Whenever a huge tournaments is about to happen, there's always a strange sense of calmness before it starts. Preparations have been made for weeks, sometimes months, and you feel like you've prepared everything to a tee. No stone left unturned, no hole to cover up, nothing can go wrong. As always, it's just the calm before the storm. Let's talk about what happened.
The day started as any other hectic tournament normally starts - with chaos. The minute we said go, the tournament bracket homepage went offline. A few minutes later, we got the sad news that
GT had to forfeit the tournament citing real life reasons. Throw some server issues into the mix and you've got yourself a normal start to a massive and hectic tournament. But, once the problems were resolved, the tournament moved very smoothly, much thanks to the awesome QuakeCon staff member FreAk who helped direct players to servers while managing the bracket at the same time. He used four monitors - one for the stream, discord, bracket, and an enormous list that I had provided him with including every player's location, every server that was to be used for any potential matchup, and even from which part of the US American players were playing from - and had to work hard to keep up with the intense pace of the tournament. What a trooper. I'm sure nobody could have guessed that this was actually his first time in a role like that. He truly did a splendid job.
The stream was also hard pressed to manage things. Game commentary was lacking quite a bit due to having to manage rulings, rematches, and answering several other questions that always get asked when players don't read the rule book properly before entering a tournament. It's easy to forget that information being out there does not equal all players taking part of that information. This is not an isolated QuakeWorld thing. The ESL mails out physical rule books that participants are required to read through if they are to participate in an event. One can understand that this is the boring part of signing up for a tournament - you just want to play some games - but it does put organizers in a difficult position. It becomes a whack-a-mole of answering questions that are already answered in the rule book that players are expected to read, and in a relatively small scene, it's not like you can start punishing players for not reading the information that is available to them. But, I personally was and to some extent still am a player, and I can understand signing up for tournaments without necessarily reading every single word in a rule book.
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With all the bad stuff out of the way, what did we see in Day 1?On the upper side of the winner's bracket we saw plenty - actually all but one - of the Australians duke it out but with no real upsets.
Drax did what he was supposed to do and
Yeti dodged a bullet, or rather an insanely skilled Brazilian, when
GT forfeited the tournament. More notable games were played in the second part of the upper bracket.
er managed to beat :flag_us: / :flag_ru: B1aze 2-1, only to fall to :flag_us: Sane, 0-2. Sane had previously beaten
isimom, the up and coming star player from Chile, who plays with seemingly the same playstyle as GT. Did he learn from GT, or is it just the way South Americans play Quake? Unfortunately, isomom had to face B1aze first in the loser's bracket, losing 2-1 to end his run for this time. Keep your eyes open on this guy though, he's the real deal!
We also got to witness more awesomeness from the legendary
Reload as he made his way through two very difficult opponents in
Serp and perhaps even more notably,
Nitemare. Serp had already dispersed of
/
vON, another amazing player. Someone who had perhaps the most difficult path to the winner bracket quarter finals was
Dirtbox. Not only did he first have to beat
Billy-The-Kid, the recent star player from the Russian scene, he also had to take on
Nemesis, the dm6 monster who kind of stays away from the spotlight only to suddenly make you look like a fool, especially on dm6.
As with every other tournament, we unfortunately had to say ggs to a bunch of players in the lower bracket.
Hammer lost in a heart breaker to fellow countryman
Nitemare,
Zorak, the arenaFPS superstar who has recently shown interest in QuakeWorld, fought his way through two opponents in the lower bracket before going down. This is another guy to keep an eye on, with some experience and some coaching, he has the potential to be the next North American superstar. Keep hitting him up, especially for duels!
Dusty lost to Serp, and
dEF couldn't keep up when Billy-The-Kid decided that there's no way he'll go out this early in a tournament.
The always reliable
LuGia tasted bitter defeat against B1aze, and
Anni lost to Zorak. To them, and everybody else who were eliminated, ggs and thanks for playing!
Who we lost: GT
Nico
Pred
Coj
Hammer
Anyother
Anni
RaggA
k0ng
Homer0
g0dly-en0ch7
RuSS
Turbo
Ncr
/
Tautheory
Omicron
E99E
Namtsui
isimom
I am someone
Jinoru
Zorak
dEF
Valde
Dusty
LuGia
Moksha
gLAd
-
What we have to look forward toYou
don't want to miss this Saturday when the tournament resumes. With 16 players remaining in the tournament, we already see a plethora of good games coming up.
In the winner's bracket, not only will we see the two Australian 4on4 power houses Yeti and Dracs go toe to toe, we'll also see games that we perhaps thought impossible a decade ago, with
Sane taking on
Reload being a prime example. The winner bracket quarter finals are already such amazing matchups that I almost dare not predict any of them.
Dracs vs Yeti
Sane vs Reload
Bogojoker vs Dirtbox
Blood Dog vs Lordlame
Do I need to say more? Holy moly... and that's only the winner bracket quarter finals.
The loser's bracket is not much less stacked. Nitemare, er, Billy-The-Kid, vON, Serp, B1aze, Nemesis and the scary x1bot all remain and will face elimination in their first games come Saturday.
The first day is in the books, but BOY do I look forward to seeing the outcome of this tournament!
We're in for a hell of a ride. You should join us.Who remain: Dracs
Yeti
Sane
Reload
Bogojoker
Dirtbox
Blood Dog
Lordlame
NItemare
er
Billy-The-Kid
vON
Serp
B1aze
Nemesis
x1bot
--
On Saturday, we'll find out who makes it to the Grand Finals to play in front of the world at QuakeCon 2021. High octane action is coming your way. Catch it all on
https://www.twitch.tv/suddendeathTV.
The action starts at 3pm ET / 21:00 CEST / 5am AEST. We will see you there.Stream::
SuddendeathTVBracket:
Tournament BracketVOD of Day 1:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1111235693
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