A request and an insight into my personal stance on prize pots

Leprekaun wrote: »

Its not a matter of what I choose and not choose to do in my religion so I try to do everything, without exception. I am devout to my religion and like I have previously mentioned, if I had known this before, I wouldn't have gotten involved in tournaments or ran tournaments with a prize pot so its not a case of "throwing the toys out of the pram" to try and manipulate the community. When I had previously had voiced my opinion about tournament entry fee, there were only few who agreed but the majority disagreed and that was fine, I conceded and any tournaments that were held after that, I paid the same entry fee as everyone else.

In terms of imposing myself on others with my stance, I'm not trying to impose my religious views on any of you. I'm just trying to find a good balance between the situation and my beliefs. In my opinion, religion is entirely a personal thing so whether or not you want to be religious, thats up to you, I'm not going to go round each of you and start saying "Have you ever of..." and all that carry on, I'll only be there to have a laugh and play some SF. If you wish to ask me about any of it, thats fine, I can answer to the best of my knowledge but I'm not going to try to change your mind because, like I said, its a personal thing, you make that decision.

In regards to whether this can be considered gambling or not, it is gambling. The only difference between betting on a football match and putting your own money into a prize pot is that you do have a clearer understanding of how good you are and can rate yourself compared to other players but even then, it is still gambling, because from one tournament to the next, some players might change characters which favour their matchups and disadvantage others. If you asked most people "Who'd win Evo this year?", they'd say "Daigo" but Fuudo won last year and there have been other times where Daigo was beaten so although he is most probable to win, it is not a certainty that he will.

So fair enough, it can be assumed that nothing is certain, that is the truth so there will always be an unknown factor in any situation. In the instance of tournaments here, I just feel that although there are the top 8 players who could each possibly win a tournament, sometimes they'll lose and sometimes they'll win. A direct comparison can be poker. Ok, so there are more unknown elements in poker but analogies can be made. Your cards could be your chosen fighter (Zangief Vs. Ryu -> Ryu's favour) and reading your opponent right, that would apply to any form of competition. But the same way you have a select few top poker players who always place highly, none of them always win.

So ok, now, there is a small predicament, how would anyone earn any money in sport if its considered gambling? Well, thats where a third party comes in. Say if GameStop chose to sponsor a tournament, awarding the winners with prize money / vouchers / gaming hardware etc., then in this case, it would be completely valid to have a tournament with prize money, as long as the winnings of the players aren't coming from other players.

Anyway, my original post was directed towards TOs in general, not necessarily to the community.

If the TOs can agree with me on this, I would greatly appreciate it as I do miss getting involved in tournaments but if they choose not to, thats fine.