Urgent poll, come and say what you think!

[matti1896]

I need help from everyone willing to give a couple of minutes to understand this situation. First thing, with no prejudice and before reading the rest of the story, check out the replay of this game and tell me what you think:
*

Watched it?
Here is the story: as you can see in the forum, * hates me (way too much for the nothing that happened, but it's another story), and * is the current second player in arena ranking in lucky numbers. They both heavily dislike me, and it's fine. The thing is it's pretty suspicious that, in this situation, close to the end of the season, in one of the games with the MOST players on the whole BGA, they meet in arena, right the only game played by viking after 3 days. I don't want to start it all thinking the worst things, but watching the replay I cannot phisically hide my smell for something fishy. * is an elite player and a great historical player too, and all these moves he made, according to me, are senseless and clearly wrong moves, made in order to help * to beat me in arena.
OK, here are my notes on the game, where there's an empty space I'll write x:

Move 8: putting a 13 there is clearly NOT the optimal move, but still more or less understandable
Move 12: he has 5 x 7 in the first line, an 8 in the 2nd diagonal. He gets a 6 and puts it..... In the 3rd place on the first column (nobody ever would do that)
Move 15: why the 16 there, no sense but still "understandable"
Move 17: clearly playing to lose on purpose. You have a situation of 5 x 7 first line, x 8 second line and 6 x third line. There's a 2 on the board, one of the BEST possible cards to ever get in that situation. What does he do? Leave a 2 there for the opponent with a 1 in the corner and get a new card. Totally unacceptable move.
Move 18: after not taking a 2 to remove the 5, he does take the 2 to remove a 3, with both 3 cards out and thus gaining literally 0 CARDS POSSIBILITY out of this move. Even more evident he's doing so on purpose.
Move 24: putting an 11 there is an insult to the regularity of this game. That's the end of discussion (once again)
Move 37: you have the assured 19 out, you get a 17 and you put it close to the 20? Another bad on purpose move to lose.
Move 44:why getting a new card and not taking the 13 that is ASSURED 10000% to make the opponent win the first round? Even worse, if he took the 13, viking would have got an useless 2 and wasted another turn. Always more cheating.

Round 2
Move 47: * starts with a bad 567 diagonal. He gets a perfect 15 as first card, he, for a never understandable reason, puts it in the column instead of freeing the 7 (0 sense move).
Move 49: bad move but we've seen so much worse.
Move 54: he gets a 14, again the PERFECT STATISTICALLY card for the diagonal, he doesn't put it in the diagonal. Just why!


This being said, maybe it's just me, so I will use this as a poll and please, anyone, feel free to watch the replay and try to give an explanation or your personal thoughts on what happened here. Even if you don't like me, please be honest and tell what you think about this.
Thanks everyone,
Matti1896

*Moderation Edit: please do not use the Forums to call players out by name, this is what the Moderation Reports are for. The Forums should remain a general discussion.

[Blacktango]

Hey, uppercase means screaming, so please don’t use it on forum, especially on the subject.

Also, there is nothing urgent here, no one is going to get burned or anything.

[matti1896]

Considering we're about the end of the season, and of course we're talking about online boardgames, and not wars, famines or any really important matter, well, in this case I think this can be considered an urgent issue to discuss. For the uppercase, I'll just switch, the sense is the same.

[Guudys]

The guy might be an elite player in Arena but overall, after 4 764 Games, he still just has 227 ELO as opposed to the other guy who is currently top 4 with 471 ELO. What I'm seeing here is just a player that does less optimal moves and that's it.
They seem to be friends but does that mean anything? Like if I constantly lose to my husband who is like Top 1 at a game like Space Base, does that mean that I just played to let him win or that he is just better overall at the game?
I've seen accounts that actively cheat to stay Top 1 in Arena and that looks nothing like these 2 accounts.

[matti1896]

We're not really talking about non optimal moves here. We're talking about moves that are widely clearly and deliberately wrong. Also, the current elo is worth less than 0 in lucky games, dozens of times I went from 450 to below 300 in 1 hour or 2. And the same applies to *, who is now 227 but was above 300 most of his career (you can check from the graph) and close to 400 other times. Also, a 300 elo in arena is a 400 elo in casual games, at least. That's the difference...

*Moderation Edit: please do not use the Forums to call players out by name, this is what the Moderation Reports are for. The Forums should remain a general discussion.

[Charlieboy80]

I’ve just watched the game and it looks like a normal legit game.

No offence, but seriously you need to take a Valium and calm down or something.

Hugs and kisses xx

[ExaltedAngel]

I’ve just watched the game and it looks like a normal legit game.

Honestly it doesn't, but on the other hand OP had some shady games too, this is what u get by doing so I guess

[Bubbles881]

I agree it does look abit suspicious. But saying that, I myself sometimes play stupid moves and then think why did I do that (I am still a noob tho) I have a few times accidentally pressed the wrong clover and cost myself the game, it looks like that's maybe what happened a few times here. Idk, I don't know these people.
But does it really matter which one of them won? It wasn't a game against yourself.

[bbrriiaann42]

If people accused me of cheating every time I made a sub-optimal play in a board game, no one would ever play with me because everyone else is claiming I’m a cheater.