

Team Ben:

# A Year as a Professional Gamer

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## Find tournament matches, pictures of the players, and more at:

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## Prologue

Looking at old pictures of Ben Vassiliev, I'm struck by the way his features seem to disagree with each other. His eyelashes are much too long for his face to really be described as masculine, yet his square jawline actively prevents it from being feminine. He wore his jet black hair long in a way that would come off as pretentious, if not for the way his lips rested naturally in a smirk that seems to mock himself as much as the people around him. He could appear handsome and even rugged one moment, especially with a 5:00 shadow, and then like a complete goof the next when his face exploded in the broadest of smiles. He was the funniest person I have ever met.

I moved into Ben's neighborhood in the 7th grade and we immediately became best friends. We climbed trees, talked about girls, beat the crap out of each other, and generally did the things boys do when they have lots of time on their hands. We would organize games of jail break with the other kids in the neighborhood and run around in the dark until somebody called the cops and we had to go inside. Summers together were endless fun for us, and some of the fondest memories I have.

Ben had a wiry frame, but his posture was intimidating to me and I always had the impression there was a lot of power hidden behind the t-shirts that hung off of his shoulders. I liked to be around Ben because he made me laugh, and because he was somehow mysterious — he seemed to know things about life that I didn't. We spent all of our time together during those middle school summers and wanted for nothing.

But then high school came, and I think it was lonely at first for both of us. I know that most days I ate my lunch by myself; I have clear memories of sitting alone with my nose buried in Slaughterhouse-Five. The world suddenly seemed much bigger, and Ben and I didn't hang out as often. Video games were our constant, but that time was threatened by school and by extracurriculars — and when Ben was the first of us to get a girlfriend, it became the only thing we didn't have in common.

Caroline was her name, and I had set the two of them up, if somewhat by accident. She had very pale skin, and light blond hair with light blond freckles to go with it. They would hold each other in the hallways as though he was about to ship off to war, which was surprising for me because I'd never seen him look like a twat before. But he was lost in her, and that was that.

High school brought out a brooding, artistic side to Ben, which would have been more annoying if he wasn't also suddenly so talented. He began writing books and drawing portraits; he acted in shows at school; he enrolled in a martial art called Kumdo. One day in his living room he began casually picking out songs on the piano, despite having never been taught to play, and I remember noticing something else that separated us — he was creative.

Despite all these new hobbies, Ben somehow found the time to be everything to everyone. He was a good older brother, and a good son, and to me, he was a best friend in that Good Will Hunting, I'd-lay-down-in-front-of-a-truck-for-you kind of way. His feelings for Caroline, however, were intense on a different level. He wanted nothing more than to make her happy.

Incidentally, Caroline had taken interest in another classmate of ours called Ryan. Ryan was a sad and troubled boy, and became quite attached to Caroline. Caroline, somewhat inexplicably, made a connection with him and was quick to defend him. There was never a romantic aspect to their relationship, but their friendship was peculiar in itself; Caroline felt bad for Ryan, and so frequently asked Ben to include him and reach out to him. Ben obliged fairly often, but I would typically make myself scarce when that happened. To put it plainly, I had no patience to spend time with someone who didn't interest me. But here again was something that separated Ben and I — he had a worldliness about him and a gentle understanding of things that most teenagers do not.

Senior year of high school was so perfect it felt like a parody of itself. I had come into my own, doing a lot of theater and finally dating someone. Ben and I hung out every day, along with his little brother Erik (who just started as a freshman) and our other good friend Kevin (whom we'd snuck into our school by faking residency at my parents' house). Each morning Kevin would come pick Ben, Erik, and me up in his ridiculous station wagon, and we would ride to school blasting "I Get Around" through open windows.

The four of us were inseparable at school, too. We had classes together, ate lunch together, and three nights a week Ben and I would drive to the school for play practice (he was the Oberon to my Lysander). He and I were also meant to perform Monty Python's "Dead Parrot" routine at the spring talent show.

On Friday, January 3rd, 2003, the four of us left school together as usual. We stopped at 7-Eleven, as usual, then went back to Ben and Erik's place, as usual. Except on this day Ben had invited Ryan over, so naturally Erik, Kevin, and I had plans to clear out as soon as that happened. We were practicing our a cappella routine for the talent show in the kitchen when Ben told us that a last minute change in plans would have him going over to Ryan's house instead. So around 4:00 he left, said "see ya later," and it was the last thing I ever got to hear him say.

It was just a small amount of cyanide, which Ryan had slipped inside a can of Coke, which ended Ben's life. Just a sip is all. It is remarkable, I think, how a life can be lost, or rather taken, so effortlessly, without any screaming or bleeding or anything. Just alive one moment, and not the next. All the memories, the thoughts and opinions, the plans for the future, jokes, songs — all erased by a chemical a high school student can research and then purchase on the internet.

Ben was flown to Johns Hopkins, but there was nothing to be done. The doctors and the police asked their questions, but no one had any answers. He was over and he was gone. Ben donated his organs, saving three lives. We were told someone even got his eyes. He was 17.

When I found out the doctors were giving up on Ben I was out in the falling snow, in the street in front of his house. It snowed more that winter than it had in 70 years.

## Beginnings

A Grassroots Community

My very first video game competition was at a run-down old house in Alexandria, VA. My friends and I found out about a tournament being hosted for the game we all played in our free time, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and we thought we would go just to check it out. I can't remember if we were going partly for a laugh, or just out of curiosity, but showing up at that tournament dramatically altered the course of my life. Despite what a disaster the event itself turned out to be.

The house was at the end of a cul-de-sac in a neighborhood about as poor as you can find in Northern Virginia, which is one of the richer areas of this country. There was a pit bull standing guard on the porch, and a shopping cart abandoned in the front yard. The whole scene was dirty — the neighborhood was dirty, the house was dirty, and the people ...

It was like entering a different world. There was a musk — maybe not a stench but the air quality was decidedly different — of body odor. The house was crowded, but nobody seemed to be talking to each other. There was only the sound of clicking buttons and the symphonic music of the game. We paid our money and began to sidestep around the room, taking it all in. I noticed slumped shoulders, matted down hair, ill-fitting t-shirts with words on them. Not a girl in the whole house. In a word, it was depressing. In a color, it was brownish-yellow.

These beginnings are perhaps a step below humble, but hidden within this house were some of the most incredible people I would ever meet. Over the next 10 years playing competitive Smash Bros. I made many friends, a few enemies, and several thousand acquaintances. I consider myself fortunate to have met even those with whom I couldn't make a connection. It broadened my horizons and, more importantly, it taught me the importance of diversity.

The first person I played that day happened to be one Christopher McMullen. He would have been 16 at the time. Chris was Asian, despite his overly Irish name, and exceedingly shy. Over the next few years we would become good friends and teammates, and he would make a name for himself as one of the greatest players of all time.

He was known as the "Master of Diversity," because he could play all 26 characters in the game with equal skill, something no one before or since has been able to accomplish the way he did. Rather than learn the ins and outs of one character at a time, the way the rest of us did, he just understood Smash Bros. as a concept. He must have seen the game differently than other players, at a fundamental level. He did this with other games too, casually and humbly earning nation-wide top scores on puzzle or racing games. I'll venture that he saw most of life that way, with a heightened sense of clarity.

He was eccentric, too, if you took the time to get to know him. Strange would be another word for it. When we went out to restaurants, and I don't know whether it was the shyness or the eccentricity that led him to do this, but rather than ordering something off the menu he would just ask one of us to get two of whatever it was we were getting.

He made thousands of dollars from tournaments, but just let the checks pile up on his desk. He treated them like parking tickets: you can't really throw them away, but who feels like dealing with them?

He didn't sleep — if you wanted to go over and practice with him you had to bring a friend in hopes that the pair of you could keep up. Kevin and I would drive to his house and we would all play until midnight, at which point I would take the first sleep shift from midnight to 4am while he and Kevin played. Then Kevin would wake me up and say "okay, it's your turn to play, I'll sleep for a while." I'd hobble out of bed, onto the couch, and play right on through sunrise.

Chris also had an incredible sense of humor, though his shyness often kept it hidden. And he never complained, not about anything.

So, back in the brown-yellow house in Virginia, I had no idea what I was up against, sitting down to play with Christopher McMullen, Master of Diversity. Each match he played that day, he would "ditto" his opponent, meaning to pick the same character (much the way he would ditto your order in a restaurant). While this was certainly not his intention, it was particularly insulting to be beaten with your own character. He danced circles around me, beat me handily, and I think I made some sort of superior remark to him as I left. Nerd.

My first foray into competitive gaming was a disaster. It was embarrassing just being there, let alone not winning a match all day. I was dejected. The best part of my day was hanging out with the pit bull, which actually turned out to be an incredibly sweet dog (the first of many lessons I would learn about stereotypes).

*****

There was no gradual progression into the next phase of my life. No shades of gray. I think it was the taste of failure that really set me off, but I also became immediately interested in this subculture that I never knew existed; after that tournament I went home to find another. I started to practice. I would go to another tournament, do just a little bit better, and get motivated all over again. A competitive spirit inside of me had been stirred and there was no going back.

The game is simple. Two players (or four in a doubles match) are put on a stage and given four lives each. The game is two dimensional, and so the stages have an edge on each side and typically a few platforms. A player attempts to get his opponent off the stage and keep him off, thereby taking his life. The first player to take all four of his opponents' lives is the winner. Tournaments are held in double elimination format, frequently with pools beforehand for seeding into those brackets. High level matches are best three out of five games.

Its simple nature makes Smash Bros. Melee a great game for parties, and a common reaction when I tell people about my game of sport is "ohhhhh, yeah, I played that one all the time in college!" Admittedly, it's also great for kids. But the game actually proves to be a ridiculously deep well of subtle tactics and technical skill. The game, at a professional level, looks different each year than the year before, and the champions of previous years often look silly when compared with modern players.

It is my wish to share with the reader some of the complexities of advanced play, because this was much of the allure for me when I first started. However, in an effort to maintain readability, I have split that educational material up into two parts (the second included much later on).

Advanced Melee is built around split-second timing. So much so that it cannot be played on most flatscreen TVs, because there is a delay of about half a second in converting the image from the system to the screen. When a player is executing maneuvers that average six inputs a second, a half-second delay is disastrous.

The first subtlety of Melee one needs to master is speed. This is not simply a matter of moving faster, pressing the buttons faster, or being aggressive. To be more accurate, the first subtlety of Melee one needs to master is learning when a character is capable of movement, and this is not obvious. Partly it requires paying very close attention to your character, and partly it requires manipulating the lag your character experiences (lag is experienced any time your character is unable to move, usually due to a previous action).

To become a serious contender in this game, I knew I had to speed up.

First, learn to L-Cancel. By pressing the L button at the exact moment an aerial move hits the ground, lag following the attack is reduced. Do it 100 times in a row without missing.

Placed second to last at a tournament in a high school gymnasium in Trenton, NJ — not enough practice.

Next, learn to short hop. Press and release the jump button extremely quickly and your character will jump half the normal height. Short hop 100 times in a row without making a mistake.

Drove to a small tournament in a rec center in Pennsylvania. A church in West Virginia. A shopping mall in Ohio. I could not break into top 16.

