Est. 2011 Vol. XIV — No. 212
Independent · Unindexed · Unbought
TheReality Daily
Today Winchester Bureau
Print edition suspended indefinitely

The Record of What Actually Happened

Section

Fact Audit

Sports · Fact Audit Desk · Competitive Viability Unit

Forty-Year-Old Father of Two Says He Might Go Pro at StarCraft, Four Hours After Reinstalling It

He said it in the kitchen, at 11:40 on a Tuesday night, in the tone of a man raising a practical option. This newspaper measured his actions per minute at forty-one. The professionals he proposes to compete against sustain three hundred and forty, practise sixty hours a week in a house in Seoul, and are mostly finished by twenty-five because they started at thirteen.

A man in his forties sits at a desk in a family room playing a real-time strategy game on a large monitor, one hand on the mouse and one on a keyboard. A woman in pyjamas stands in the doorway behind him with her hands on her hips, watching. A lettered board above the monitor reads BUILD, SCAN, MICRO, REPEAT. A mug on the desk reads BEST DAD EVER and a bottle beside the monitor reads DAD FUEL. A dog lies on the floor of the hallway behind them.
The claim, in the room where it was made. Mr Ostergaard at the desk in the family room, photographed during a reporting visit on 29 September. At this newspaper's request both parties returned to the positions they occupied on the night of 9 September. He is playing a live ranked game and was, at the moment of exposure, issuing forty-four actions a minute, which is three above his mean and the highest figure recorded in his file but one. The lettered sign above the monitor is his own and predates this newspaper's involvement. Mrs Ostergaard's expression was not requested.Photo: Supplied

More in Fact Audit

Fact Audit

Connor's Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad, Our Sources Confirm

The claim was made at 3:14 p.m. on Tuesday, 2 September, in the dismissal zone at Willow Run Elementary, by a nine-year-old, to an audience of nine-year-olds, and it was not original. What makes it worth five weeks is that it appears to be true — and that the man it is about would very much prefer we stopped.

By Dale R. Kettering · 14 min read · September 7, 2026