World Cyber Games

Let’s kick off with the biggest event of the week and, arguably, the year. WCG 2006 is now over and Sky won. Not much of an article though, so how did he win? Unfortunately, he won amidst some controversy. Despite his 2-0 victory in the final, most of the focus in the aftermath of the Chinese player’s success has been on the incident involving GoStop in an earlier round. Much has been said on the matter (mostly by GotFrag’s ever-crowing Chinese contingent) but this is very unfair. Sky played an excellent tournament, albeit with a minor (and disputed) breakage of the rules along the way, and was a deserving winner and that should be what people remember his victory for.

It was no cakewalk either. Sky faced three tough games before he even reached the final where he faced another solid opponent in ToD. The Frenchman had been in dominating form up until the final, beating all of his opponents 2-0 in knockout play, while Sky had squeezed past GoStop and Grubby with 2-1 scores before taking out HoT 2-0. More importantly, I picked ToD to win this event in the GotFrag poll and his form coming into the match made him most people’s favourite to win. As I’m sure you all know by now, things didn’t turn out that way and an outstanding performance from Sky gave him his second WCG title in as many years.

Can he go one better than 3D’s CS team next year? Time will tell but this result re-affirms many people’s belief that Sky is the best WC3 player in the world right now. With victories over Grubby and ToD at this event, and with Moon in less than top form and Lucifer unable to attend recent events, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better candidate for that accolade right now.

WC3L

I realize this is a bit late but there was no WIWC last week so better late than never, hey? 4k, unsurprisingly finished yet another regular season on top of the pile, this time ahead of WE. With Grubby and ToD leading the way you’d have to fancy their chances at the finals and the ever-improving Creolophus is the perfect solution to any problems Zeus and FuRy might cause. Throw-in the incredible skills of soon-to-be-gone FoV and the kings could be set to reclaim their throne.

World Elite, having finished second, are prime suspects for regicide. Their chances can only be helped by Sky’s WCG victory and despite their defeat to 4k earlier in the season, WE is surely a force to be reckoned with. Any line-up they care to take to the finals will give a good account of itself but the likes of Sky, TeD and InCup champion Lyn must surely make the trip if they are to challenge for the title. If they can send a team which includes these players then they have as good a chance as anyone.

The surprise team of the season, Mousesports finished third but this means they have to face a playoff for the playoffs against Fnatic. The two sides met in the last game of the regular season and Mouz pretty much ran away with it. A 4-1 victory over your opponents less than three weeks before a playoff game gives you a pretty big mental edge and one that will probably see Mouz into the finals.

The other playoff is between SK and mYm. The former WC3L champions have struggled at the back-end of this season but still made it to the playoffs for the playoffs (catchy name, don’t you think?). This means that at least one of last season’s finalists won’t be in Germany for the finals. When the teams met on the season’s opening day, SK upset mYm with a narrow 3-2 victory. It was a close game that day and we should expect nothing else in the playoffs. For mYm the key is Moon: if he plays and how he plays. His Digital Life victory will have boosted his confidence but the lack of competition may have left him rusty. For SK it’s about match-ups. Deadman seems like he can beat anyone on his day right now but Zacard and Insomnia are struggling and will need a favourable match-up if they want to claim points for the team.

The bottom end of the table gets a little confusing, but let’s sit down together and take a moment to figure this out. Instead of the bottom two teams being relegated and replaced, they go into the WC3L qualifier, which will feature a bunch of teams yet to be announced. Troublesome but simple enough, right? Now, for some reason, teams seven to ten have to compete in a kind of “playdown”. One, Go, SK.ger and Hoorai will all compete for the dubious honour of not having to re-qualify for next season. One will face Hoorai on November the second and Go take on SK on the eighth. The losers of those two matches have to enter the qualification tournament while the winners skip all that and claim their rightful place in season eleven. Got it? Good.

Digital Life

I hate to finish off the week on a downer but Digital Life was pretty much a joke of an event. Moon, against all good sense, did show up to the event and predictably walked to a fairly easy victory. The only real point of interest was Nilknarf’s amazingly average performance. Ok, so he finished third in the end, but there were only two players who most people would consider worthy of a final at that event and he should have been one of them. Credit has to go to Longwalk, though, he surprised everyone and beat Nilknarf twice and even took a map from Moon, going down 2-1 in the final. With a tough re-qualification tournament coming up, Longwalk’s performances could be the difference between Verge appearing in WC3L season eleven and Verge planning for season twelve.