Now learn to dash dance. Hold the joystick to the side and your character will run — but if he runs too far he won't be able to turn around and run the other way without skidding first (which creates lag). However, run back and forth within a specified distance and the turnaround is swift, giving your character flexibility in movement. There's a rhythm: back, forth, back, forth. Close your eyes and do it without visual clues, just feel it. Back, forth, back, forth — dash dance without stopping for 5 minutes.

Spent a weekend in Manhattan — I started bringing a notebook with me, and took careful notes on what I saw.

Piece it together. The following maneuver should take less than 1 second: short hop, down air, fast fall, L-cancel, shine, wavedash, short hop again.

Drove 13 hours through the night to Lansing, Michigan. Slept on the floor of somebody's basement. Earned 17th place – getting better. Then I began to build on the successes — 5th place at Baltimore, 4th at Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Within a year of beginning my training I began placing top 10 at local tournaments.

The first tournament I won was in Arlington, VA. I was playing well, to be sure, but I knew I was outmatched in the finals. My opponent had been around longer and was wholly more talented, but as an up and comer I had the element of surprise on my side. To tell the story, the reader needs to know that I played one character — Peach. My team partner, Kevin, played one character as well — Marth. Typically, Marth is Peach's most difficult matchup, but endless hours of practice had made me an exception to the rule. I ate up Marths like half-priced appetizers.

My opponent in the finals could play several characters, but I knew I'd only really stand a chance against him if he played Marth. Luckily for me, he followed conventional wisdom and chose Marth first. A minute into the first game I knew I had him. I could tell I was way more comfortable than he was, so I just played with him a little, sort of tiring him out the way a boxer might. I let him get the better of me, and dropped the first game intentionally. In this best three out of five set, I had room to lay out a trap.

When he beat me I cursed, and started the second game right away. Then I proceeded to drop the second game, at which point I turned to Kevin in fake frustration and said, "I don't know what to tell you — he's doing different stuff than you do, I don't know how to get around it." Then I won the third game by a small margin, and made sure to do the same with the fourth. Now the match was tied at two games apiece, and my opponent had a decision to make. The first two games he crushed me, so wasn't Marth his best bet? Why challenge convention? He took a long time to decide, but ultimately decided to stay Marth for the fifth game of the match. Big mistake.

I revealed what I had been hiding: an unprecedented understanding of the Peach vs. Marth metagame. I played on my instincts and soundly won the match and the tournament. First place! If my initial failure playing Melee didn't do it, my first real victory certainly pushed me over the edge. I made a decision in that moment to become a nationally-ranked top ten player.

*****

The tournament I had won was simply a local (which is smaller than a regional, which is smaller than a national), and it took place in some kid's basement. I can tell you that my victory lap was cut a bit short when, upon leaving, I had to thank the host's parents for letting us come over ... but I had grander plans. Off to Texas.

My first national was in Dallas, in January of 2005. In fact, this was technically an international, marking the first time European players came to the US to compete. The Netherlands and Sweden were represented at this event, as well as talent from both coasts and Mexico. It was the biggest tournament to date with 127 attendants, and for me an incredible weekend.

MOAST (Mother of All Smash Tournaments) was not only my first major event, but my first time off the east coast and my first plane ride. I was 19 years old and had never been on a plane; the first thing that got me in the air was a video game tournament. During MOAST I also learned a thing or two about the kindness of strangers, southern hospitality, and grace in victory.

By this time, Smashers (as we affectionately called ourselves) had formed a strong community, even if it wasn't that big yet. Primarily through online forums, a person could find a Smasher in any part of the country and secure a place to stay for a few days. And so for MOAST I simply got online, indicated I had three people in my party, and as easy as that I had a home in Dallas for a week. But a detour about these three people is necessary before going any further.

## Team Ben

Creating an Identity

Back at my first tournament, with the pit bull and the shopping cart, I was asked which "crew" I was with. I learned that having a crew or team, usually regionally based, was common in competitive Melee. I wasn't prepared for this question, but I answered without missing a beat or looking to my friends for confirmation — "We're Team Ben," I replied.

What else could it be? What else was there? At that time Ben was all we thought about. Ben's life, Ben's death, Ben's family. Ceremonial events and court proceedings took up not only our emotional reserves, but also our days. The unavoidable grief and drama were all-consuming. From the moment I got the first phone call, my whole world changed.

I have kept a journal since I was very young, and write frequently even in adulthood. Having a journal is nice because reading it can really put things in perspective for you. For instance, perhaps that time in your life or the relationship you were in really weren't as perfect as you thought they were. But rereading the entries leading up to January 3rd, 2003 brings to mind a sentiment from The Fountainhead — it is positively indecent for a person to be this happy. Everything in my life was going just the way I wanted. I had friends, a girlfriend, hobbies, and even confidence. At 16 years old I basked in the complete picture of contentedness. I don't have to consult my journal to remember the afternoon of January 3rd.

Ben, Kevin, Erik and I left high school that day like we were fucking T-Birds. I don't know how I could have felt higher. I hung out with Ben Erik and Kevin after school as always, until Ben went to go over Ryan's house. He said goodbye to us for the last time, and Kevin, Erik and I got to practicing our song for the fall talent show — the clandestinely chosen Weird Al Yankovic a cappella song, "Since You've Been Gone."

Later that night I received a phone call from Ben's mother. Now she was something of a worrier, so when she asked me to come to Howard County General Hospital I figured it was due to some gross overreaction. But when I got to the hospital and was met a sea of somber faces, the gravity of the situation quickly became apparent. I was ushered into a private room with Ben's parents, all of Ben's close friends, two police officers, and a doctor. They wanted to know what drugs Ben was taking that caused him to be rushed to the hospital. They said, "We can't save him if we don't know what's wrong."

And that's when he was murdered a second time. Because Ryan was there in the room with us, he sat there with his arm around Carolyn and said he had no idea what happened. He had a chance to confess and save Ben, but his silence murdered Ben for the second time in one night.

Out in the lobby Kevin and I tried to work it all out. The four of us hadn't had so much as a drop of alcohol between us, so we couldn't imagine Ben taking any drugs – willingly, at least. We had our suspicions, but who would listen to emotionally compromised high schoolers? So we waited in the hospital for as long as they would let us, until eventually we had to go home and Ben had to be flown to Johns Hopkins. I rode home shoulder to shoulder with Ryan in the backseat of a car, rubbing up against ... it's so unsettling that I can't bring myself to narrate it.

To give credit where credit is due, Howard County's finest confirmed Kevin's and my suspicions almost immediately. Ben's heart was still beating when Ryan was arrested. They learned it was cyanide that was destroying Ben's body (and found it to Ryan's house), but it was too late — his brain was already dead. I'm thankful that Ben had parents who believed that without the thoughts in his head, the blood pumping in his heart meant nothing. The doctors kept him alive long enough for us all to say our goodbyes, and to rescue as many organs from him as possible, but no longer.

I can remember only flashes from the night it all ended and my life changed forever. I was in Ben's house awaiting news when a family friend told us there would be no tomorrow for Ben. Go to the hospital to say your goodbyes now, she said. I ran out of the house and into the street. It was snowing, I remember that, and after about 50 feet I just fell to my knees and wept openly. Eventually a pair of arms lifted me up (to this day I don't know whose) and brought me back into the house.

It's amazing how clichéd acts don't feel clichéd at all when real-life drama happens. No part of me was secretly enjoying the cinematic color to the scene. I hid myself in my arms for a long while, until I couldn't hide any longer. Kevin and I walked through the heavy snow to my parents' house and we woke them up and told them.

"Ben is dead. It's 2am. We have to drive to the hospital and say our goodbyes now. Yes, I'm okay."

At the hospital Erik, Ben's baby brother and only 14 at the time, got me alone to let me know he hadn't given up on Ben. "I know everyone else thinks it's over," he explained to me in a hushed voice, "but I know Ben can still pull through. I have hope." I don't remember what I said to Erik, but I know that when I said my goodbye to Ben that I promised him I would always take care of his little brother.

*****

Right, so crew name? Team Ben. That was already our crew even if we didn't yet call ourselves that. I wish more than anything that Erik was with us that day, and that he spent the following decade with us as a part of Team Ben, but competition always turned him off. It just wasn't his style. Instead, Team Ben began as me, Kevin, and Manus O'Donnell the 7th.

Manus looks more than a little bit like Ben, and he was close with Ben before I met either of them. He, Ben and I all went to the same middle school, but then Manus went to a different high school and I lost track of him. In fact I didn't really know much about Manus pre-tragedy; Ben's death had the unforeseen consequence of bringing all of his friends and acquaintances closer together. In Manus' case, he would become one of my best friends for years to come. Something good coming from something awful, it might be said.

If Ben is the funniest person I've ever known, Manus is undoubtedly the smartest. He's clever as all get out, which also makes him hilarious, but most outstandingly he is a sponge of information. He soaks up facts, made more impressive by the way he never brags about them. But ask him a question and it's like a Google search result in 0.23 seconds. Manus, how far away is Saturn? Manus, why don't the back windows in my car go all the way down? Manus, why can't we time travel? Kevin and I were unrelenting with questions. Well, Kevin was unrelenting with his questions, and I just enjoyed egging him on.

Kevin is in many ways the opposite of Manus. Where Manus is tall and lanky, Kevin is short and muscular. While Manus avoids confrontation at all costs, Kevin will argue with you about the color of the sky, if you'll let him. He once told me he didn't believe in Helen Keller.

I've known Kevin since 4th grade gym class, and by the time we started competing we had already written a good deal of history. We had performed together, worked together, grew up together. Starting with my first recess fight in elementary school all the way through Ben's death, there was a lot we survived as a team. I can also recall a lot of times when he wasn't there, but he is someone I've called my best friend at more than one time in my life, and all we've been through has created a powerful synergy between us and an exceptional ability to communicate. We were the resident doubles team for Team Ben, and we would go on to be one of the best-known teams to play competitively.

So that was us — Team Ben. It would later grow, to four and eventually six people, before shrinking down to just Kevin and me, after Manus decided he no longer wanted anything to do with the scene, for reasons I've never truly understood.

Competitive Melee came at the absolute perfect time for the three of us, providing an outlet for all our stress, and also bringing Manus close to Kevin and me in a way that I don't know anything else could have. We became a team, and still are today. As of this writing I can't say I am quite as close with either of them as when we were competitive, but we established a solidarity that has lasted through the years.

*****

The three of us arrived in Dallas with no idea what to expect from our first national, or from the person we had never met who was trusting enough to invite us into his home for an entire week. Corey was his name, but I don't remember much more about him than that. His mother on the other hand, her I remember. She would cook each night and insist we sat around the table together, where she learned about us and we learned about the whole family – Corey, his sister Cali, and his brother Jordan. It was such a wonderful, lovely experience breaking bread with total strangers. So endearing.

Texas was wonderful. The weather was perfect, plenty hot but refreshingly bereft of DC humidity, and the neighborhood in which we stayed was beautiful. I fondly remember spending time just walking around the area by myself and counting the people who said "hello" to me. And for those who have never been to Texas, everything really is bigger. From the people and their personalities to their cars and to their stores. Team Ben visited a Walmart that was the size of a small town and we spent almost an hour there just running around and marveling at its size and scope.

