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paintballimpact.com / Cheating in Paintball / Distraction Tactics
Distraction Tactics - Cheating in Paintball
"Team owners and sponsors are taking the hardline… It ain't enough to be a Pro anymore. You have to be a winner, or at the very least consistently competitive, which is not a bad thing given the object of the competing is winning. The reality though is that more teams are gonna lose than are gonna win. So, here we are in the era of the Pro Loser and it's a dog eat dog world out there. The truth is nobody likes a loser, particularly the folks who have a financial stake in the outcome."
- Paul Richards, Paintball Games International magazine.
This article summarizes the culture as it exists today with regards to professional paintball. Players are not just expected to play competitively, but to win no matter what. Losing could mean dropping back down into the semi-professional division, or it could mean losing a lucrative sponsorship. To win, players will pull out all the stops. Often, doing everything to win includes cheating. The culture of paintball today is that many teams cheat, and cheating is sometimes thought of as just a part of the sport. One form of cheating in paintball involves distraction tactics. Distraction tactics include requesting a paint-check to distract a referee from a hit on another player or teammate. Distraction tactics turn the gaze of the referee away from the real site of impact and towards a dry section of a player's uniform. One of the classic distracting tactics is the fake paint-check. When a player attempts the fake paint-check, he calls over a referee to inspect an imaginary impact, buying his teammate enough time to rub off a real paintball impact.
Cheaters beware, if players are caught doing things such as this, they may be eliminated from the game along with one or more of their teammates.
Unfortunately, distraction tactics like this can be a powerful tactic if a team gets away with it. Imagine that a player and his teammate are running up the right tape and the teammate gets hit with a paintball while the referee has his eye on some other action. The referee hears the impact, but did not turn his attention to the two players quickly enough to see exactly who was hit. Thinking quickly, the one teammate turns towards the ref and calls for a paint-check, The ref comes over, expecting to see splatter marks on the player that in reality don't exist, giving the other player the time he needs to rub the paint off his uniform. As long as there isn't another referee around to catch this hideous act, there is a good chance that they will get away with it, though they will know in their heart that they did the wrong thing by cheating.
Paint-checks can be called by players on the field, or by referees who observe a likely elimination. Sometimes when a referee calls a paint-check, he will call neutral check. A neutral check is a declaration that the player in question cannot fire or be fired upon until the referee can determine whether the player has been eliminated. Neutral checks are generally not called in tournaments such as the NPPL or the Crossroads Tournament Series. The Crossroads Tournament Series is a Midwestern paintball league.
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