Lurker > BlAcK TuRtLe

TLJ was a flawed movie that at least tried to do something original, and for that I rank it much higher than TFA. Honestly if you just eliminate the entire casino planet bullshit, and get rid of the bitch-admiral lady and weird Chinese chick, the film is 100 times better already. The core story elements were very well handled (Rey/Kyle/Luke)
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Vlado posted...

Safer_777 posted...

So what saved Tifa? PORN!

Don't fall for this crap. Registered user vote was 5029 to 5031 - practically tied. It's entirely plausible for Tifa to win the close match without the "porn rally" excuse that a known crybaby like black turtle made up, and people bitter that Tifa smashed their brackets perpetuated.

I like how you just list the registered user total (which is fairly meaningless given how easy it is to create an account) and not the total vote. If Tifa didn't have her 400 hentai porno votes, the match wouldn't have even gotten to the point where it was close enough for her to win.
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trdl23 posted...

Ulti_PCA posted...

Also, level with me. Are the games any good?

Yes. Yes yes yes yes. God, yes.

With the shitshow that Square has become, Atlus has become the last bastion of good JRPGs from a major developer (though I don't play DQ so maybe that franchise hasn't become garbage?). However, you have to really embrace the fact that it's 50% JRPG dungeon-crawler, 50% Japanese high-school simulator.

This sounds like the worst game ever made
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I've always been of the opinion that Cloud won mainly because of Wind Waker backlash (I think people forget just how polarizing that game was when it came out). The picture wasn't the main reason for the loss, but it certainly hurt more than most pic disadvantages because it played on that polarization
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yeah, majora might have the biggest turnaround in contest history. I really wonder how legit it is, though, since it nearly lost to super metroid.

I think the easy explanation is Nintendo not SFFing itself as easily across consoles. LTTP murdering Super Metroid makes sense. Majora's Mask not murdering Super Metroid and not getting murdered by LTTP also makes sense.

Ehhh, I think going back to my justification for MM > GSC, which was that certain games (like non-RBY Pokemon, Super Metroid) have a slightly different fanbase compared to the casual favourites (like RBY and Majora). Anyone who is a hardcore Pokemon fan voted GSC in that 4-way match, anyone who was a casual fan of Nintendo games were split between RBY and Majora.

Think it goes the same for the MM/SM matchup, Super Metroid is one of the most hardcore titles Nintendo has ever made
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Man, I'm reading through the stats topic archive of the Majora > GSC match, I've come to the conclusion that ExTha is the biggest crybaby in the world
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I have a Wii U, so I can play Smash 4 if the desire ever comes up. All my friends have a Switch, so if we ever need to play Ultimate I can just go over to their house. I have a baby on the way in 6 months, so it's hard for me to justify a console purchase for the literal 1 game on the console I have any interest in
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Team Rocket Elite posted...

BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

I dunno, I think Brawl/4 would be a really close match with an awful lot of apathy on both sides. I might take Ultimate over Melee if we have a game contest next year

What happened to "who cares about a complete rehash of Smash 4" that you posted not even a day ago? Or are you expecting SSBM to tank in strength?

That was more in response to the 'Joker is going to be a threat' discussion, but reading up on reception, it does some like people care an awful lot about a complete rehash of Smash 4, so I guess I have to eat crow
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Ulti_PCA posted...

BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

I dunno, I think Brawl/4 would be a really close match with an awful lot of apathy on both sides. I might take Ultimate over Melee if we have a game contest next year

Me too bro, and it would 100% be the correct result. Smash Ultimate is so insanely good. It's like an ode to video games.

By the way how hard did you freak out over MMX5's Hunter x Hunter theme being in the game?

I don't own a switch, but that is a fantastic track
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The majority of the Smash fanbase will default to the newest game (barring some crazy mishandling of the franchise in the future). The sizable minority will probably never leave Melee. It will always go Latest Smash > Melee > the rest
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Barring some crazy release next year, if BotW doesn't win the next contest (with Smash:U coming in a distant second place) I'll eat my hat.
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I dunno, I think Brawl/4 would be a really close match with an awful lot of apathy on both sides. I might take Ultimate over Melee if we have a game contest next year
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ExTha KP and Ulti all had Melee, which given their loudness and disdain whenever I'm right, probably explains why I remember the whole stats topic calling me an idiot for Majora > GSC and Brawl > Melee
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LeonhartFour posted...

