By Ken "xander" Smith

Well then. Two days in a row I turned on my computer, hopped onto GotFrag, looked at the Painkiller melee, and then screamed “WHAT!” several times. This weekend has to be the oddest weekend for gaming that I have ever seen, and not only in the Painkiller tourney, either. In CS, the big favourites, coL and NiP, went down to mouz who, though an amazing team, wasn’t thought to be a threat to two of the biggest names in Counter-Strike. In PK, we had the almighty Vo0 coming in pretty much undefeated and everyone (including me) was picking him to win, yet again. Some also saw Fatal1ty winning it, or maybe zyz, or Stermy. What had happened next, no one expected.

The strangeness began in the first round. The match-ups had the famed gelleshak playing the CAL-I runner-up dj, 3D ace wombat playing worre, hometown Akiles playing the British wonder Kuula and a skilled player named rat playing Fatal1ty’s partner zen. Though all are very skilled players, everyone expected the winners of these matches to be gelleshak, wombat, Kuula and zen. Instead, all four players lost. I picked gelleshak to place 4th in the tourney and he lost in the first round. My shock could not be expressed. The second round of the winner’s bracket saw Akiles take down the other big name 3D player daler, who I picked to place 6th.

The first round of the loser bracket had the most disappointing match-ups I think I’ve ever seen in tournament history. Not just game wise, but in the inevitable results of the match. We had gelleshak playing wombat – regardless of the outcome, one of the best players at the tournament was going home after only two games. I expected to see these two go deep into the tourney and do some serious damage. Instead, we saw wombat being sent home way earlier than he should have. The next two rounds of the loser’s bracket saw some of the best players in the tournament get knocked out: Destrukt, Kuula, gelleshak, zen, and Zaccubus among them.

The Americans had a pretty disappointing showing with Fatal1ty being the only player placing in the top 8 and daler the only other player finishing in the money. Most Americans ended up going out as 17th-24th with wombat going down after two matches and finishing even lower. On the upside, we saw dj taking down the 5th ranked player in the world, gelleshak. I would not be surprised to see a big name team pick up the clanless dj after his performances in this tournament as well as in CAL last season. Hopefully we’ll see a better American showing in Brazil.

The three biggest stories of the weekend started to emerge as the day went on. Ztrider, who was knocked out of the winner’s bracket by Vo0 in the first round, began to absolutely tear up the loser’s bracket beating five people before losing to the famed Stermy and finishing 5th. Another story of the weekend went down to Ztrider, but not before beating gelleshak, Zaccubus, worre and Rocketboy; this was forrest, who would end up finishing 8th.

The biggest story of the weekend is pretty obvious. He emerged in the 3rd round of the winner’s bracket with a matchup against his fellow SK teammate and tournament favorite, zyz. He would beat zyz convincingly and then totally blew away the Painkiller world by taking down not only the Italian stallion, Stermy but finally beating the almighty Vo0. I recall commenting to a friend that the apocalypse had come. He would then await his opponent in the finals who was, surprise, Vo0 - who had taken down Stermy in the consolation finals. Our CPL Spain winner, SteLam, would once again surprise the world and hold out in a two-match thriller to yet again take out Vo0 and win the tournament.

This weekend showed that eSports is finally falling into a realm of competition befitting a major sport – no longer will the tournament favorite always win. The Cinderella teams and players have more of a chance. Dynasties are no longer likely: in PK, the unbeatable Vo0 has been struck down; in CS, the invincible American team Complexity fell and the former SK juggernaut, NiP, also lost. The world better look out because eSports is on its way up.