Forensic Evidence: Arkosh Gaming’s “Pale Horse” is North America’s Brian “BananaSlamJamma” Canavan

Brian "BananaSlamJamma" Canavan goes by many names: "Banana Man," "Promocode BSJ," and "Mr. Deadlane." Now, in a Reddit dota2 exclusive, I present forensic evidence that he has recently assumed the alias of "Pale Horse" in the Arkosh Gaming lineup.

You will notice in the tables below that the player/demon/thing known as Pale Horse uses the same item slots as BSJ for many items. Most obvious are that boots are always in the first item slot, bottles in the second, wands and BKBs in the third slot, and silver edges always in the sixth slot.

The tables below show the item slots used for three heroes that Pale Horse has played in recent matches compared with BSJ's item slot usage for the same heroes in his recent matches. The most significant patterns are bolded. Some of the item slot usage in the tables is from the mid-game instead of at the end of the game since items like wands or bottles are generally sold before the game is completed.

Phantom Lancer

Leshrac

Sven

The patterns are quite clear even across only a short amount of games and strongly suggestive that the two players are one and the same. I imagine continuing this study across more heroes or games would yield similar results.

A proper study would also account for how likely these similarities are "by chance" (that is, the null hypothesis that Pale Horse is not BSJ). That could be done by computing a similarity score between the item slot usage of the two accounts and comparing this score to the distribution of scores generated when comparing Pale Horse and other NA players. This is time consuming to do in a rigorous way. Instead I will show that a random sample of other notable NA players have quite different item slot utilization for one hero: PL. By including players in the table below I'm not suggesting that they could be Pale Horse–I am only including them to give a baseline of how different item slot usage is across a random sample of top-tier players in NA.

Phantom Lancer (NA Players)

(Note: Some matches are very old because not all these players frequently play as PL)

Conclusion:

None of a random sample of 6 top-tier NA players have very similar item slot usage to Pale Horse. The fact that BSJ and Pale Horse have such similar item slot usage appears to be a statistical anomaly and indicates they are likely the same person.

^{Disclaimer: Nothing in this study is intended to claim, imply, or otherwise suggest that Arkosh Gaming is a cult.}