The group play ends with a few surprises and some results not so surprising. Complexity's group didn't have too much competition except for the West Coast team wcR, but they managed to get by just fine in their group. WEW was in the same situation and managed to give up the least amount of rounds of any team in all the group stages. As for the other two groups, there were some big surprises. One was the three-way tie in group 4 with CyberGlobe taking it by rounds. The other was the biggest upset of the tournament, with a Southern California team, 3DO, managing to take down 2nd place CPL Summer 2005 team Evil Geniuses.

The first team we're going to talk about is compLexity. All eyes are on them coming into their first event after taking home the ESWC 2005 championship. They had a bit of a roster shakeup, cutting Justin "Sunman" Summy and replacing him with GamerCo's Derek "exodus" Heidinger. A lot of people were skeptical about this pickup and downplayed exodus' role on the team, but although playing lower tier teams, he was definitely one of the outstanding stars of the day. It probably would have been a better test for the team's new lineup, if they were put into group 2, but they weren't, and now day two will be a much better test for them to show that their new lineup can still take out top North American teams.

Next up is team WeekEnd Warriors. Their group was probably the easiest group of the day and they showed it by absolutely dominating the entire group. They managed to give up only six total rounds out of the three matches. There isn't much to say about this team except that, if nothing goes wrong against Cyberglobe, they will have a change to prove that this new lineup can compete with the #1 team in North America, compLexity, and possibly even take the tournament.

Moving on...

Group 4 was rather interesting, with three great California local teams competing against each other to gain a little more respect in the West Coast LAN scene. Everybody expected iDemise to breeze through this group after their surprising CPL performance, and after Cyberglobe lost to kmindz, it looked as though this would be the obvious outcome. iDemise did great in their first two matches, beating qt 16-3, and kmindz 16-6, but still had to face off with the other team that could possibly take the group, Cyberglobe. Cyberglobe dominated their first match against qt, and then paired up with team kmindz on de_nuke. After getting a very respectable 7 rounds on the offensive side, it seemed as though the match was in the bag on this defensively favored map...wrong. Kmindz had some great and unexpected teamwork and tactics on the offensive side of the map, and only gave up three rounds before taking the match. After this match, everyone thought that iDemise was going to roll over Cyberglobe and take this group, but as we all know by now, that did not happen. Cyberglobe started off on the defensive side of de_inferno and managed to end the first half 10-5. After seeing this, all of the admins started talking about how it would then come down to rounds, if Cyberglobe were to defeat team iDemise, and would then have three teams with a 2-1 win-loss record. Cyberglobe beat iDemise and since they had such a close match with kmindz, they were able to edge out iDemise in total rounds by only three rounds.

And last but not least, the group that shocked the world, group 2. EG was coming into this tournament with the same lineup that just placed second at CPL just weeks ago, but they seemed to have underestimated the skill of the teams out West. EG is probably one of the most interesting teams to watch, just because of the fact that their chemistry is so great, due to the fact that they have kept the same lineup for years (except for the recent stand-in of shaGuar to replace Scottie B. due to inactivity). This team has their setups and strats, but they also do a lot of on-the-fly setups, stacks, and peeks that a lot of teams can't do, without getting killed in the process. Although this team has outstanding chemistry with one another, they suffered the most disappointing loss a top team can come across at a tournament, and that's losing to a team that you know doesn't belong on your level. I am not trying to downplay 3DO at all. They are a great team out West, but when you're playing against a team with years of international experience and large amounts of practice, such as EG, there is no reason for EG losing the match. 3DO played a great match. It definitely made a great statement for a lesser known team for their first LAN event. EG is a great team and you can bet that by the time WCG rolls around, they will be back to the same team that everyone has known for years.

Upper Bracket Round 1: de_train
compLexity vs. Cyberglobe
W.E.W. vs. 3DO
Upper Bracket Round 2 and Lower Bracket Round 1: de_nuke
Lower Bracket Round 2: de_inferno
Championships: de_dust2

It will be a very interesting tournament from here on and out. The real question at hand is whether or not any of these West Coast based teams can take out one of the undisputed top teams in the world, compLexity.