It didn't take long for us to feel at home. On our second day there Jordan took us to see the place where JFK was shot, and on our third we used the family car to pick up Cali from school. On the east coast, around Washington, DC, it's not safe to trust people. Certainly not with your car or your children. But things are different in Texas — that much was clear just by the way strangers talk to one another. This was all entirely novel to me, and it was far from the last time my horizons were broadened by an opportunity given to me by competitive gaming.

At the tournament, I saw row after row of TVs, lined against the walls and squeezed together on tables filling up every inch of the venue. I'd also never witnessed such a collection of nerds before! It was several hundred people in one grand gaming center (people were there for other games besides Melee), and it was ripe for people watching.

The champion from California Ken Hoang was there, and if this story has a villain, we surely meet him now. Ken was the undisputed best in the world for many years — to see him lose at all was quite rare. However, Ken was not humble, or really a nice person at all. He had a palpable air of smugness about him, and not just concerning the game at hand, but people in general.

Ken is my age (which would make him about 20 — 22 during the timeline of our story), Vietnamese, and wears a persistently sour look on his face. He not only made it on the Gabon season of Survivor, but actually made it to the top five (the clever bastard). So if anyone saw that season of the show, I trust they know what I mean about the smugness.

But he was immensely talented. His gameplay itself never impressed me, which was what was so impressive about him. You could never put your finger on exactly why he was so dominant; he just knew how to cut through people and get right to the win. I admired that the way I admire prowess in any field — and Ken certainly had that. He was undefeated in doubles play with his partner, Isai, and virtually undefeated in singles play.

Ken was my rival, not only as a result of mutual disdain, but also because of the characters we played. Ken was another Marth player to my Peach, which meant by definition I was not afraid of him. In fact, I saw it as my destiny to beat him at a major tournament.

*****

My chance came in November of that year, at Major League Gaming's 2005 playoff tournament in Atlanta, GA. It was a big day in my competitive career. My first match was against my long-time mentor, the person after whom I modeled much of my Peach playstyle, Mike G. I had lost to him at least three times previously, but at this tournament the winner of our match got to face Ken. So I did what I had to do and I bested Mike that day; it was nothing short of momentous for me. My strategy was simple: I knew by then I was mature enough to understand his play, even if I wasn't as good as he was, and so I watched his character very closely during our games, as opposed to watching my own. I then concentrated on mimicking his movements and just trying to stay a bit ahead of him.

My strategy proved effective enough, and with a handshake and my heart in my throat, I prepared myself for what might be the biggest match of my life. Ken knew damn well how epic it would be, but when I approached him to say "OK, let's do this" all he could muster up was a sort of groan of acknowledgment. He was playing with a friend, and showed no intention of getting up, so I stepped in front of the TV — I had waited two years for this and I wasn't in the mood to wait any longer.

We plugged in and started the first game up, and right away he started to wail on me. He took my first two lives before I took his first, and I'm sure to onlookers I looked like just another of Ken's playthings. But the truth was that I felt cool as a cucumber. Nothing he was doing was surprising me; I felt completely in control. So I let my instincts take over and made the comeback. 1-0.

Then in the second match, Ken came back hard on me with his counterpick stage. In competitive Melee, the loser gets to pick the stage for the next game, and so Ken chose the stage on which Marth has the greatest advantage. He didn't realize that Marth's best stage would also be my best stage, and foolishly set himself up for failure. Game two also required a comeback, but I didn't break a sweat. 2-0.

Except at this point it dawned on me that I was one win away from besting both my Peach idol and the best player in the world in six consecutive games. The weight of all this started to set in, and that's when I started to get nervous.

Ken switched from Marth to Fox and took game three from me, although it was very close. Then he switched back to Marth and somehow took game four as well. Then I started to get really nervous. This was the most high profile match I had played up to that time, and I was not equipped to handle the pressure. My hands started to shake and my breath started to catch.

Game five began and I came out strong. There was no back and forth, but rather I found a way to stay consistently ahead. The game was near an end when Ken had only one life and I had two. But my mind was miles away — I was playing out in my head what it would be like if I won, and what it would be like if I lost. He began to close the gap little by little, but I remained ahead. All this time I was going crazy in my head: "Ken is ready to die, he's ready to lose. I'll be the first player to take a major set from him. Just one more hit and the match is mine." But I simply could not control my character. Peach would not do what I wanted her to do, not with my shaking hands.

In the end I couldn't hold on and I lost. The defeat hit hard and I did not handle it gracefully.

That game has over 10,000 views on YouTube, and I can tell you none of them are mine — I can't bear it. I often think how my entire competitive career would have been changed had I beaten Ken that day.

I never again got the chance to play him in-tournament.

*****

Rappers have probably just one thing in common with competitive video game players: pseudonyms. There are those rappers who abstain, who just use their real names, but more common are rappers with names like Eminem, or Ice Cube. Puff Daddy. 50 Cent. Snoop Dogg — Snoop Lion. These names sound ridiculous by themselves, but it's something we generally just accept – and a person called Puff Daddy can sell $200 concert tickets.

And so it is with gamers. They have names like ManaCloud, or Tink. QDVS. Rock Crock. Take the names out of the context of a tightly-knit subculture and they sound silly, but inside of the bubble they don't sound strange at all. The names take on a meaning of their own, and they can carry a lot of weight or be intimidating. But sadly this is something that doesn't translate into the real world; people look at you with something short of envy when you tell them you beat Dr. Peepee, even though they should be damn impressed.

I came up with my pseudonym before going to my second tournament, and I saw it as something of a joke. I had no idea I would be creating an alternate identity to which I would become permanently affixed. I played Princess Peach, and instead of the trademark pink, I always chose the white costume. I took a look at the girl in the long white dress and thought ... Wife.

There's a very talented player out of Kansas whose pseudonym is Darkrain. How cool is that? Darkrain. I'm Wife. My team partner? Husband, of course, and our team was The Newlyweds (partly a tongue-in-cheek reference to Nick and Jessica's show on MTV at the time).

Wife. If I could go back and choose more carefully? Yes, I would. If I knew the name I picked was going to appear in newspaper articles, and on a plaque hanging in my apartment, it most assuredly wouldn't be Wife. If I somehow could have known that more people would know me by my gamer name than the one my parents gave me, that people would recognize the Wife alias in Canada and Europe and Japan, I could have picked something cool and intimidating. I could have saved myself having to explain two million times, "No, I'm not gay. Yes, I know how it sounds."

And I could have saved myself a lot of embarrassment, but I'm glad for it. I'm glad for every time I had to tell someone from the real world that I go by Wife in another world. I'm grateful for every time that my secret became known, even though I tried to hide it, like when I was outed at work by one of my employees who happened to follow competitive Melee. He knew about Team Ben, and eventually one day in the office he put it all together and exclaimed, to my horror, "oh my god, wait — you're Wife!!"

Another time, a local newspaper wanted to write an article about Kevin and me. After he met with us and got his interview, I started getting anxious because I realized my girlfriend's family, and whomever else, might read it. I didn't feel confident enough to admit to my alter ego, and I went so far as to call the reporter and ask him to omit our pseudonyms from the article. He did.

I'm ashamed that I didn't have the courage to own up to something as inconsequential as a name. What's in a name? But I was shallow enough and self-conscious enough to be embarrassed, and that was truly the emasculating part. Thankfully, I've since found in myself the integrity and the sincerity to keep my chin up and my voice clear when I talk about my time as a competitive video game player — even the nomenclature.

Sidebar: What is Ken's pseudonym, you ask? He didn't have one; he just went by Ken. This tells us two things about him. The first, it tells us that he's boring. The second, and you have to give him credit for this, it tells us that he was such a powerhouse that his common first name was enough to create a reputation.

The upside to having a pseudonym is the opportunity to create an alter ego. How many people get to say they've had that chance? Because while I was venturing into the world of competitive gaming, I was also maintaining a (relatively) normal life at college, going to parties and volunteering. It seems somehow unfair that I so freely choose one world to call the "real" world and one set of people the "normal" people, but that's the perspective which seems inevitable. I've certainly prided myself on my ability to walk in these two different worlds, but if ever I was being honest, I would admit to my preference for the world of competitive gaming. Wife's world.

And the reason is adventure. Competitive gaming was one big adventure — one with heroes and villains, unchartered territory, and training montages. It seemed like everyone in the real world was living slightly different versions of the same story, while in my secret world I was constantly approaching new frontiers. Who could resist that?

And yet one world was real, the other a fantasy. Status quo is a powerful thing, and so followed two astoundingly separate people. Chris was silly, humble, and aloof. Wife was assertive, intense, and a natural leader. I always liked Wife better because I figured he had it in him to be more successful than Chris. He just needed the right stage.

## MLG New York

Season Opener

By 2006, there was a very strong little community in place. There was a kinship between players all across the country and, despite little rivalries, people seemed to act like they were members of one big fraternity. In fact a new mentality was gaining popularity around that time, one of camaraderie and good faith — which I happened to think was bullshit.

This newfound brotherhood exhibited itself in a new kind of tournament format, also bullshit, which placed a greater emphasis on pool play. Rather than just throw every entrant into a double elimination bracket and wish them luck, tournament organizers would boast round robins that gave players more matches. And slowly but surely, the community at large grew soft.

To anyone who would listen, I would expound upon the virtues of traditional competition and the cut throat competitive spirit that I started out in. While I empathized with the draw of inclusivity, I saw it as a threat to the competitive spirit that drove progress; I liked it better when the only way a player could earn respect was to produce results. Then, to my horror, a trend developed where the remaining two or three players in a tournament would consent to splitting the winnings and claiming a tie for first place.

Bullshit. I refused to subscribe to this hippy, free-loving mantra, and I became more and more aggressive in my attempts to combat it. At a tournament in Philadelphia I was playing in the grand finals for doubles, with the odds severely in my team's favor, and the other team asked to split the pot. When I plainly refused, one of my opponents said, "come on, I have bills to pay." I fired back, "well then I guess you better play your best."

This attitude of mine, shared by Kevin and to a lesser extent Manus, earned us a reputation for being elitist (which we probably were). It began to separate us from the community, especially our local one. It was a shame, but we believed progress to be of paramount importance, and we believed Melee a gorgeous and structurally perfect game. We saw no reason we couldn't make a career out of it.

The Melee community suffered its greatest step backward as tournaments became so centered around socializing that people started bringing alcohol. Competitive Melee was regressing into something that resembled an every-other-Sunday ultimate Frisbee league, when I was trying to turn to into a legitimate sport. So when Major League Gaming (MLG) offered a vehicle to make this happen, all I needed to know was where to sign.

Several upstarts had tried to turn competitive gaming into a mainstream sport, the way it already was in South Korea, but the first to see any real success was MLG. Team Ben had attended many of its 2005 season events, but the 2006 season was being built on a much grander scale. There would be seven events in major cities around the country — five regular season events, playoffs, and the championships in and unannounced location. And lots of prize money. The company had already been gaining momentum, but when it was awarded $10 million in venture capital in February of 2006, MLG suddenly became positioned to dramatically and permanently change the face of competitive console gaming in the United States.

