This is a fair statement, however I think that if an IM team wanted to practice against an Invite-tier team, they should do it in their own scrim time rather than having no choice and facing them during league play. I would also argue that IM sandbaggers contribute to the widening of the skill gap that exists between Top IM and Top Invite, inviting more teams to do the same and never attempt to reach the highest div.

There's lots to be discussed about this topic (sandbagging) and how its effects on our playerbase are incredibly nefarious but I think ESEA is doing everyone a service by beginning to enforce.
Beyond and even before prizepools, sandbagging hurts growing players the most, it creates false, localized maximas in skill rating that end up blocking most player's paths. Skill rating isn't even anywhere near linear, climbing it organically is a challenge by itself, you're making that challenge a whole lot worse.
If you're going to defend your right to not have to try to win in League play, you're gonna need convincing arguments. If you're doing this for the money, I'm honestly sorry for you.

shoutout to my best friend and my fat fucks, sorry about the distinct lack of NMH/IDLES loudsinging and time spent together
shoutout to warhuryeah (thank you so much for all the shoutouts during streams, i couldn't express how much it meant to me, but seriously if you try to make me cry when i'm on main stage once again i will fucking unsubscribe you little bitch), warhuryeah's financer and the warhuryeah.gg ultimate gamer group, you guys are always greatest fun
shoutout to the insanely funny Casual, PolygoN, Funs (18 years old btw), you guys were immense help relaxing the second evening
another shoutout to my main man typed 4-1 Casual, forever infinitely, sorry i couldn't own up to the promise of singing your beautiful song
shoutout to gubbins, seeds and kola for all the gratuitous hugging when i needed it the most
big up aux potos d'ascent et d'ora que je me suis fait, grand plaisir de vous avoir rencontrés et merci de m'avoir fait sentir comme a la maison
no shoutouts to time for flying so goddamn fast and preventing me from meeting everybody
shoutout to all the shy kids, we've all been there, keep pushing, you're all welcome
shoutout to the insane amount of people whose face lit up when i introduced myself, it was one of the most surreal things in my life
shoutouts to essentials talent for their great work and camaraderie, to all the people involved behind the scenes, to all the people who came to play and spectate, and to all the people who watched
shoutout to the mainstage production who were inspiring as fuck and demonstrated what efficiency looks like even when they didn't try, who were extremely helpful, and who gladly put up fun TF2 stuff on the mainstage when we were setting up

Insane shoutout to all of you who gave me kind words about server stuff, you are all too kind and it's unreal, I still have issues accepting whether I did a good enough job but your support ABSOLUTELY makes me want to strive to make it the absolute best it can be.

Thank you all, let's do some more

I would like to clarify that even though the short term circumstances were unfortunate (my flight being delayed, CS:GO servers crashing causing a 2 hour delay on what should have been our server setup), I should have pushed my testing and not trusted what Insomnia and the server manager contractor told me. I should have asked for more information, actually replicated the setup in its entirety, and attempted to manage a large amount of servers during a short amount of time, which ended up being actually impossible with the contractor's software. I was tricked into comfort when I should not have been, the failure was caused by social interaction before the technical could even fail. I'm sure they did not mean any harm themselves, but it could have been prevented.

I take entire responsibility for the lack of LAN servers on the first rounds, and I would like to offer an apology to all players present, Open and Invite. I hope the Open players who did not manage to play beyond group stages managed to have fun in dmixes on LAN servers, if you did not, please contact me, I would love to make it up to you in any way I can.

I am insanely grateful to all the appreciation I have received over the last few days, it was very lifting, but I am not pleased with my performance and I strive to make it perfect at any possible occasion. All in all, if my task is done properly, you shouldn't need to ever hear or speak my name, that's when I'll be pleased.

https://ldesgoui.xyz/public/i63/demos

Have fun, friend

---

My flight is delayed for almost 3 hours, I'll do data entry for players, you should be able to pick your first teams in an hour or two

Holy shit, fucking hype, I'm playing https://youtu.be/ll6zaUq-oy8 on loop until I get every voicecrack right
I wish I had something to offer you but I'm living the jank life myself

Then you want either a weekend ticket or day tickets from link I posted above, whichever is least expensive. Don't buy priority access, there's no use if you're just here for TF2.

Were you looking to buy a BYOC (Bring your own computer, to play) or just a spectator ticket?
I just checked https://www.theticketfactory.com/insomnia/online/ and weekend tickets are still available, it's just the early bird rate that's sold out.

It might be a crazy idea but hear me out.

Option C isn't something you might be pleased with but it's the only true one.

Option C is the eager young blood you've always discarded, disregarded.

Option C is not belittling puggers because you don't know their name, or because they fucked up a bomb, or dropped an uber.

Option C is making the best of your years of playing TF2, teaching the lessons you've learned through your own journey to players who will make the exact same ones unless taught otherwise.

Option C is giving a chance, speaking, listening.

Option C is onward, forward, towards third place b4nny.

Daylight savings kill people, abolish that shit.

Hey, I'll be handling servers this LAN, they've allowed us 24 servers, with the current open and invite tournaments and at maximum capacity, the games will require 20 servers simultaneously at most, that leaves leeway for DM/MGE servers etc.
I'll be spending time on and off this week to replicate the setup we'll have at LAN to make sure everything is as smooth as possible on day 1.

https://clips.twitch.tv/ChillyNurturingWerewolfStinkyCheese

Sorry to hear this actually made you leave, I'd be happy to keep your stuff alive, hit me up if you're interested.