TvT, positioning is everything and he NEVER errs on the side of caution. There are too many blatantly risky troop movements on his part that you simply would not do without vision of your opponent. That is my two cents I don't care to go into too much detail because it is obvious to me.

We need to clamp down on more of these situations especially with all the online tournaments and money floating around. Crazy to think about......

Those prove nothing. If anything, they actually add further evidence making it obvious that spades is a hacker. I watched the catz/ill/drewbie analysis and in virtually all of the luci games he never looks through the fog of war, and in every single ladder / vod he plays completely "different" in terms of that, which is something no high level player can magically change.

Besides that, every high level TvTer that watched those replays/analyzed them knows that there is no way spades can make a lot of the army movements without vision or complete information of where the opponent's army is. The theo vs spades blind shift to the left on antiga is insane, the moments where every good player puts spotter marines on the edges of the watch towers, spades doesn't, he insta-mirrors the opponent's army movement with zero vision not even leaving a unit at the watch tower, and then on top of this, the next army movement he purposely sends only ONE spotter marine to the right side where theo's army is moving (illusion pointed this out in the replay and it's very important). When you send spotter marines, you do it to both sides, he sent only 1 purposely to make it look as if he was not hacking when obviously he already knew where the army was.

Keep in mind mirroring opponent's army movement in TvT is standard, but you have to actually know where your opponent's army is to do that ...

Even worse, catz points out a camera lock in the same game where spades is literally moving his entire army via mini-map in reaction to theo's army...? Yeah...and every other game catz/ill/drewbie analyzed...there are things you just do not do in TvTs, whether you are smart or stupid, and spades repeatedly does them over and over. Even without analyzing every "camera lock" you can see the troop movements with zero information, and things that should not ever be happening in a TvT.

edit: The tal'darim game is another instance of a "hacker scan," spades scans the most random inane piece of territory on the map on tal darim, and sees dropships coming into vision, which would be the defense of why spades "knew" the drop was coming. But as TT1 said, hackers will do stuff like that to make it look like they are not hacking like, "oh, i scanned see? I'm not hacking." The only instance any TvT GM/pro would be scanning in that particular location is if he is on the move with his army and is checking for army positioning or where the opponent's army is not. Spades army is not on the move, it's sitting inside his base, so why randomly scan that area that just so "luckily" happened to catch dropships? These things add up...

The entombed game he stims to kill 3 free vikings of luci, and the instant luci sieges 3 tanks he insta-runs back. The daybreak game, there are about 10 free medivacs for spades to kill that he has zero vision of, and in this instance he even clicks into the fog of war to go chase after them. What's worse is another instance in this game where luci had sieged up tanks, spades scans, and then immediately after the scan wears off spades cavalierly walks marines into siege tank range as if he knows 100% that they are gone. That was the most obvious give away of this game.

Hackers should not be tolerated in the community, this is not the "random pitchforking" of redditors or whatever. There is overwhelming evidence from just the luci vs spades games that he was maphacking.

Well after sleeping on it, I still don't really know what to say. But I can say this.

Some pro's have come to me with support, or defended me in this thread. Other pro's have found it necessary to stream to 6k+ people that they have concrete technical evidence I hacked. Which shortly afterward had been proven wrong or inaccurate in this thread. I have done my best with limited knowledge to explain the situations of "suspicious activity". By "done my best" I imply that it is very difficult to accurately depict your exact thought process at these instances in the game, without actually being in that exact given moment playing the game. I made lucky judgement calls based on a lot of prior research. I also made countless terrible calls, resulting in losing some of the games. I think I played very poorly, and was actually quite lucky to have finished 3-4 vs LucifroN. I don't think it was an accurate depiction of how I normally play, but mirror matchups tend to be have a lot of random chance factor in.

I won't be posting here again unless I find it imperative to do so. I have to try and focus on Anaheim, in which I will be participating in WCS and MLG. I have been practicing very hard for these events, and I hope to show how I can really play.
Thanks for all who support me.

On June 06 2012 04:19 QuanticIllusion wrote:
Per request, replays from the stream. Of course he is going to provide us with replays where he streamed ladder and etc., because he wasn't cheating. You have to look where winning matters.

IPL 5 Qualifier Matches
Theognis vs Spades

Text Summary: http://www.mediafire.com/?oyk5mnll8lgfu5f

Replays
1: http://drop.sc/192066
2: http://drop.sc/192067
3: http://drop.sc/192065

Study Cloud Kingdom and Antiga closely.

PM responses to me, thread is too clustered now and only civil discussions should be made.

VODs for more indepth analysis
+ Show Spoiler +

We're sad to have to announce Spades will be leaving Western Wolves. Recent maphacking accusations severely hurt Spades' reputation. This unfortunately got to a point where Spades himself felt his reputation was so damaged by the claims that it was time to end his career as a pro player for the Western Wolves team.

We have attempted to investigate these claims (unfortunately not exhaustively because of how swiftly the rumors spiraled out of control). Our investigation as far as we've been given the time to look into the matter shows that most of the claims are circumstantial at best. Spades prepared intensively for the showmatch in question as it was hosted by our team and studied and familiarized himself with LucifroN's builds. We acknowledge there seem to be suspect occurrences but nothing that should be considered more than circumstantial. Considering a player should be considered innocent until proven guilty and the lack of conclusive proof, we don't believe Spades used maphacks.

We'd like to stress that it's Spades' decision to retire from the team. We feel that the matter shouldn't have been handled publicly without giving us a chance to review. Unfortunately this has gotten Western Wolves and Spades stuck in between a rock and a hard place. We can only look back with some regret and wish him luck in his future endeavors.

Statement from Brian "Spades" Francis:

I won't discus the accusations themselves here, this is not the place or time.

Regardless of whether I'm found “innocent” or “guilty” in the public eye, my reputation as a pro gamer is damaged severely. It's unlikely that I'll receive invites to major tournaments or showmatches as long as this matter is unresolved and I don't see any way for this to be resolved. I feel that staying with the Western Wolves would put the team in a negative light, especially considering how well the team has treated me, I would hate to negatively represent the WW team.

It's been a short stay, but one I thoroughly enjoyed. It's been great to have the opportunity to play for the WW team and I regret it coming to an end the way it is.

Following this news, we would like to point out that our organisation is actively looking for new Starcraft 2 players.

source: http://westernwolves.com/content/News/Spades_retires_from_Western_Wolves-263.html

I haven't retired. I just left my team, to avoid public backlash upon Western Wolves.

On June 06 2012 12:30 gawk wrote:
Its very difficult to follow all the different accusations made in this thread so I created a liquipedia page to collect them.
This way its much easier to see which of Spades actions already have already been explained (e.g. the magic scan) and which have not.
As its very time consuming to collect the information I only took the Points the op mentioned so far.
Many points have been discussed in this thread and can be linked accordingly.

So everyone fell free to add content to that page.

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/User:Gawk/Spades

On June 06 2012 11:13 Antoine wrote:

I thought this would be 100% proof so I loaded it up in sc2gears and I think you must have yours set to real-time, not game-time. If you have it set to game-time, it shows at 2:54 Spades Hotkey Select 1, which is the scouting SCV.