Brawl was the Guru favorite man

Not in the stats topic
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Brawl > Melee was the cherry on top of my Guru victory. Melee fans are fucking terrible, and I only hesitate to call them the 'worst' in a world where Underfail and LoL exist. The only thing that made it better was the absolute certainty the stats topic had that Melee would win, despite that result not making a lick of sense in 2010.

Man, GotD was a great contest, if only FFX beat Majora and lost to Brawl like it was supposed to
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God this just reminds me of how awful that contest was, from start to finish. Draven was bad, I think Undertale was worse. All of the mindless morons from r/leagueoflegends that couldn't play a real MOBA like Dota were still better than the weird 'millennials' that invaded with Underfail
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For all of the weird lunatic fringe alt-right subtext in Ulti's posts, he is absolutely correct about SJW morons being the main problem with society these days. It's almost like all the below-average intelligence manual labourers and factory workers that have had their jobs automated, now have nothing to do all day but post about how great Trump is, or post SJW drivel.

Just goes to show that both "sides" in the political argument are absolutely insane. How hard is it to evalute each political issue and formulate your own opinion instead of locking yourself into some hardline tribalist 'stance'.

But I digress
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ShatteredElysium posted...

Man, that Majoras Mask run still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth because I originally had it as the winner of the contest without any doubt in my mind. Then I let B8 slowly eat away at me and eventually talk me out of it. That was the last time I let B8 change my mind on the latter end of the bracket

If I had kept my bracket as i predicted then for sure i would have won the guru easily (I remember that much as I kept checking it all the way). Not sure about overall contest standings as I wasnt prize eligible then so didn't care

I had it beating FFX and losing to Brawl but pulled back because everyone else on the board had it losing to Pokemon (which never sat right with me so thankfully I at least kept it going as far as I did)
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Team Rocket Elite posted...

Sephiroth looked shaky the entire contest... except for that time he demolished Ryu. Sephiroth was kinda strange all contest long.

If you throw out Seph/Tifa and base their indirect strength on Samus/Mario 1, everything else makes sense. That requires you to take Samus/Mario 1 at face value though, and for whatever reason, people still want to believe in Samus > Mario.
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transience posted...

Mac Arrowny posted...

I feel like Red vs. Blue > Cloud vs. Sephiroth at least deserves a spot on the list!

why? it's like taking 'what character do you want in smash?' polls and trying to apply it to the contest. red vs. blue's unique quality as rivals completely invalidates any kind of result there.

CaptainOfCrush posted...

I still find it weird that tumblr had enough people to pull off that Undertale run. Maybe I'm an internet recluse but I almost never hear about that site.

I'm pretty sure twitter was the main source of the rally. we just tied it to tumblr because it's so sterotypically representative of undertale -- kinda like how we blamed the Tifa rally on hentai.

okay, I'm home now - time to move on with the list!

Was there any evidence that the Tifa rally didn't come from all those hentai subreddits?
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swirIdude posted...

Bold of you to say that just after he was announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Do you try to be this wrong or is that just your nature?

I wasn't aware of the announcement, because: A) who cares about a complete rehash of Smash 4 and B) who cares about Persona?
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Let's be clear here, a shitty Persona character was never going to amount to anything. The 10 people that played those games know who he is regardless of name, and not a single other person in the world is going to vote for them.

Persona is going to be the new 'Tales of' in these contests
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Man this division hurt bad. I had Sans > Hayabusa getting to the division finals. I'm still shocked that all the shitty ancillary shit-tier Smash characters (Rosalina, Pac-Man, Bayonetta, Belmont) were so strong this year. Even more surprising was how strong Geralt ended up being. I figured he'd be on the same level of 'generic open-world third-person protagonist' as Aloy and the Assasins Creed clowns.
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2B - 30.93%
Simon Belmont - 30.79%
Vincent Valentine - 30.38%
Terra Branford- 30.34%
Pac-Man - 30.33%
Ryu Hayabusa - 30.31%
Crash Bandicoot - 30.03%
Kratos - 29.93%
Sub-Zero- 29.75%
Ryu - 29.35%
Jill Valentine - 29.28%
Kefka - 29.26%
Magus - 29.23%
Yuna - 29.13%
Frog - 28.92%
Waluigi - 28.70%
Ness - 28.63%
Amaterasu - 28.53%
Dante - 28.45%
Rosalina - 28.32%