*****

On April 17, 2006, MLG announced its television series. I remember just reading and rereading the press releases, unable to make any sense of my fantasy come to life. I learned there would be seven episodes, covering each event of the season, and it would air on USA, which was the most watched cable network at the time.

The story was picked up by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Times, the Post, and all of the major news networks. CNN called it "a new type of entertainment ... taking video game playing to a whole new level," and the Hollywood Reporter said the series would "bring professional video gaming to a broader audience this holiday season."

The promise of cameras and big stages bright lights excited me as a competitor, but I was just as eager to see competitive gaming properly packaged and monetized. I sat at my computer with my eyes wide and my mouth open like an idiot. I wanted nothing more than to be brought to a broader audience this holiday season. MLG, how did you know?

Reuters highlighted the brand new sponsorships from Boost Mobile and Scion, which meant a lot of money coming in. Money draws competitors, competitors draw spectators, and spectators draw sponsors – who provide money. Critics within the Smash Bros community were wary of "selling out" to MLG, but I was already looking years ahead. I let my imagination take competitive gaming to mainstream levels, where star players could be household names. As then-CEO Matthew Bromberg liked to say, "(competitive gaming) is where poker was two years ago, or NASCAR 15 years ago."

Fox News even called competitive gaming "a serious sport for professionals." Now, I had been to a lot of tournaments, and there were very few people I had met who deserved the descriptors serious or professional. And yet console gaming would have its first nationally televised event in just five days, so all I could really think to do was pick up the controller and keep training.

*****

At 9:00 am on Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 at the Meadowlands Exposition Center, the line of gamers wrapped around the block. Because of my ranking from the 2005 season, I was entering the first event with "pro player" status. Pro players, I learned, are not subjected to waiting in line. After being brought right to the registration desk, a staffer gave me my credentials, asked me to sign a waiver for USA, and finally presented me with my pro player ID badge. It was pretty and it was laminated and it made me feel important.

Stepping into the venue was surreal, mostly because of the grand scale. There were dozens and dozens of 32'' TVs, lined up in neat rows, separated by red velvet ropes. Expensive cameras on giant cranes glided 20 feet above the crowd. I remember being surprised by so many people moving around with purpose, which created an atmosphere rather different than other events I had been to. There was a Toyota Scion parked right there in the venue.

The centerpiece of the arena was the main stage, where the most prominent and exciting matches were to take place. The stage was spotlighted with warm blue and purple lighting, and jumbo screens hung from the ceiling to broadcast matches out toward the bleachers.

I wandered around in a stupor for a while, taking it all in, until I came upon the Pro Player Lounge. This is a roped off area, entrance to which is offered exclusively to players boasting "Pro" status. At this, my ego heart grew three sizes. There were red leather couches, classic arcade machines, and a refreshment area with drinks and a full spread of food. There was even a security guard standing at the entrance to make sure no riffraff got in.

I loaded up on snacks, then laid down on one of the couches and closed my eyes. When I opened them there was a photographer taking my picture as I lay there. And I thought to myself, "This is it. This is what you've been working for. Enjoy this."

The glamor suited Team Ben quite nicely, and I played on point that day. The Newlyweds were on fire, burning through teams I wouldn't have thought we could beat, including a rival team from Crystal City, Texas. Our team made it all the way to winner's bracket semifinals, where we were pitted against a top ranked team from New York City.

NYC fans and players have a reputation for being rowdy in the world of Melee just like in the real world, so we knew to expect shouting and trash talk from the home crowd. Normally I would just keep my headphones in and tune everybody out, but with the cameras on things were different. They brought out an altogether fearless version of Wife, and I didn't want to miss a thing.

As the match headed into its fifth game I found myself actually shouting down our opponents while I played. All the commotion brought more spectators, and the spectators brought more cameras. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the producer I had introduced myself to earlier calling for more cameramen to come over, and the boom mic edging closer to me – all of which just improved my play. While we didn't pull out the win, it was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my career.

*****

Meanwhile, the singles event at the season opener was headed toward a thrilling finish. Predictably, Ken made it to finals, but his opponent was a bit of a surprise. In the other corner sat PC Chris, named for his hometown of Port Chester, NY. PC Chris, real name Chris Szygiel, has the legacy of just being a great guy, the kind of person who can play friend to everyone in the room. He was approachable, humble, and talented in the inherent kind of way; the story goes that PC never even owned a copy of the game. He was already earning a name for himself in the tristate area, but to say he was the underdog in the finals would be a gross understatement, as Ken's title of King of Smash was only ever seriously challenged by one person: Christopher McMullen, our master of diversity from Chapter 1, who will henceforth be referred to by his tag, "Azen." Azen unfortunately had gone missing as of late, and besides, the lights and commotion of the MLG Season Opener would not have suited him well.

PC's trademark play focused on manipulation. One of his favorite strategies involved alternating between measured patience and all out aggression, a tactic he would later call "hot/cold." This novel approach to Melee was very effective against Ken and to everyone's shock, the giant fell. The games went back and forth, but ultimately PC Chris edged out Ken for 1st place, $2,000 in prize money, and MLG and Smash Bros. history. It made me feel better about losing to his team.

The Newlyweds earned a 4th place finish at the season opener, which is a respectable placing and a decent paycheck, but more importantly I had gotten a taste what I truly came for — the sport.

## MLG Dallas

The Sport

For the 2006 season, MLG implemented a tournament format which sifted entrants into "amateur" and "pro" brackets. Consequently, players ranked top 16 were only required to play in the final half day of competition, rather than wading through a few hundred participants to get to the contested matches. This did two things: first, it made our competitions more like a mainstream sport.

Professional athletes don't compete for two days nonstop, and they certainly don't bother playing opponents who are out of their league (speaking literally, not figuratively). Second, it freed up players to double as commentators, coaches, and other trademarks of mainstream sports. By MLG Dallas, the number one question on my mind was, "How can we transform this budding pseudo-sport into something kids can brag about to their parents?"

How about commentary? What professional sport has no sportscasters? MLG was able to provide the necessary equipment, and a few players (myself among them) tested the waters. The beginning of the 2006 season saw the first ever attempts at commentary for professional Smash Bros.

Next, coaches. Team Ben was infamous for walking each other through big matches, and I think our active and intrusive style of coaching both brought the idea to the forefront and eventually got it banned. Halfway through the season coaching became legal only between games.

Then, sponsors. A professional athlete isn't worrying about how to buy his plane ticket, because he has Tide or Target or some other company paying him to wear their logo. Why should gamers be any different? I had the attention of an untapped market, I would explain in my sales pitch. I approached over 200 companies before I finally developed a relationship with White Castle, who agreed to make Team Ben the first sponsored Super Smash Bros. team.

Publicity — I gave interviews to anyone with a pen and paper, to increase awareness. Rankings — I helped launch an independent ranking system that aggregated the opinions of top players from each region of the US to create a list of the top 25 players in the country. Training camp — Kevin and I began offering lessons for $20/hour to train the next generation of pro players.

Then I began looking into the future. Spectators? They'll come in time. Uniforms? No, people aren't quite ready for that yet. Celebrities? Well, we might be dreaming a bit big there.

I invested all of my time and energy into these projects. I felt an ownership over competitive Melee and I was committed to helping it gain momentum so it could be the great sport I knew it could. This hobby was growing into something more, and it offered all of us in Team Ben an outlet for all of our energy and frustration ...

*****

Life back in the real world was difficult, to offer an understatement. I was trying to pick up and piece together all that had fallen apart after Ben's murder, but found that there was no place to hide. I needed to focus on the grieving process, but was instead made to face a parade of people, activities, and proceedings which forced me to relive my tragedy over and over again.

To begin with, there was the trial. I had moved away to college at this point, but was obliged to come back to my hometown not only for the trial itself, but for other necessities like meeting with attorneys ahead of time to practice testimony. The days of the trial coincided with my exams, and I had to reschedule them. So instead of partying the day after finals like everyone else, I packed up early moved home to serve as a key witness in a 1st degree murder trial. These things can make a person bitter.

I learned that the initial trial is just the start in the case of a homicide. There are also appeals, parole hearings, and other excuses to have a man in a tacky suit who cannot pronounce Ben's last name correctly argue that his murderer is ready to be released back into society. The same society in which my little brother lives. These things can make a person sick.

Then there are the little bits of unpleasantness one wouldn't think to expect. Like the media, digging up the whole mess for a good human interest story. Every so often my parent's get a call from Discovery or some news station trying to get an interview. Or even stranger, one time some tragedy of a person, having never met Ben or talked to any of his family, decided to write and stage an off-Broadway play about the events surrounding Ben's murder. He invented his own drama, in which we were all characters, and used each of our real names without so much as a warning; I found out about it on Facebook. Who are these people who do this sort of thing? These things can make a person tired.

Then there is the simple fact that you know a murderer. This changes everything. You catch yourself thinking what you'd do if you saw that person in the supermarket one day ... but I digress. Suffice it to say, there was plenty to run from in the real world, and I had found a mercifully separate world in which to escape.

It wasn't that the gamers who occupied this other world didn't know about my situation, it was that no one cared. Gamers don't really make small talk, and they don't feel obliged to do things like ask questions to which they don't want to know the answers. If forced to mention that I missed a tournament to go to a parole hearing for the murderer of my team's namesake, a gamer might quietly consider this for a moment and then just leave it be — without the overly sympathetic eyes and the furrowed brow, and without several uncomfortable follow up questions.

The competitive Melee subculture is made up mostly of nerds, many of whom are indeed very socially awkward, but to me this makes them blissfully easy to spend time with. No one tries to impress each other, there aren't really cliques, and silence is okay. I like silence. If players don't feel like talking they just don't, because the game is enough communication by itself.

So escaping to MLG Dallas for the second event of the 2006 season was all I could ask for. I was grateful for the comfort of being around other nerds and just letting my guard down, complemented by the glitz and glamor of MLG's grand venues and perks. I was chuffed to learn that I had earned a travel stipend for my fourth place finish in doubles at the season opener.

It was an exceptionally fun event, partly because it was fantastic just to be back in Texas. I had a reasonably good run, beating my longtime local rival Chu Dat in singles and placing 5th in doubles. On the main stage, Ken got his rematch against PC Chris in the grand finals.

Here the audience got to witness the difference between the two players: PC played mostly on instinct, whereas Ken was a more conscientious player, the kind who plans ahead. Ken hadn't planned, I don't think, for the contingency that was PC Chris at the season opener, and PC's unique and difficult-to-follow style took him off guard. However, Ken used the time in between events to study the videos and prepare an answer.

Something in those videos inspired Ken to dust off an old move called The Counter, which was rarely used in tournament play. When executed properly, Marth's Counter takes his opponent's attack and turns it into a hit of his own, sort of like his parry as a swordsman. However, if Marth uses this move and it does not connect, he is exposed by a considerable amount of lag, which is why it was rarely utilized.

So going into the first game, PC Chris was as surprised as the audience when he got Countered over and over again. The tactic was beautiful, as it used PC's aggressiveness against him. Ken's ingenuity really impressed me, and it made me think that he could be a good coach one day. PC Chris was not able to adapt before the match was over, and Ken reclaimed his crown.

