Written by Mark "wombat" Larsen

Today was the first day of actual competition here at the CPL, and already we have seen some exciting matches and great players sent home. I’m only going to do summaries of the matches that were mentioned in the Round 2 Preview, unless an unexpected match turns out to be exciting and/or close. The first quarter of the Upper Bracket finished tonight and the final matches of single elimination will be finished on Friday. The matches resume Friday morning at 10 am, so expect a similar match write-up posted in the early afternoon. Also, if there are any specific players you want interviewed tomorrow, feel free to post about them in the comments and I’ll try to get it done.

#33 Christian “deatz.de” Dotzki over #32 Alejandro “x6|ve-elpajuo” Gonzalez
(13-8;24-6)

This match turned out to be the first close and exciting matchup of the tournament. With elpajuo losing the first match on Sacred in the final minutes, deatz managed to secure his lead by getting some favorable spawns. Having more experience in the game than elpajuo does, deatz was able to stay out of harm’s way for the final minutes. The second match took place on Fallen2te, and was dominated by deatz nearly the whole match. He managed to catch elpajuo off guard many times, often shafting him in the back. Before even being aware of what was happening, elpajuo was practically dead. This game showed us the first example of why the lightening gun is overpowered, as elpajuo could never accumulate enough lightening cells to last a whole fight.

Next for deatz: Vo0

#17 Alexey “LeXeR” Nesterov over #48 David “4K^Zaccubus” Treacy
(28-7;35-15)

Both players chose Psycho as their map of choice, and after the first game it was clear Zaccubus regretted choosing it as well. Throughout both games, Zaccubus couldn’t get a solid streak going. Whenever he would get a kill, he usually died immediately to a spawn stake courtesy of LeXeR. This happened over and over in both games, and the frustration building inside of Zaccubus was clear. After more or less every death, Zaccubus would slam his mouse onto the table and let out a little sigh or the occasional f-bomb. LeXeR’s performance was very impressive, as he showed a fluent movement style I’ve never seen from him before. If LeXeR has actually improved on his movement as much as it showed this game, which in my opinion was his only apparent weakness, he may be heading a lot further into the tournament than most expected. 4Kings suffered their first loss of the tournament, with 2 more players possibly getting knocked out in this single elimination round.

Next for LeXeR: brett

#40 Michael “Moerser” Froese over #25 Alexander “e*star Ztrider” Ingarv
(26-16;16-25;21-16)

This was the most exciting match to witness tonight, and Ztrider almost pulled off an amazing comeback on map 3. On the first map Sacred, Moerser started off with a quick lead, and never let Ztrider get complete control on the map. However near the end, Ztrider was able to gain control of the megahealth and the gold armor becoming completely stacked, but could never engage in a head to head fight for more than a few seconds. Eventually Moerser hurt him enough to take him down and close out the match worry free. The next 2 maps took place on Psycho, with the 2nd map being Moerser’s choice. Ztrider played a very impressive game here, and got a lot of spawn kills to increase his lead. Moerser could never get a streak going here, similar to Ztrider’s performance on the last map. With the final match on Psycho as well, Ztrider had the momentum and was expected to win. This, however, was not the case and he quickly found himself down 8-0 within the opening minutes. For the majority of the match, Moerser had complete control and was picking up kills quite steadily. With about 3 minutes left, and down by more than 12, Ztrider attempted an amazing comeback. With Ztrider’s teammates and supporters behind him, every spawn kill was followed up with a cheer. Ztrider was seen waiting for the gold armor to spawn 3 or 4 times during this pivotal period of the match, and those wasted seconds may have cost him the match. This was an impressive showing by Moerser, pulling off the upset, and it’s a shame 1 of these guys has to go home early.

Next for Moerser: clowN

#45 Geoffrey “geoff” Akers over #20 Timothy “FireBlade” Lobes
(19-18;21-14)

In 2 close matches on Psycho and Sacred, both games were decided in the final minute of play. The first game on Psycho featured about 15 stake kills total, preventing anyone from getting stacked and running the map. With just over a minute left geoff was winning by 4 frags, and was starting to be chased down. Instead of running away and playing defensively, he decided it was best to continue to fight FireBlade head on. Doing so almost cost him the match, as he finally secured the win with only a few seconds left. The match would have been lost if he hadn’t been able to win a fight where FireBlade was trapped in the air above the Silver Armor. The second match didn’t feature a lot of stake kills or even stake hits, and this allowed the pace of the game to be a lot quicker than the last. With geoff maintaining control of the gold armor and megahealth for most of the game, a few crucial fights in the megahealth room could have altered the final result. FireBlade lost about 3 fights in this room, with geoff barely surviving each time due to the extra 100 health pickup. Despite the final score, the match was almost always within a 2 point frag difference. In the final minute, geoff was able to rack up an amazing 8 spawn kills, making him the clear winner of this match.

Next for geoff: boxcar