When I first entered the venue, everything looked really impressive. The booths looked great, and there was a long line of spectators waiting to get inside. The opening ceremonies were great with the awarding of the national teams, and even some folk dancing. Beyond The Game started blasting from the speakers, and I was pumped up for what I thought would be a great event. Little did I know...

Organizational Problems

From the lack of communication with the event organizers, to not knowing the list of teams attending the event until the day of the event, this was easily the worst organized event that I have been to. When I finally received the schedule, I was surprised to see there were only three teams playing. Not only that, but there was no time scheduled for any of the particular matches. I spoke with the head CS admin at the event, and he informed me that the matches would be delayed until later that night, or Sunday because they were using the computers for Warcraft III.

I feel I should explain the situation, which I think could have easily been avoided. They had six tables set up with computers. Five of those tables had four computers each, with the other table having six (the one they would use for CS). With FIFA, AoE3, Starcraft, and NFS3 using four of those tables, they put Warcraft on four of the computers at the CS table, instead of the remaining open table. This is what caused the delay of CS, and with all of the games running right to the end, they had to eventually push back the matches until Sunday morning.

mibr with 3

I found out during the middle of the day that mibr only had three players at the event. It's pretty unfortunate as I was looking forward to watching them play both EG teams. Now it's looking like it will just be EG vs EG tomorrow for the finals, which I really hope will be a best of three so we can actually see some CS being played. I'm going to try and push for that tomorrow morning, if it isn't already planned.

Returning to my roots

With CS being delayed until the completion of Warcraft III, I decided to spectate that tournament for the day instead. Nikolaus "SonKiE" Cassidy and Martin "apm" Sanfacon really stole the show, proving to be far and away the best players at the event. I didn't exactly expect anything different, and felt that the match between the two could go either way, which SonKiE ended up winning. That match didn't mean anything at all, and tomorrow

Ending the day on a positive note

Towards the end of the day I finally decided to suck it up and try the cafeteria. None of the employees there spoke English, but the only problem I had was saying "fries please" and ending up with a Sprite, which isn't too bad. The hamburger actually had a slice of ham on it, which I thought was pretty amusing, and overall tasted really good. As I was eating and packing up, FIFA was the last game still playing, and oh man did they all of a sudden get loud. The Latin American players just started screaming after every goal, especially when one of their comrades were playing against KreeganBG. I stuck around to watch Kreegan win, mocking the Latin players with his own war cry. On the way back to the hotel, I saw a moon bounce just chilling in the lobby, which I totally thought was the perfect way to end the day.