## MLG Anaheim

Love of the Game

The first two events of the season were a dream come true. The bright lights and the big screens seemed to be put there just for me, as a spotlight for the game I loved so dearly. To date, and I know this is controversial, but to date I think it's the best game ever created. And I'm not just talking video games.

I think it's better than football. There, I said it.

I think the game holds a beauty that is unmatched by other sports. I think the game — when played at its highest level — is a work of art, more so than "meat sports" like hockey or football. High level matches are extremely fast-paced, without breaks of any sort, with a depth of subtlety I've never seen anywhere else.

Undoubtedly, many people would be quick to counter that football players are athletes. Players who have physical prowess on the field tend to create awe in the rest of us. But professional gamers are athletes too, just of a different kind. They have skill sets they spend years crafting, but also assets they are born with.

In 2006 a basic little game was floating around online that tested a person's reaction time by having him click a large dot as soon as it changed colors from red to green. There were thousands of people registering scores, but the names with the fastest times were some of the highest ranked players in competitive gaming.

The difference between the Steelers fan at home and the Steelers linebacker on TV are exceedingly obvious: massive bodies and shocking displays of force impress just about anyone watching. But a gamer's skill is measured in fractions of a second, which makes his talent harder to recognize and appreciate. In a small effort to bridge that gap, let us together explore some of the nuances of competitive Melee.

The speed and efficiency of a player's character is paramount, and it rests on his ability to utilize every frame available; pressing down at 0.3 seconds as opposed to 0.5 seconds after leaving the ground can separate a great play from a winning play. It takes a long time to become comfortable enough with the finger movements required to move with speed and adaptability, which is the first thing a new player needs to learn. But once speed is attained, there are whole other worlds of technical skill to be explored.

Directional influence (D.I.) is the single most important technical skill for a player to possess, though it necessarily comes with experience and not just practice. This requires an understanding of weight, gravity, and percentage. To explain:

The distance a character flies when he is hit (or thrown) is dependent upon the player's percentage. Each time a character is hit, he gains a predetermined number of percentage points; the higher the player's current percentage, the farther the character flies.

Therefore, an experienced player will need to anticipate how far his enemies will fly when hit, so that he can predict where they will land, so that he can follow up with another hit to create a combo or to apply pressure. Through experience, he learns how far Marth will throw Peach at 20%, 30%, 90%, 140%, etc. And this is different than how far Marth will throw Mario at 20%, 30%, 90% or 140%.

Easy enough so far, but here's the trick: a player can influence where his character is sent by holding a certain direction on the joystick. This serves two purposes: the first is to avoid combos, and the second is to avoid losing a life.

To understand the first purpose of D.I., imagine that the stage is a box (a rectangle, to be precise), and that you need to stay inside this box — if you fly off the edges you lose one of your lives. So if you are hit by something powerful and go flying, you'll want to use the joystick to influence the direction in which your character is hit to prevent that from happening. If your character is threatened to die off the top, try to influence his direction left or right; if your character is threatened to die off the sides, influence your direction upwards. It is quite difficult to a) know exactly which way every move will hit you and b) anticipate which move your opponent will do, because there is a very small window of time for a character to apply D.I.

And there are more subtleties still, if we delve deeper. There are shades of increasingly effective D.I., which can astound educated onlookers as they watch characters survive seemingly impossible scenarios. Also, a player can get a "power D.I." if he inputs the direction at the exact moment he is hit. But the real key to spectacular D.I. is influencing your character's direction to the optimal degree. For example, if your character is hit to the left, hard, your only hope to survive might be to guide your character to the deepest nook of the upper left corner, where basic geometry dictates there is the most room before the box ends. This requires extreme precision and spatial awareness, not to mention complete game knowledge.

To understand the second purpose of D.I., imagine that you are playing against a Marth (whether it's Ken or Husband or Azen, that's up to you). The Marth grabs you and throws you upwards, and you have the chance to influence your direction. So there you are, up in the air, and Marth is waiting below you with his sword — where do you want to be? Well, you could try and D.I. in front of Marth as far as possible to get out of range of his upward attack, except then he might use a powerful and far reaching forward attack to catch you, and when he does you will be holding away, and so will fly farther away from the stage. So you could D.I. behind Marth instead and try to get behind him, except that then he might just turn around and grab you again. It depends on what this Marth is expecting you to do. And which character you are playing. And your percent. And, for that matter, your opponent's preferences and how strong his spacing. It is a battle of wits and technical skill alike.

Another key element to advanced gameplay is something called spacing. Spacing is putting the optimal amount of space between you and your opponent when you attack, and at its most elementary this means the maximum amount of space. This makes sense fundamentally: you would want to be as far away as possible from your opponent while still able to land your hit, so that retaliation would not come as swiftly if you missed. However, things get more complicated when moves have different properties at different distances; again, we look to Marth for prime examples of this.

Sidebar: I believe Marth to be the epitome of high level Melee. I do in fact believe him to be the best character (though this theory is not widely accepted), but more importantly I feel he just represents the best of the game. Aesthetically, who can match him? He has a flowing cape, an long sword, and he's manly enough to wear a headband to tame his wild hair. Functionally, he glides all over the stage and makes his combos look effortless. To educated readers, I say to you that Marth is the best, because if played perfectly he will never be hit. To non-educated readers, I encourage you to find in Marth the essence of intricate, exacting, stylish video gaming.

But back to spacing. The very tip of Marth's sword behaves differently than the rest of it, and players must position themselves so that their opponents are hit with the area of the sword that they desire. On the ground, we see the tip send opponents flying very far, while the rest of the sword is much weaker. In the air, we see the tip of the sword send opponents upward, but the rest of the sword sending them forward. Choices, both for the Marth and for his opponent, because each decision the Marth makes must be anticipated by his opponent.

And it is not until a player has a firm grasp on complex skills such as these that he may truly begin to implement what we call "mind games."

The one on one format of the game is best compared, I think, to fencing. A sport in which the position of your feet or a tilt of your head might influence your opponent's choices, and the fight is one for control. Is your opponent easily shaken, and a staunch offensive likely to throw him off balance? Or is he impatient, and will start making mistakes if you wait him out?

Mind games encompass decisions like this, but Team Ben and other eccentric players implemented more unconventional strategies too. For example, I made a habit of consulting with a coach between games simply to break momentum, if I felt my opponent would suffer for it. I'd just lean over and whisper about lunch plans. Husband sang while he played, a habit he knew perfectly well aggravated his opponents. I knew a player who would actually manipulate the noises his controller made, in case his opponent was consciously or subconsciously making decisions based on those sounds.

Gaining influence over your opponent's actions through pressure and mind games is a skill with no ceiling. Reaction time and skill with the controller can theoretically be mastered, but I don't think Melee has seen any "masters." I've been watching the game for over 10 years as of this writing, and I've not seen the ceiling, even technically speaking.

And on top of these (somewhat) accessible tactics are a myriad of technical maneuvers that would be too much to explain in a book meant to hold a narrative of some sort. Maneuvers such as wavedashing, platform canceling, moonwalking, the jab-reset, pivoting, and The Gentlemen, each of which are used to reduce lag, enhance movement, or engage your opponent. This complex list of "tech" – some of which was put in the game by the designers, some of which are glitches forced into existence by the players – grows every year. And then there is style; Melee is a game with so much style.

Often a player's personality is reflected in his form. In other cases, like mine, a person might have a style that is completely (and perhaps purposefully) contrasting to his personality. I was a relatively quiet and unassuming guy in real life, and particularly in 2006 I would have much rather listened to a conversation than started one, but my Peach was hyper aggressive. In fact, I don't know that anyone played Peach like me — she is supposed to be a reactive character, and defensive. But with me it was always go, go, go. Pure offense. I think ultimately it held me back as a competitor, but I just couldn't find pleasure in steady, measured movement — the joy came from playing Peach like she was Tom Cruise in the last 20 minutes of a Mission: Impossible movie.

God I loved that game. I mean I still play it now, but when I was 20 years old I really, really loved that game. I think my then-girlfriend worried I loved it more than her, which is why she fought it so much. She hated when I went away to tournaments. But that's silly, right? Who would love a game more than a person?

Right?

But I digress ...

Suffice it to say in 2006 Melee was coursing through my veins, and to have these grand events in these beautiful cities was more than I could have asked for. MLG Anaheim was the greatest event yet — California culture was clearly present in the design, as it was simpler than other venues and very stylish. And sightseeing around the area felt very cool:

"Want anything from Dolce & Gabbana? Because I'm going to swing by Rodeo drive before my video game tournament."

But best of all, before the pro bracket started up on Sunday, we were asked to participate in a charity event called Gamers Give Back. Disabled children from the area were brought to the tournament to get autographs and play with the professionals. Perhaps our profiles were built up a bit when this idea was initially marketed, but for the kids who attended we must have seemed like bona fide celebrities.

There were children with both mental and physical disabilities, ranging in age from 5 to 12. It was just a free play scenario, where everyone roamed around and picked up games with whomever. I got to joke around and have fun with the younger kids, and go over some advanced techniques with the older ones.

The gamers in the smash community are, by and large, the lazy and irresponsible type. Not to mention the fact most of them don't go to bed at any kind of reasonable hour. This is why I was so touched to see so many players volunteer their time at 9:00 in the morning, the morning of the final day of competition, to be a part of something like that. That remains one of my favorite Melee memories of all time.

*****

MLG Anaheim was the first time I really saw Melee become a spectator sport. PC Chris and Ken fought through the most challenging bracket to date, quelling talented underdogs like SilentSpectre (who beat me) and KoreanDJ (who beat him). For them to meet up in the finals for the third tournament in a row, after their record was tied at one tournament win a piece, was a perfectly dramatic climax for the main stage.

The rafters above were lit up in blue and purple, and the stage itself really looked like an arena. The TVs were in the center, with plenty of space roped off around the players; this gave the competitors breathing room, but also had the effect of creating a sort of battlefield. The tech crew created a setup where each player in a 1v1 match had his own TV, with jumbo screens behind them broadcasting the action to the crowd. Bleachers surrounded the stage on three sides.

For the tie breaker, it was Ken (a SoCal native) who played the role of hometown hero. All the hype for the match really got California's fans amped, and during this match was in fact the only time I've seen a crowd get in a frenzy over old Ken.

The players' appearances contrasted quite nicely, with Ken in an ill-fitting sweater and a face that, well, didn't exactly benefit from the lady killer smile belonging to PC Chris. PC was sporting a graphic tee and a Bieber flip, before such a thing existed. The players were near silent as the games ticked by.

PC Chris had upset Ken at the season opener, but Ken had come back and embarrassed PC in Dallas, sending him to a 3rd place finish. For their third encounter, no one would doubt that Ken was the more prepared of the two. Ken had just returned from several weeks in Japan, playing with the 14 year-old prodigy Bomb Soldier, who had one of the best Falcos in the world at the time. With PC playing Falco against Ken's Marth, the odds were not in his favor.

The match was a best of 3 out of 5 game series, but since PC Chris was coming from the loser's bracket, he had to defeat Ken twice. With a longer series like this, the audience gets to better experience the power of momentum and also gets more opportunity to influence the outcome of the match.

