Advokaiser

Advokaiser has been on GameFAQs since 2007, and posting on Board 8 and following Contests since 2010. He did well in Game of the Decade but had a breakout year in 2018 when he won the Guru Contest for Character Battle X.

2018 Guru Championship Speech
My history in Board 8 (who is Advokaiser?)

Hi, fellow friends. I'm Advo, I'm from Mexico, and I'm 23 years old. English is my second language. I'm a huge fan of videogame music, and have participated in many Board 8 projects, although I've yet to start a board project of my own.

I joined GameFAQs in 2010. I was 14 at the time. I had previously been using the site for cheats and guides since around 2007 or so. I especially remember following a guide for Castlevania: Curse of Darkness -- the brand new game I was playing at the time. My older brother saw that I was using the site a lot, so he said to me: "Why don't you create an account there?" I was unsure, but I ultimately went for it. I saw that there was a Character Battle going at the time, but didn't pay attention to it, especially after I was a little disappointed with the match I had been looking for: Link vs. Alucard, since I thought it was gonna be close (how far have we come, huh?). At that time I thought Mario was the strongest character on the site.

I used to hang out in the Poll of the Day board, but I didn't feel too comfortable there, so I switched to the GameFAQs Contests board. My first real contest was Game of the Decade. For some reason, I didn't nominate any games, but I still entered a bracket anyway. I looked at it, having not heard of half of the entire bracket's games. I don't know exactly how it happened, but I stumbled upon a certain user's prediction and analysis topic. His name was KamikazePotato. Long story short, I managed to finish 11th (I think?) in the Guru thanks to it, without ever participating in a contest before, and having no idea of any contest's stats prior. How did I achieve that? I did some tweaks to KP's predictions in debatable matches: Metroid Prime > Half-Life 2, Brawl > Melee, Majora's Mask > GSC, etc. I was really happy with my result, and didn't have a remotely better result than that in the following contests... until now. I discovered some other projects along the way, my favorite being the Oracle Challenge, and I enjoyed the board's overall mood while it lasted. I was also going through a beautiful part in my lifetime, so that contest definitely holds a special place in my heart. So I decided to stay here and participate in every contest since.

My first actual Character Battle was 2013's. I was so confused by so many unrecognizable names and overall difficulty to even make a bracket. I also skipped the Oracle since the 3-way format was nearly impossible for me to figure out. Draven was the icing on the cake for a truly devastating contest experience. BGE 2015 ran in a somewhat similar fashion, so I was disappointed and thought contests would never be fun anymore. By the time BYIG came along, my family and I where going through harsh times, but I enjoyed the contest since it was short and sweet, but most importantly, there weren't any rallies. Whatever happened to the questionable management of the contest is something I won't take into account because I still enjoyed the contest a good amount.

Fast-forward to October 2018. I followed KP's topic and went for the same strategy as years prior: Listen to him, but pull the trigger in debatable matches. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have known about KOS-MOS backstory, Tifa's superpower, or Pokémon's normal strength. I went for Tifa reaching Samus, but I also almost went for Zelda going all the way to Snake and losing to Auron. I figured Crono would boost from his game's performance in 2015, but not enough to beat Cloud, who I figured would have enough of a Smash boost to catapult himself to #2 again.

All-in-all, this is the most fun I've had since 2010, and I can't believe I am where I am right now. This is my biggest accomplishment on the site's history, and I think my Oracle performance is the best I've had as well.

Shoutouts and Special Thanks
 * God. I believe in Him, He's my Lord and Savior and I've been enormously blessed by Him.
 * My brother and mother, for their endless support in everything I do and care about.
 * KamikazePotato, because without his contest analysis, my bracket would have gone an entirely different way (you should pay closer attention to his analysis next time!).
 * Ngamer64, for hosting the Guru; Ange for co-hosting it, as well as everyone involved in the process.
 * TeamRocketElite for hosting the Oracle, participating in the Stats and Discussion topics and being an overall awesome authority here.
 * Steiner, for hosting the Battle Challenge, in which I also participated in.
 * hylianknight3, for never letting me catch up to him in the Oracle Challenge, and both tennisboy213 and LusterSoldier for reinforcing that barrier.
 * ZenOfThunder for making me laugh continuously with his great GIFs and memes.
 * Luster, TRE and LeonhartFour, for contributing nice info and updates in the Stats topics, as well as everyone who also contributed to it.
 * charmander6000, for his pre-matches' analysis, which I also took into account to make my own predictions.
 * And everyone who makes their own projects, write-ups, etc., and that overall make this board a really cool place to hang out (and that I may have forgotten to mention).