And here is the perfect reason why using Tifa/Sephiroth is dumb. I think the most accurate way of handling this situation is to use Mario/Samus 1 and extrapolate Tifa and Seph through Mario and Samus. That puts Tifa and Sephiroth close together (which is probably where they actually stand) and fixes a lot of the problems that Tifa/Sephiroth causes.

Of course, the stats topic is fixated on this magical 'Samus > Mario indirectly' concept with absolutely zero supporting evidence. But please hear me out and try it, and see where the final stats lay
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UltimaterializerX posted...

KP adjusting stats because hes still buttmad over a Ganon sprite picture that made no difference in a match he was never going to win is hilarious.

Ganon looked like crap all contest, not just in that Mega Man match, but you do you. Did people already forget about Chun Li embarrassing the dude? People thought Vivi would beat him after that.

X stats havent meant dick in over ten years and stuff like this is exactly why. The people who adjust them for personal reasons instead of only being faithful to the math.

For once I have to agree with Ulti. Ganondorf dropping makes a lot of other matches make sense. Remember Occam's Razor
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Tifa - through Mario/Sephiroth and Tifa/Sephiroth
Samus - through Tifa

This seems silly. Tifa/Sephiroth is one of the biggest outliers in the entire contest (besides the last couple of Zelda matches).
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No

Why would you remove the strongest character from the bracket? Especially when he's already been relegated to side-contests like the legends bracket? This is a truly 'millenial' line of thinking. "Every character deserves to win". Fuck that noise, let me see Link 60-40 the next strongest character
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SuperNiceDog posted...

Honorable mention 4- Extha vs rally fanbases





On October 29th and Nov 1 2018, user @ExThaNemesis finally got his revenge after 5 and 3 years respectively against the rally fanbases. He had rose to internet fame back in 2013/2015 due to his negative reactions over those results, but he had his revenge in 2018.

Hilarious that not 2 weeks after this post, ExTha would be rallying for Tifa on reddit

And people wonder why I called him a fucking hypocrite
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CaptainOfCrush posted...

I still find it weird that tumblr had enough people to pull off that Undertale run. Maybe I'm an internet recluse but I almost never hear about that site.

I mean, hentai subreddits also had enough people to pull off Tifa/X and Zelda/Snake. Guess it just goes to show how many people love beating it to weird cartoon porn
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charmander6000 posted...

BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

Reading through these, is the consensus that 2005 was the best contest? It's certainly my personal favourite

In terms of character battles I think it comes down between 2003 and 2005 for most people here (likely on which results they liked better). 2007 was pretty good too if you were fine with L-Block. 2010 deserves some mention, but day/night matches kind of killed it from being the best ever.

While 2002 was new and exciting, the first two rounds were quite forgettable. 2004 had too many SFF matches plus a company cap, 2006 had the female bracket, 2008 didn't feel fresh, 2013 had too much rallying and by 2018 trends no longer exist and for us contest vets we don't have as much free time anymore because we aren't teenagers.

Seems reasonable, I don't remember 2003 too much, since I only started coming here during the villain contest. Think for me it goes 2005 > 2007 > 2010 > 2006 > 2018 > 2008 > 2013
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I voted Alucard, but 2B deserves a lot of credit
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It's crazy to think, but when Mario/Link 1 happened, Ocarina of Time was only a 4 year old game. To put it into perspective, we are further removed from Link Between Worlds than 2002 was from OoT. We are almost as far removed from BotW as 2002 was from Majora's Mask.
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Reading through these, is the consensus that 2005 was the best contest? It's certainly my personal favourite
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Doc Louis was in a contest before? How do I not remember this?
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Nelson_Mandela posted...

KamikazePotato posted...

transience posted...

67.