Ken came out of the gate with a victory, but barely so. PC Chris wiped his hands on his jeans in a customary attempt to rid them of sweat and chose his counterpick stage. Something changed for him, or changed for Ken, as he crushed Ken the next game. Crushed, meaning he lost only one of his four lives. With that the momentum swing, PC Chris briskly won the next two games and the first best of five set.

Here, the reader should remember that Ken was winning tournaments before PC Chris was a recognizable commodity. PC Chris, while inherently talented, is undeniably standing on the shoulders of giants, whereas Ken invented most of the stuff he was doing. He even has a move named after him. The second set saw the momentum move back in Ken's favor, and I suspect experience was keeping Ken tethered to the ground, while PC Chris' world must have been spinning.

Ken began the second set solidly, while PC Chris got a bit overzealous and allowed Ken to take game one even after getting started with a lead. PC Chris again wiped his hands on his jeans. At fan-run tournaments where he got his start, especially in New York, PC would have his friends in his ear giving him advice. On this finals stage, however, his closest friend wasn't even within earshot, so he just kept his eyes on the TV. Ken claimed the second game of the second set soundly, and all the while the crowd was beginning to go wild over Ken's impending victory — just one more game.

But PC Chris rallied and took the third game, then the fourth, by turning up the heat. The match was now eight games deep, with the ninth and final game deciding the winner. The crowd was going wild. I was going wild. Team Ben screamed for PC, while Ken's fan's drowned us out.

The final game was back and forth, back and forth. When either of them would gain a lead, the other would take it away. The game climaxed with each player desperately clinging to his last life. Ken comboed PC Chris across the right side of the stage, just bouncing him around. But PC Chris escaped by doing a "walljump," which is exactly what it sounds like and not very common in competitive gameplay, to survive. He comboed Ken back, now across the left side of the stage. Both players were one good hit away from first place when Ken executed his namesake maneuver — an aerial combo ending in a spike, which finished the match.

The commentators' voices disappeared in the crowd's cheers. PC Chris immediately showed Ken his broad and gracious smile, always the good sport and probably relieved that the match was over one way or another. The players shook hands as the crowd rushed down from the bleachers. Here, and I couldn't believe this when I saw it, here the crowd actually lifted Ken up on their shoulders and chanted his name. And then even I smiled, in spite of myself, overwhelmed by the grandeur of it all.

## MLG Chicago

Demons

MLG Chicago was a dark tournament. I drove 13 hours by myself, stayed in a terrifyingly cheap motel, and was probably the cause of The Newlyweds placing 9th, our lowest doubles placing of the season. I could swear the venue itself was even dark and drab, though that could just be my memory coloring things for me again.

My depression, something that I had lived with for years, was rearing its ugly head. I'll remember Chicago as the low point of the season.

*****

Winston Churchill referred to his depression as "The Black Dog." He would write of the dog's arrival and departure in his life, and I think that anyone who has been depressed — I mean clinically depressed — knows what he meant. For me, depression isn't a part of who I am but rather a completely separate entity that won't leave me alone.

My depression doesn't live inside my heart, or anything poetic like that. More accurately it just hovers very near, passive but still destructive. It is so much so a separate entity that it is impossible to feel lonely because there are always two of us: my depression and me. My depression has been with me through my ups and downs, for years and years. And how can I hate something that's so close to me? Even though I've spent much of my life battling it, I cannot help but feel a vague sense of longing for it when it isn't with me.

If I can temporarily rid myself of the depression, through medication or otherwise, I feel almost ... unprotected. Sure, the crushing weight has been removed from my shoulders, but who am I without it? It's like Linus with his blanket — he thinks he wants to be rid of his crutch and stand independent, but life is scary on his own. It is during these periodic absences that I am better able to let loved ones into my life, and welcome their real and healthy love, instead of the cold permanence of the beast.

At the tournament and in my life, I tried to hide what I was feeling; people who have not felt real depression cannot understand its power. When I was in high school, flying high with Ben, Kevin, and Erik, I myself was unwilling or unable to feel even pity for those who were struggling, let alone any kind of sympathy. It's embarrassing to recall the superiority I felt, and the way I saw people's faults as nothing more than lapses in willpower. At 16, I saw happiness as a choice. I didn't know that there were demons lurking out there, powerful ones who could rob you of your reason and your strength.

I was 17 when Ben was murdered and everything fell apart. The tragedy changed me, but sadly did not humble me. The first year after his death was filled with plenty of misery, but also lots of events, like the school-sponsored ceremony where I gave an impassioned speech or the high-profile murder trial where I was a key witness. To be honest, it felt somehow like being a celebrity — I could feel the eyes staring at me as I walked through the halls of my school in the weeks after Ben's death, and if I wept it wasn't strange, it was just sad. I was what they call a homicide survivor, a term that is only slightly asinine. But it was well known how close I was with Ben, and everyone in school seemed to offer me a free pass to grieve. I missed a lot of class.

Gradually, the grieving gave way to depression. Whereas before I was a "homicide survivor," eventually I was just "an asshole." It was very confusing for me, trying to reconcile what I knew about the grieving process with the emptiness that started to grow inside of me. When the cinematic grief eventually disappeared, a poisonous depression took its place. I withdrew inside of myself, offering less and less to the people around me. At some point I all but stopped talking; I can remember days going by without my saying a single word. For several years, I was only able to feel truly happy when I was by myself. At the time I thought it was kind of sexy, this independent streak, taking vacations by myself and only trusting myself, but now I'm grateful that I'm relearning how to connect with people.

Of course I know now that the depression would have come anyway. Onset for depression like mine is usually around 18 years old. If anything, it was masked by Ben's murder, taking longer for it to be diagnosed. It wasn't until my anger and fear began to manifest itself in a wicked temper that I decided to see a doctor. I was put on Lithium, a drug that earns its reputation, and then from there I was moved to a parade of other medications aimed to make me better. Prozac, Pristiq, Wellbutrin, Lamotragine ...

And so began the battle that I still fight. Trying to feel normal, trying to just get on the same page as everyone else around me.

But all the while I had Melee. Where college social situations were draining for me, Melee competitions were invigorating. Where I stood shyly by at parties, at MLG events I was a leader. It's no wonder I made my escape into the world of "Wife," "The Newlyweds" and "Team Ben." To me, they were happiness.

*****

Two good things came out of MLG Chicago: the return of Azen and my proper introduction to KoreanDJ.

Azen had been largely MIA during the season, even at local tournaments, and had not made an appearance at any MLG events thus far. As a new era of Melee was ushered in, many new players must have seen Azen as more of a legend than an actual threat. But there he was at MLG Chicago.

Azen is far from intimidating in stature, being short and skinny, but his presence at this tournament did not go unnoticed. Wherever he played, crowds gathered around. "Did you see Azen, the Master of Diversity, is here? I heard he can beat you with every character." The master was rusty, though, and he earned only a modest fourth place. Not bad for a washed up hero, but I was watching him closely and hoping for an upset first place finish.

I have always been a big fan of Azen's, for his unique playstyle and his endearing personality, so I was happy to be able to boast about his return. As far as I was concerned, this meant the current talent was officially put on watch.

Especially you, Ken.

Then there was Daniel "KoreanDJ" Jung (or just KDJ), a fireball kind of player from Massachusetts. He brought an unprecedented intensity with him to tournaments that instantly made me take notice. My earliest memory of him comes from a regional northeastern tournament where he was just starting out. He asked me for what we call a "money match," $5 to the winner of a best of three set, and I said sure — I like to patronize the local amateurs, after all.

The first set came and went as I expected — I trounced him in front of his friends, accepted my fiver as graciously as I could, and was about to walk away when he stopped me. "Again," he demanded. I beat him handily once more. "Again," he insisted. And so this went on and on until he was finally out of money. I told him that paying me was unnecessary, that I would have just played him for an hour if he wanted, but he let me know he was training — putting the money up was worth it to make sure I was trying my hardest so he could learn properly. And it is precisely this attitude that took him to the top and would eventually make him, in the author's opinion, the best player to ever hold a controller.

At MLG Chicago he fought his way to 7th place, but it was getting to know him that really made me fear him as a competitor. I considered myself to be a pretty intense person, but his passion, energy, and dedication really inspired me. He was a renaissance man, bringing this force to a long list of hobbies. After his gaming career ended he started his own business.

He took me to the Pro Player Lounge where he showed off how he could play Guitar Hero on expert — backwards. Meaning, he faced away from the screen. I remember thinking, "who the hell is this guy?"

## MLG Orlando

Friends, or, The Return of Azen

The spotlight of competitive Melee has always rested on singles, and this book follows suit accordingly, but far more important to me was doubles play. There is something particularly rewarding about the way cooperative gameplay demands high levels of communication; a team that cannot effectively communicate will not reach its full potential.

But more than that, the cooperation that goes unspoken is what makes a successful team. With four players on one screen all moving at split frame speeds there simply isn't the time to announce your movements, so your partner must anticipate them. How is this accomplished? Well, ideally, through a decade of getting each other's back.

I met Kevin when I was 9 years old, so at the time of the 2006 season, we had been growing up together for 11 years. This meant we had played video games together on every system since the Sega Genesis, but it also meant that if I started singing Build Me Up Buttercup, Kevin would provide the background vocals without asking questions.

The point is, we prided ourselves on strong teamwork. Groundbreaking teamwork, and possibly even superlative teamwork, for our time. A review of top 10 results from the singles tournaments at these MLGs won't often include the names Husband or Wife. But we were consistently ranked as top 4 in doubles because our teamwork allowed us to create a whole that was greater than the sum of our parts.

Kevin and I stayed acutely aware of the other's position on the stage, so that we could poise ourselves to execute the team combos we had designed ourselves. I needed to not only notice if Kevin was setting up for a kill combo, but anticipate his movements so I could space myself properly. We also had plays we could call, which was my favorite part about doubles. There was "caged animal Wife" where I would just go non-stop aggression while Kevin stayed back and waited to pick up the pieces. There was "MLG NY" — named after the style that almost beat PC Chris and his partner Wes at the season opener, where we just team up on the faster player if we estimate his partner to be too slow to keep up.

Our routines proved successful in Orlando, where we took home our second 4th place finish of the season, bouncing back from our low placing at Chicago.

In fact, everything about MLG Orlando was bright and fun and wholesome, and the opposite of Chicago.

*****

Kevin and I flew out to Sunny Orlando right smack dab in the middle of summer. When we got off the plane and out of the terminal, the first thing I saw was a cute girl holding up a big blue and yellow sign, all done up with glitter and such. I must have looked at it two or three times before my brain could catch up and really believe that it read "Wife." I couldn't process what was happening. I noticed that my sign even replicated the colors of my trademark, custom-made controller, baby blue and yellow. There was an equally glittery sign held up next to it that said "Husband." As absurd as it would be, my first thought was that they were our first groupies — they had found out which flight Husband and Wife would be on and decided to wait for us. They turned out to be something even better: friends.

Instead of getting a hotel for this tournament, Kevin and I wanted to do it like the old days and stay with Smashers. We were offered housing by some local players living on the FSU campus, and instead of letting us take a cab to their apartment, they spent the day making signs and surprised us at the airport. The gesture was truly touching.

