After only a single set of three maps, the Russian mousesports representative, Anton 'cooller' Singov has defeated Johan 'toxic' Quick. With expert map control, aggressive gunplay and general confidence in his skills, cooller was able to keep even the one map he lost to the impressive toxic within reach. Here's a brief recap on some of the important things I noticed during the Quake4 Winter CPL finals.

Phrantic

cooller and toxic both had a good workout on this map yesterday, so they had an idea of how this would play out. The two seemed slightly anxious at first, but cooller settled down and played his game precisely with the Lightning gun and rocket battling. toxic seemed much more sloppy and almost in a state of panic as he traveled the map, missing jumps that he was making all week while sipping drinks and eating Swedish chocolate. cooller cleaned up his mistakes and didn't seem to have trouble with the jumps that he had yesterday, which made the difference for the game.

Both men knew how important the red armor was in the clinch battles, leading to many frags in the red armor chamber whiched amounted in huge rocket kills that gained loud reactions from the crowd in front of the TSN & iTg booths. One of the biggest mistakes that toxic made throughout this map was forgetting the importance of his grenade play. Had he been playing his usual game, leaving explosive breadcrumbs for cooller all around the map, this could have honestly gone the other way. Just watching toxic warm up, however, I could see he seemed completely intimidated and looked almost sickly.

Final Score: cooller over toxic 15-9

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Lost Fleet

As I had predicted, both players picked the same maps as the previous series that they played on Saturday. As I had also expected, cooller went straight for the rail in order to cripple toxic on his strongest map. toxic wasn't interested in cooller's mind games however, as he went on to flash his shotgun skills in impressive fashion. He was hitting literally every shot that he fired, including fragging cooller the exact millisecond he teleported onto the upper deck with a shotgun blast. One thing that definitely took cooller down mentally for at least five minutes of the game.

Both of the players kept up with the rail curve, and we saw plenty of great rocket play, but one of the most interesting things that I noticed during this map was role reversal. Even when toxic was in the lead, cooller was playing a much more aggressive game than toxic. While toxic would be trying to catch the flank I spoke about in my preview, cooller would already be behind him, on the move. The score was extremely close throughout the entire match, but in the last minute and a half, cooller put forth a final push that closed the gap up to three frags, earning praise from the spectators.

Final Score: toxic over cooller: 15-12

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Blip Tournament

With a different map than Galang, the tie breaking map from the original toxic and cooller series, everyone was curious to see what would happen. Blip Tournament, while being larger than the other maps, does not have a railgun spawn, leaving toxic at a very large disadvantage on a day that his lightning gun was extremely inconsistent from the unstoppable form we saw previously. cooller beat toxic to almost every item on the map. At times, cooler used the items as the proverbial carrot below the box, waiting for toxic to take the bait before cooller would spring the trap and feed the Swede nothing but a rocket. While the play was close, the score was running away from toxic by the second. cooller kept control of the mega health and yellow armors as we would expect; sometimes beating toxic back from them in the nick of time, as we saw on Galang.

cooller was smiling after frags...in reality he was just extremely confident against an opponent that was falling apart mentally. Looking at toxic's face during the match, each time TSN would cut to a shot of it, you could see his dismay. By the last few minutes of the match, I was predicting vomit; he looked that stressed on the situation. Something I found interesting from a player who seemed to play with relaxed determination.

Final Score: cooller over toxic: 16-8

While toxic pulled himself together in the final few moments of Blip, he just wasn't there mentally for the match. He looked as if he was deeply submerged in an internal conflict, like his mind was elsewhere and he was just watching first place slip from his fingers. Do I honestly believe that cooller is better than toxic? Not at all. toxic has a lightning gun unparalleled by almost the entire roster of players from this week. He just seemed intimidated. It’s hard to go up against someone with a reputation like cooller's, walk into the tournament area, see him grinning confidently into the GGL cameras, and not feel out classed.

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Anton 'cooller' Singov takes home the 1st place prize, 1st seed for the Summer CPL tournament, and $9000 USD. Johan 'toxic' Quick receives a respectable 2nd place finish in the tournament, and $5,700 USD.

Full Tournament Results: Here