"The battle of the Northeast", "The biggest LAN Center Tournament of all time" and "Every team on the East Coast that LANs is here this weekend". These were just some of the quotes taken from participants of web2zone's President Day Weekend Tournament this past weekend. The 2-day event marked one of the largest tournaments held at web2zone | NYC. The tournament filled up with 32 teams in the span of less than a month. Teams traveled great distances to partake in the competition. Some players flew in from the west coast, while others drove in from the south. web2zone's local teams remained loyal as well, traveling via the NYC Subway system and other conventional ways. The tournament was broken down into two segments, the first pitting teams into group play and the second matching up the top placing teams in each respective group in a single elimination (best of three series) bracket. . .

Day 1:

Group 1 consisted of teams ATP, Brutesmaps are Bad, x3o and huntaz. The first matches of the morning moved along quickly. Team ATP consisted of some “old-school” local talent and was arguably the favorite to win the group. However, they were unable to withstand the domination of x3o. Commotion broke out in the spectator area about alleged attempts by x3o to distract their opponents by disguising their manager as a ghost (in a bright white suit). The second group included dextrous, Five Players, profiLe and the heavily favored h5m. Team h5m proved why they are one of the top teams in local web2zone competitions by destroying the opponents in their group. Group four, also known as group upset, brought together MissedMe and TFM. MissedMe was expected to take down their group but TFM managed to oust them in a 16-13 fashion. Teams beyond belief and Moment of Impact also participated in the group. As the sun set for the day, eight more teams played out to determine who would move on to Day 2. Teams f2 and GB both advanced out of groups 5 and 6 with ease. They took on teams such as iLLicit, NERFED, Genome, [ocn], MiA and Heroes of E-sports.


Day 2:

The last two groups of the tournament arrived early Sunday morning to unfortunately discover that internet connection @ web2zone and surrounding areas was down. Admins at web2zone reverted to backup lines with little success. It turned out that the local Central Office of routing for broadband ISPs was experiencing difficulties and there was no ETA on when connection would be restored in the area. After numerous attempts, web2zone was able to obtain limited connectivity with a backup line. It was just enough to allow Admins to manually login to the Steam Network to authenticate before reverting back to the default network and accessing Steam's Offline Mode. The remainder of the event was played out on LAN without the amount of extensive Internet coverage that was provided on the first day. It was later discovered that web2zone was just one of 926 connections in the area affected by the outage.


After the inevitable delays, groups 7 and 8 went underway. Teams esT and endurance earned their spot into the final bracket by ousting teams: toogood, hyper4mance, weLAN, isolated effect, extreme gamers and never question.


Single Elimination Standings & Prizes:

1st: h5m - $1500 Cash, SteelPad 5L (x5)
2nd: GB - $500 Cash Icemat Siberia (x5)
3rd: f2 - $250 Cash, Steelpad QCK+ (x5), PNY Attaché Flashdrive 256MB (x5)
4th: esT - PNY Attaché Flashdrive 128MB(x5)
5th-8th: TFM, endurance, x3o & cX - Steelpad QCK (x5)

MVP: David “Merk” - PNY GeForce 6800 GS PCIe 256MB

(GotFrag coverage of the event can be found at http://www.gotfrag.com/cs/story/31439/
Match Results & Team Details can be found @ http://events.esportsea.com/40)


The Single Elimination Brackets proved to be the highlight of the entire weekend. Top teams traveled from around the east coast, competing for thousands of dollars in cash, prizes and most of all respect. In the past four years, web2zone has been active in growing and building a community of gamers, competitors and friends. For a team to place at a major tournament at web2zone has become a task to accomplish for many teams on the east coast. In the past few years, our team has seen players and teams start from scratch, building friendships and chemistry that define what the new generation of competitors should aspire to build.

web2zone appreciates and welcomes the coverage provided by Gotfrag and iTG (Inside the Game). We would like to thank Intel, PNY and SteelPad | IceMat for providing their unmatched hardware & accessories that make our tournament stations unmatched. But most of all, web2zone would like to thank the gamers for their loyalty, respect and cooperation.


Demos & Pictures will be uploaded within the week. Stay tuned for more web2zone and CSA Networked events in the near future.

*Announced last week!! - PNY March Madness CS 1.6 National Tournament: http://gotfrag.com/cs/story/31397/

[csa]-kurts