We went back to their place for many hours of Melee with their other friends, where playing the game created an instant bond between us all. It was like we had been friends for years. The next day we all went to Disney World together and had an amazing time. These guys (and the one girl who they dragged along) were hilarious. This was before smartphones, and they had a clever system worked out where they would call each other when they were out and say "can I speak to the internet please?". If the person on the other end was by a computer he would reply, "this is the internet, go ahead."

*****

MLG Orlando saw the first grand finals ever without Ken. He was first upset by KoreanDJ in winner's bracket, and then taken out of the tournament by his own team partner, Isai.

And with his arch-rival Ken out of the way, Azen was left to run straight over the rest of competition. I mean he cut through them like a hot knife through butter, and earned himself a first place victory before anyone could say "Azen Comeback."

Watching Azen take the title at MLG Orlando reminded me how much I liked him. As he displayed his trademark shyness, grace, and humility, I was so proud that he was representing my region. It reminded me that I was also making and building friendships at these tournaments.

I was never closer with Kevin than at these events, and that time is important because only a year later, a girl would come between us and force us apart, though not in the way girls usually do, and we weren't on speaking terms for over two full years.

These events became my social reality as well as my professional ambition, and I can remember feeling the "real world" start to slip away.
MLG New York

Playoffs, or, The Carbon Sweep

All those other chapters in this book? They were forgettable. The other tournaments? Unimportant, when compared with the playoffs. This was the tournament to separate the sidekicks from the heroes; the tourists from the legends.

Well, in truth the champions would be determined at the final event of the season, but playoffs are a player's last chance to earn himself an invite, and there were several players who still needed to clinch a spot.

Meanwhile, the location of championships had finally been announced: Vegas, baby. The stakes had been raised.

MLG ranked its players based on points accrued throughout the season. Players like Ken and PC Chris had qualified long ago, but for players like Azen who arrived halfway through the circuit, only a stellar placing would guarantee a spot at the championships. And for players like me, NYC might be the last chance to improve their overall singles ranking for the 2006 season.

Cue training montage.

Championships were set as an eight person double elimination tournament where the top seven players by points were given an invitation, along with one wildcard spot awarded to the winner of the level one bracket at the playoffs. (Then the winner of the level one bracket would advance to the level two bracket to compete for prize money and seeding at Championships).

So I set my sights on first place in the level one bracket. No problem, except that due to his late arrival in the season, and consequent low standing, I would be sharing that bracket with Azen.

To beat Azen, I essentially had to hope for him to go blind during our match. Not only was he far better than me, but he trained me and so knew all my tricks. My other hope was for someone else from our bracket to beat him, which was only slightly more likely than a sudden bout of blindness.

The odds didn't bother me, however. This was to be the biggest tournament of my life, and I intended to be good and ready for it. My plan was to go out swinging, and finish my singles season strong. (Note: The Newlyweds were ranked third overall and were therefore already guaranteed a spot in the doubles event at Vegas).

To get ready, I watched videos of the players I knew would be in my bracket. I studied their styles, looked for weaknesses, and took notes in a binder I kept with me always.

I also started a cardio routine to get my body in better shape. Even gamers benefit from endurance, not to mention the endorphin bonus and all that.

To complete the image, I took a pair of clippers to my hair and gave myself a military-style haircut. I wanted to feel like a weapon.

During all this preparation, I was surprised by an invitation to be signed on by a new sponsor, Carbon. Team Carbon wanted to get behind the best players in competitive Melee (to include Azen and a few others as well) the way they had already done with MLG's other mainstage event, a fanatically popular "shooter" called Halo 2.

I designed matching, red, slim cut hoodies for Husband and myself, which read on the back, "CbN — The element that is essential to life." The pep talks I gave to myself in the mirror started to feel a lot cooler.

*****

The venue for MLG NY Playoffs was the most expansive yet, and the pro lounge spared no expense. I really felt like a professional, like I was there to do something important.

Doubles competitions always come first. The Newlyweds had a solid run, placing fifth, while Azen and his team partner Chillin beat out their rivals Ken and Isai to take first. That was the first win for Team Carbon.

Then Karma, Team Carbon's Halo 2 front man, took 1st in the free for all event. Win number two for Team Carbon.

*****

The newly carbonized, weaponized version of Wife didn't do too shabby either. I entered the level one pro bracket with all the focus and determination I could, and it paid off. I pushed through the early levels of the bracket, taking out the players I had been training for. I made it all the way to loser's bracket finals when I hit RobMoney, another talented, mid-to-high-level player like me.

Rob played a few different characters, but always chose Sheik against me because I was classically weak against her. Rob knows this from experience, and our record in tournament matches was 3-1 in his favor. However, I had been forcing Husband to play Sheik against me in preparation for this match specifically, and I came out strong and won the first game. Rob responded by playing more cautiously, using his character's defensive advantages over mine to neuter my offense.

Rob won the next two games, but I won the fourth, sending us into the fifth and final game of the set. I remember that while my hands were sweating, they were not shaking. I had come far from my choke against Ken the previous year. However, Rob was efficient with his punishes and he took the match, sending me home with third place in the level one pro bracket.

With seven players waiting in the level two bracket, placing third in the level one bracket essentially meant placing 10th overall. My final placing at the 2006 MLG season was 10th place. 10th ... as in top ten. Top ten, as in my ambition from the moment I set out on this journey into professional video gaming. This is by no means a definitive way to rank a player, but it damn sure is substantial, and in my eyes it was a goal reached.

RobMoney of course lost to Azen, who was of course waiting for him in the finals, making Azen the wildcard for the Championship and sending him into the level two bracket. Regulation quite sensibly matches up the winner of the level one bracket with the highest ranked player from the regular season.

That would be Ken.

*****

There was a great deal of anticipation for this match. Sure, Azen had won Orlando, but he managed to avoid playing Ken, the "King of Smash" and his old rival. Here was Azen's chance to prove himself, and represent the east coast against Ken as PC Chris had failed to do since the season opener.

Ken was waiting controller in hand for the match to start, either eager to face his old enemy or perhaps to just get the whole thing over with. Each player must have been spectacularly nervous, as every Smasher in the room struggled to crowd around and watch two figures from history play each other for the first time in years.

With Azen's reputation for strength in the "ditto" matchup, Ken and Azen each choosing Marth was something of a pissing contest. Azen could have switched to a different character to perhaps give him an edge, being the master of diversity and all, but even shy Azen had a streak of stubbornness. I knew we would see Marth vs. Marth for the whole match; Ken with his trademark Red Marth, and Azen his usual blue. This symbolic red vs. blue is more than a little reminiscent of Darth Vader vs. Obi-Wan.

Ken took the first game, though barely so. Game two, Azen, then game three, Ken. With Ken leading the match 2 games to 1 and poised to preserve his reputation, Azen and Ken played one of the most talked about games in Smash Bros.

Game four started with typical back and forth action, and lots of momentum change. The Marths dash danced around each other (see chapter one) waiting for an opening. The player who makes the first move essentially gives something up, so the action was slow and then very fast and then slow again, like watching a snake fight a mongoose. Not that I've ever seen a snake fight a mongoose, but I'm thinking Rikki Tikki Tavi.

Ken inched ahead little by little, first taking a narrow lead and then consistently widening it as the minutes passed. Eventually Azen found himself at a terrible deficit, on his final life while Ken still had three. Azen managed to take Ken's second life, but he was so near to death by this point that you could feel the crowd start to grumble and lose interest. People started to walk away. I was commentating that match, and at 3 minutes 19 seconds I called the it over in error, when Azen got hit far so off the side that I thought he could never make it back. But he did. Once again on the stage, Azen kicked and screamed and somehow resisted being killed for 42 more heart-wrenching seconds. He forced the crowd to hold its breath and watch stunned as he drew the game to one life each, and then in front of a couple hundred dropped jaws, he completed the single greatest comeback of all time.

After that 4th game, there was no coming back. Azen finished Ken off handily and put him in a very bad position in the loser's bracket.

By bad position, I mean he had to face Mew2King. Here is a player that deserves his own chapter — his own book probably — but the reader will have to settle for a small piece about him in the chapter after next. For now, it suffices to identify him as a technical guru whose speed and frame-perfect play were something to fear. Mew2King took Ken out of the tournament and left him with a career low of 7th place.

Azen, meanwhile, tore through the winner's bracket, not losing a single match. When PC Chris finally climbed out of the loser's bracket to face Azen in grand finals, he was faced with the task of beating the Master of Diversity in two sets. Azen, however, needed only Marth to take out PC Chris and earn him his second consecutive 1st place finish, and win number three for Team Carbon.

Finally, we looked to Carbon's Halo 2 4v4 team as they emerged from the loser's bracket to face the imposing and appropriately named "Final Boss." In an extended series that lasted nearly an hour, our boys upset the favorites and completed the sweep. At MLG New York Playoffs, Team Carbon took 1st in all four main events.

It was a rush to be even a supporting member of this winning team. A career began to unfold in front of me. Undoubtedly my reflexes would start to dull and my fingers would get slower with age, but MLG and teams like Carbon would always need coaches, managers, etc.

I saw no reason for anything else but pro gaming.

And let someone call it nerdy. I was going to Vegas.

MLG Las Vegas

Championships

Las Vegas was ... awe-inspiring. The whole city was beautiful. During the day the streets were pristine and bright, and at night, well, it was Vegas. The event was held in the Red Rock Hotel & Casino, the nicest hotel I've ever been in. There was actually a TV in our bathroom, in case we needed to get some last minute practice while we brushed our teeth or took a dump.

For championships, competition was in the air — it was positively palpable. Eight entrants only for each event and $10,000 for first place. Ken needed to prove he was still king; Azen had just won back to back events; PC Chris sought to topple Azen the way he did with Ken; and KoreanDJ and Mew2King were forcing their way into the elite. In doubles, Ken and Isai remained the team to beat, while teams like The Newlyweds lurked with upset potential.

It is at this point that I'd like to zoom the camera out a bit, to gain a wider perspective on what was happening. Smashers, though lovely people, often lack the social grace to talk to the waitress at IHOP — so it's crazy to imagine them taking up residence in a five star Las Vegas hotel with crystal chandeliers to play video games for money. I don't want to ever lose sight of the ridiculousness of the whole situation. This ridiculousness, the absurdity of the whole story, is one of the reasons I wanted to tell it in the first place

*****

Doubles competition was first. For Husband and me, it was our time to prove our worth, and we were well-practiced for the event. We lost our first match, as we had a habit of doing, but we were a menace in the loser's bracket. We took out a few talented teams, then ended up hitting the imposing wall of Azen and Chillin; our friends and teammates, not to mention two-time MLG winners that season alone.

But Husband didn't fly 2,500 miles, apparently, to get 5th place. He played the single best match of his career that day, without comparison. He was playing with a precision and style that I'd never seen from him before. I don't think Azen or Chillin had seen it either, because they were against the ropes the whole match. While typically I take lead, I felt the fire coming from Kevin and just let him take us to an upset over the defending champions.

We played hard for 3rd, but just couldn't get the edge over Mew2King's team. The Newlyweds had landed a 4th place finish at the single most important Melee tournament of all time, and three years' worth of hard work felt absolutely worth it.

Next was singles, and let's get right to it: Ken didn't win MLG Las Vegas. He didn't defend his reign as King. He played well and still managed a 3rd place finish, but could not get past the force of nature that was KoreanDJ.