I was thinking about this match recently. It's the only time I've ever been on Board 8 where the aftermath of a match made me feel distinctly uncomfortable (and I picked Vincent). I remember voting, seeing the results and just...cringing a little as I imagined what the blowback towards the users who supported Kerrigan was going to be.

Was it black turtle or maybe... Kyle Bowen or KP who adamantly backed kerrigan? I remember weeks of buttdamage.

I took Kerrigan but I don't remember being particularly adament about it.

I think I got 1 point in the Devil division, Squall > Geno
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Wow, Extha showing good taste? What is this?

All Day was better though
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transience posted...

64.



I have a real soft spot for this match. Sonic and Mega Man was an endless debate for the best non-Nintendo gaming icon. It was a N9 match that actually lived up to the hype -- Mega Man was only ever losing for a few minutes during that ever-deadly Europe vote in the middle of the night. Sonic made a push later in the day and threatened to take the lead but Mega Man's night vote held on for him.

With this match and the Crono match next round that Crono would win narrowly, the N9, for maybe the first time, had a truly established pecking order. Clinkeroth, then Mario, then Samus and Crono, then Mega, then Sonic, and then Snake. It felt like it would always be that way -- until that Brawl trailer, and until Sonic got a shot at Crono the next year.

This is probably my favourite match of all time. So much on the line and a great comeback
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SuperNiceDog posted...

I think another trend was "badass, traditionally cool, alpha-male lead characters underperforming"

This means Snake, Sephiroth, Zidane, Sonic, Noctis, Squall, Mega Man X, Leon Kennedy, Zero, Big Boss., Mewtwo(I know there's female Mewtwos now... but still he's seen as a guy)

Another one, Riku

Ehhhhh

Snake, Big Boss and Seph have valid reasons to have dropped, MGS going to shit and FF7 not having a meaningful release in over a decade.

lol @ considering Zidane to be 'alpha'

Sonic is a mystery to me, the rest of Sonic team looked good coming off of Mania, but again, I don't think anyone considers Sonic to be 'alpha'

Noctis is a garbage character from a garbage game that noone played

X and Zero looked pretty good after you see where Tifa and Pikachu ended up

Leon was a surprise, but I think his strength was based off of RE4 getting a port on every console up to last generation, and that finally drying up.

Mewtwo was always suspect in terms of strength

I don't know that I buy your theory
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SJWFF and hentai rallies
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I feel like the people that didn't see 2B coming didn't play GotY 2017
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red sox 777 posted...

Logience posted...

_Dog_ posted...

@HaRRicH posted...

Can't wait for us to get to the eligibility of religious figures.

I could see the internet rally for Pope Francis!

Nah, get John Paul II. I'd love to see Poland be the deciding factor in a poll.

Heck, maybe we could start a really big DDOS attack by putting him up against Geralt.

The conservative Catholics will rally for Link to stop Pope Francis.

I'm curious to see a conservative catholic vs hentai pervert rally-off
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I think you people are crazy if you think any of those characters are going to be higher than 20% on Link, aside from a few of the big ones like Vader/Spiderman. At this point, I can't see any DC heroes being worth anything, for all the Batman/Joker talk, I feel lik you people are stuck in 2008
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So besides Smash and BotW, what other powerhouses are we looking at for GotD2?
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Honestly, if we just skip next year and go right into GotD2 at the beginning of 2020, I'd be totally okay with that.

Then I can become the first multi-time Guru champion. Spoilers, Breath of the Wild is going to win, and Smash Ultimate will be the close #2
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I've never see creativename be this militantly stupid and wrong about something.
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creativename posted...

HaRRicH posted...

Please keep these contests to just video game character-originals, thanks.

Please make these contests ten times more interesting rather than the same old crap weve seen a bazillion times, thanks.

The people whining and demanding Link be removed from the bracket should be demanding fictionals.

God, such a contest would be SOOOO much more interesting that its just outrageous. That people would be against this is just weird to me. I highly doubt most would be against it.

Certainly the activity level in these topics would go up a lot if we had a fictionals contest. There would be so much more to discuss.

There seems to be no downsides except maybe for some strange sense of conservativism or traditionalism that some might have.

I mean, you dont actually believe such a contest would be less FUN right?

