CPL Turkey Gallery 1

As I stayed in Turkey after the last CPL Istanbul, it was really easy to come back here for the event. After the 45-minute flight, I arrived in Istanbul on Thursday evening and headed right away for the event venue, which is a ten minute drive from the airport. When I arrived I was in for a surprise; seeing dozens of bodyguards at the gates of a CPL event isn't something usual. A few minutes later I saw that the event venue was hosting a big concert that night, and since I didn't have any kind of event badge with me, they wouldn't let me inside and I had to go to my friends house and get a good night's sleep for Friday.

I woke up just before noon and headed for the event venue and I finally got inside this time. It was really crowded inside, with booths already set up, and the player practice area was full. I met up with all the players and had a few quick words on what's going on so far. Almost everybody agreed that the setup and the venue were both far better than the last event, but they were complaining about being called in at 10 AM even though the tournament area was still having power issues at around 2 PM.

The tourney area is upstairs with the media booth located right by it, which is really useful. I can just walk 20 feet to spectate matches and come back to update stuff - certainly a big plus. Admins were still working on the Internet and power issues, trying to power up all the 20 machines at once and get the network responding normally. It was 6 PM and no matches were played so far and players were getting restless when Scott Valencia got kind of angry and told everyone that everything should be set up in 20 minutes to play the Single Elimination matches. Then I learn that there's another concert tonight at 9 PM in the venue and it's going to be unplayable because of the high volume when it goes live.

Single elimination matches started around 7 PM, they were between the 24th-38th seeds so there weren't really good matches. After those matches, admins wanted to have the first half of the winner bracket first round matches done before 9 PM but the players weren't feeling good after waiting almost 10 hours and said that they didn't have the concentration to play a match at that time. Only one match in winners bracket, Vo0 vs Burnie, was played, and the reigning champion won the match comfortably. This gives Vo0 a big advantage for the next day, which should be enormously long since it's expected that tournament is going to be played until the Final.

Everybody went back to the hotel at 9 PM while the admins stayed at the venue to make sure everything would be ready for the long day on Saturday. Even though today was a short day, so far the event is looking much better than the last time and I'm pretty sure it'll be done on time and in fashion.