The two players first met in the second round of the winner's bracket in a fast-paced, exciting, and very close match. The first game saw KDJ exhibiting his characteristically aggressive style, but Ken kept pace. In fact, Ken played some of the best Melee I've ever seen him play that day, and took game one right out from under KDJ's nose. The loss only added fuel to KDJ's fire, however, and he couldn't get the next game started fast enough. I recall a friend leaning over to KDJ to offer some advice, only to be waved away; a plan was already formed.

Go faster, apparently. KDJ doubled his speed as well as his aggressiveness. For a less talented player, this attitude would have been disastrous — what poker players call going "on tilt" — but his foundations were strong enough to allow him to feed off of his emotions and still maintain integrity. KDJ came out of the gate so strong as to take Ken's first life while only getting hit once. Ken, the veteran with the unwavering fortitude, came right back and took KDJ's first life without getting hit at all.

With the players tied at three lives each, KDJ found his rhythm and Ken spent the rest of the game on defense. KDJ stayed in control and came out on top with two lives remaining.

But Ken didn't lose his cool. In game three he came back smarter than ever, positioning himself perfectly against KDJ's recklessness. Ken took game three and the lead in the set.

In game four, KDJ came back with another convincing victory, tying up the match at two games apiece.

In doing research for this book, I revisited the video of this fifth match and it honestly made my palms sweat just watching. Even though I know the outcome, that game was so close that I still get nervous watching it. And the real shame, I have to admit, is that Ken was playing phenomenally well. I believe he was playing well enough in that moment to beat anyone but KoreanDJ, but fortune was not in his favor. This is why I call KDJ a force of nature: because sometimes when people play him the fate of the match isn't even in their hands.

KDJ beat Ken, if only barely, then made it to winner's bracket finals where he lost to an upgraded version of PC Chris, who had discovered a new peak to his talent. Ken meanwhile survived top players like Mew2King (4th place) and even Azen (5th place) in the loser's bracket, to meet KDJ again in loser's bracket finals. Their second matchup that day was not so close. After KDJ beat Ken's Marth yet again (KDJ was using Sheik), Ken tried switching to a different character for the first time all day. It wasn't enough. Then, in an act of what I'll never know was desperation or jest, he chose his tertiary character, Captain Falcon. Either way, it was the first and only piece of genuine humility I've ever seen from my nemesis, because I saw him smile as he entered what he must have known would be his last match of the 2006 season.

With Ken out of the picture, PC Chris and KoreanDJ were left to play for the title. This finals series marked the first tournament of the season to feature neither Ken nor Azen. Really, the significance of the match was not the contest itself but the spectacle of two younger, "new school" players fighting for 1st at the Championships. It was the beginning of a new era.

## MLG Long Island

Satellite Event, or, "It's Not You, It's Me"

Denial is a powerful thing. I suppose if it weren't, I would have been more prepared for when the axe fell. When MLG finally announced their 2007 season several months later, Smash Bros. was nowhere to be found. They had dropped us.

For all the intensity I felt, for all the amazing stories and interesting people and passion, our community was just too small. We couldn't put up the attendance numbers boasted by more popular games like Halo 2. Essentially we had been dumped — MLG left us for someone better.

I don't remember being all that disappointed, I think because I held out hope that MLG's "continued involvement in the Smash community" would be enough. I can be naive that way. MLG promising us continued community involvement was a lot like being told "let's just be friends." It never works that way. It should have been obvious that our time in the spotlight was over. No more crisp paychecks, no more charity events, no more crystal chandeliers.

MLG Long Island was essentially a regionally-run tournament with some sponsorship money provided by MLG, and it was the first and last "satellite event" to the regular season. Still, there was some amazing competition at this tournament, and it offered a window into the direction professional Melee was headed in, had we remained in the mainstream.

*****

MLG Long Island took place almost 6 months after the championships, and Kevin and I were not adjusting well to a world without MLG tournaments. For one, the weight of winning was removed. At fan-run tournaments, prizes were usually measured in hundreds and not thousands of dollars. There were no cameras, no bleachers, and no Pro Lounge perks. These losses might have been offset by the camaraderie of being back among our roots in the local DC area community, if those roots didn't hate us so much.

Team Ben had already set ourselves apart from the rest of the community with our callous love of competition and our (as many have said) elitism. To that I would say, "yes, well the community may resent us, but by the way it's the community that we built." Still, everyone is entitled to their opinion. And when MLG came along, tailor made for us, we embraced it whole-heartedly and said goodbye to local fan-run tournaments. So as one can imagine, we weren't exactly welcomed back with open arms.

MLG Long Island was a nice hybrid between the two, and The Newlyweds played better than we had since beating Azen and Chillin at the championships. We started off the way we always do, by losing our first round, this time to Chillin and his partner Chu Dat.

But that was okay, because we have some of our best runs when coming from early in the loser's bracket. We got to utilize our "MLG NY" strategy, where we teamed up on KDJ and later PC Chris to beat their respective teams, and eventually landing a 3rd place finish. (PC Chris did beat KDJ for the championship, by the way). It was the last MLG in which we would ever compete.

****

Azen and Ken began to fade from the spotlight shortly after the 2006 season. Neither attended MLG Long Island. PC Chris remained a formidable player, and placed 3rd that day, but the sensation of the tournament was the extended finals series between KoreanDJ and Mew2King. These two were game-by-game showing the rest of the community how Melee should be played. Consequent of this set alone, MLG Long Island could fairly be credited as historic.

KoreanDJ was an artist when he played Melee. Watching him compete, you could see him making things up as he went along — trying out brand new strategies in the middle of high stakes matches. He once compared his play to freestyle rapping; for him, Melee was art.

Then, as if these two people were born to be rivals, we find the polar opposite in Mew2King. He knew everything there was to know about Smash Bros. Melee, frame by frame as well as player by player. He used this wealth of knowledge to predict every move his opponents made; for him, Melee was science.

M2K, real name Jason Zimmerman, is probably not diagnosable as an autistic savant, but you could be forgiven for thinking as much. He first became known in our community for charting the frame counts for all the moves in Melee. For example, he could tell you that Marth's grab lasts for 18 frames, where Peach's lasts for 12 (bear in mind there are 60 frames in a second). He didn't just memorize these, he learned them himself. He could also recite pi to enough digits that you had to ask him to stop.

M2K wasn't very good at fitting in, but he didn't much seem to care. He would arrive to tournaments wearing neon green gym shorts and a baggy orange t-shirt, no matter the weather. He would say insanely inappropriate things but not bother to notice if anyone got offended.

But by the end of 2007, he was a god in our world. His frame-perfect play made the game look more beautiful than it ever had before, made it look as the creators intended. His economy of movement was superlative, with no movement wasted.

And not only did he know everything about the mechanics of the game, he knew everything about the people playing it, in an Abed Nadir kind of way.

"Hey Jason, I have to fight (xyz player) next round, any tips?"

"No not really. But he sidesteps after his aerials, and he has a losing record on small stages. And he misses D.I. on forward throws."

One time I entered a doubles tournament with M2K, and it was like playing with a perfect version of Husband. He was already familiar with all of the Newlywed combos, just from watching our videos, so there was no discussion needed on game plan — I just played like I always did and he was consistently in the places I needed him to be. Only, you know, perfect.

So when the embodiment of Melee faced up against a fountainhead of innovation, amazing things happened. They had individually burned through the rest of the (very talented) competition at MLG Long Island, and so faced each other in both loser's and winner's bracket.

In winner's bracket, KDJ took out M2K three games to zero. Despite playing the most gorgeous and most perfectly spaced Marth the audience had ever seen, M2K fell to KDJ's unorthodox Sheik two games in a row. In the third game, M2K tried his Fox — no ordinary Fox mind you — and KDJ stunned the crowd by disposing of it an astounding 90 seconds.

When they met again in loser's bracket, M2K came out with the first win, soundly in fact. I can only imagine KDJ thought to himself, "I must not be playing aggressively enough," because he somehow turned up the dial another notch and launched a crazytown-bananapants offensive that took the following three games and the tournament.

Sadly, there was never another MLG stage for KDJ to play on, and I believe that stifled his flair and prevented him from realizing his true potential. I maintain that when speaking of raw talent, KoreanDJ is the best player to ever play the game. But for a player like him, fan-run tournaments didn't provide the incentive to make Melee his priority and bring out his best. He continued to compete at local and regional tournaments, and continued to be amazing, but if he ever officially wore the crown it was for an extremely brief period of time.

M2K, on the other hand, would soon begin a reign that was second only to Ken's with respect to length, and comparable to none in terms of the gap he created between him and the rest of the field. For a considerable stretch of time, talented players would essentially enter tournaments with the hope of getting 2nd place, as M2K remained positively untouchable in both singles and doubles competition.

Unfortunately, whereas KDJ died a hero, M2K lived long enough to see himself become a villain. Humility was never one of his strong suits, and audiences cheered for underdog after underdog until someone finally removed him from his throne.

****

With MLG behind me, I was forced to readjust my dreams and realign my reality. While I still competed at fan-run tournaments, I gave up gaming as a career. I experienced for myself truth in the age-old proverb, "this too shall pass." Or the 1990s Semisonic lyric, "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

After MLG Long Island, I found my first "real" job at the University of Maryland, leading a team of student employees, and it gave me more joy and purpose than I would have ever dared hope for. I found a new world into which I could escape; when the black dog crept in close I would just pour more and more of myself into my work.

I even created a new alias for myself at this job, insisting on going by Christopher instead of just Chris. In the mornings I would put on my suit and leave behind my doubts and inhibitions. After dedicating several years of my life to a game, and to a movement, I was given the chance to dedicate myself to people.

And yet this is a story about people. About several extraordinary people, and one in particular whose departure from my life changed me forever.

## Acknowledgments

I set out to write this book as a personal journey, and didn't initially intend on sharing it. I'm not even sure I intended on finishing it. Telling this story was a way for me to connect two of the most important things that had ever happened to me.

After years of working on this project, I wrapped up writing in August of 2013. It wasn't until November of 2013 that Wynton "Prog" Smith learned about this book and convinced me to share it with the Smash Bros. community. I reluctantly self-published it, under the stipulation that I wouldn't accept any financial profit.

Since then, I've been blown away by the interest and support offered by the eSports collective. This 2nd edition you have just read was released to commemorate 10,000 downloads. Whoa.

I owe the success of this book to Ben's family for allowing me to write about what happened, to my wife Monica for her support, and to Prog for pushing me forward. A big thank you to friends who doubled as editors: Michael Brancato, Kris Aldenderfer, and Josh Davis. Finally, I want to recognize Travis Beauchamp for his spectacular documentary, which has by itself ignited more interest in Smash Melee than anyone but the game's designers themselves.

When I wrote this book I was convinced Melee was dead. Now, I can't wait to find out what's written in the next chapters.
2006 MLG Season Results

 Chu Dat was a major competitor during the 2006 MLG season, consistently placing in the top 5. He even has a great storyline which involves dating Ken's little sister. But regrettably this book had room for only so many characters and a few were left out, such as Chu Dat or the SoCal native HugS, who played the role of the underdog at Championships and was a fellow member of Team Carbon.