So if it would be more *fun* - why are you against it?

And if you really do think it would be less fun - how could that possibly be? How is Wolverine vs. Sonic and Spider-Man vs. Snake not more interesting than same old, same old...?

What is sooo great, so amazing about the same group of ten elites dominating everything all the time, with Link a virtual lock to win? I would very much like to know what you think is so wonderful about this.

I mean Im genuinely curious. Whats the logic here?

I find it impossible, absolutely impossible that such a contest wouldnt be more fun.

Make contests great again!

I'm sorry but you're wrong. Change for the sake of change is never a good thing. This contest was fascinating from start to finish, despite the numerous bullshit rallies
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MetalmindStats posted...

BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

Ryu has historically been one of the most consistant characters.

MetalmindStats posted...

And don't say "muh previous contests"

Hmmm...

To more properly address this, Ryu did not look good at all in his Round 1 or Round 3 matches. His result against Lloyd was barely ahead of Fox's 2010 percentage, and he failed to contend for a doubling on KOS-MOS after she looked off all contest. (And it's no wonder, given her lack of TJF this time around.) Ryu's only good performance before Sephiroth was against Shepard, and we all know what happened to him. As for why Chun-Li looked good despite all that, for one, I do think she's legitimately gotten stronger over the years, as her increase from something like 26% (as of 2002) to 43% against Ryu in the latest favorite Street Fighter character poll would indicate. I would also propose that voters take out their frustration over failed games/series disproportionately on their main character or other face of the series due to associating them most heavily with the state of the series in question, hence why Shepard looked on par with Garrus at best, and why Snake looked so much weaker than before. This would also explain why Ryu looked so off, given Street Fighter V.

Also, that "leap in logic" that me and others are using to put Samus ahead of Mario indirectly is the same one that you're using to claim Ryu hasn't decreased, except we're at least conceding that things have changed in the past 10+ years - in this case, we're admitting that Mario's ability to pull hierarchy on Samus has weakened significantly (or at least I don't think I've seen anyone claim that Samus would score close to 60% on a neutral character of Mario's strength). Another point in favor of Samus being indirectly ahead of Mario - Samus scored over 56% on Snake, whose result against Zelda was very similar to Mario's. While I'll concede that late contest weirdness and limited transitivity contributed to that, you're calling for a practically unprecedented margin of weirdness by saying Samus isn't indirectly ahead of Mario given those results. Furthermore, SFF hierarchies weakening also dovetails nicely with that Tifa > Sephiroth result. It's also worth noting that putting Sephiroth about on par with Mega Man and Crono results in Yoshi scoring ~56% on Amaterasu and Bowser pulling about 57% on her, versus Luigi's 59% in 2010. Not a huge difference, yes, but I would not expect those Mario characters to move in the wrong direction in terms of strength compared to Amaterasu, given their recent relevance and her lack of it.

Again, historically Occam's Razor has been very applicable to contest results: the answer with the least assumptions is often the correct one. You took 2 giant paragraphs of dancing around to come to your conclusion, all I did was throw out the really weird Tifa/Seph match and everything else fell into place.
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BarbaricAvatar posted...

Can always count on Gamefaqs to worship anything Zelda, Final Fantasy or Nintendo.
I'm glad i didn't grow up with any of these games, i have a more balanced view of the industry as a consequence.

Missing out on a lot of the objectively best video games ever made is 'balanced'? I guess you're kind of right, when you haven't played any of the best games, I suppose all the shitty games like Fortnite look a lot better by comparison
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MetalmindStats posted...

BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

that puts Ryu at a really really weak level which makes zero sense.

Why? And don't say "muh previous contests" when you're denying that Mario could have pulled rSFF on an indirectly stronger Samus.

Ryu has historically been one of the most consistant characters. If Chun-Li looked like shit I might have believed it, but she looked really good as well, and so did Ryu in every match prior to running into Seph.

I dunno, you all seem pretty convinced, but nothing anyone has said has convinced me that you guys are right about the placement of Samus/Zelda/Seph. There are too many leaps in logic to peg Samus indirectly higher than Mario, and Sephiroth being any weaker than Mega Man and Crono.
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Congratulations and welcome to the club!
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