UKTerrorist

WCG 2002 Diary

Well, on the Friday night I went down to Dan's in pulborough (that's Lucking for you n00bs) and stayed at his overnight. Not much special to report about that except me and marc managed to scare his 2 cats somewhat into not eating. Oh and we watched Die Hard 2, which is probably not the best film to watch before you go on a long plane journey.

Saturday

Me, Dan and Marc met up with the rest of the UK team at Heathrow and, after doing a few interviews for CiTV, checked in and went to McDonalds.

Our flight was due for 13:00, a 30 min delay, which we could live with, so we waited for the screen to tell us which gate to go to as it drew close to 13:00 UK time. So we waited, and waited, and waited, until at about 13:05 a 'delayed' sign appeared, updated shortly by 'delayed 14:30' *sigh*... so we got comfy for a long wait.

The problem is that the time seemed to change more than once, we were very pleased when it changed to 13:45, might not be so late afterall. Sadly it soon changed back to 15:00 and stayed there.

After a very boring wait, we boarded and set off, again delayed by long queues of planes. We were VERY concerned at this moment that we were going to miss our Amsterdam flight to Korea which all the other competitors would be taking. Thankfully they held up the flight for us and our baggage was transferred directly from one flight to the next so we saved a lot of time.

The flight from Amsterdam to Inchon was fairly cool. I remember walking in and everyone was chatting to everyone. Never been on a flight before where everyone knew eachother. As the UK team walked on there were 2 stewardesses greeting everyone and PB Kwak bouncing around welcoming everyone to 'his' flight :D

The flight itself was fairly uneventful, Aapje collected some hot pepper sauce, a stewardess spilt boiling hot water on my hand, Men In Black 2 & Spiderman I'd already seen so wasn't impressed by the in flight movies. There was one film I can't remember the name of starring Chris Rock & Anthony Hopkins that wasn't that bad, bit cheesy [Bad Company is the film...].

Sunday

We landed in Inchon at around 11:30am UK time. The UK team regrouped at baggage claim and then left together all wearing the UK tops hoping to catch the eye of a few of the cameras. Sadly, as we walked out of the gate there was a very vacant space where all the films crews where meant to be. We walked along a bit and saw a big crowd around Gate B to welcome the players and interview them. To both our amusement and disappointment we had left via the wrong gate and basically side-stepped everyone :). Not a complete disaster we still did a few interviews and other PR stuff.

Then the players from the UK, Portugal & Chile boarded one of the 3 coaches for a 3 hour journey to the players village. I would explain how interesting and exciting this was but sadly, it wasn't...at all...

There was a welcoming ceremony to greet all the players when we arrived at the village. I got the joy of handing the UK flag to the event chairman. No doubt someone has that on camera to humiliate me for years to come.

Then we had what's so far has been the most difficult bit for me. Room assigment and basically getting everything sorted. Grrrrrrrrrrrr! Players wandered off (Sid, Dreg), wrong people got the wrong keys and they wouldn't even register us without everyone being in attendance. Basically a nightmare that was eventually resolved. We had one room of 4 and another of 7 and I got the special team leader room of 2. (I'm sharing with a Canadian guy that I haven't met yet).

The most perculiar thing about when I went to find my room the first time, was that there was nobody else in the entire building...not even the lights were on...very disturbing to say the least.

I went back and complained...and they gave me a cell phone?!?...not that i was going to refuse. Then this very nice Korea lady (no, not that sort of nice before you get any ideas guys) sorted EVERYTHING out for me, my key, my registration...everything. Even showed me how to work the lightswitch ;p.

Ok, so now everyone was sorted and in their rooms I went back to check out what everyone else was doing. It turns out Infinity-eSports switched rooms so they could all be together, though sadly they don't actually have beds?, just a heated floor, which is oddly amusing :).

Everyone else I guess is milling around in practice rooms. Dinner wasn't bad, didn't eat much though, wasn't feeling that hungry. After dinner I went back into a practice room and saw Greg, Dan and Stu there and sat down behind them to type up the UKT diary of WCG.... :D...

So there u have it I guess I'll try to keep this updated as much as possible. I've got a team leader's meeting tonight in the conference room and various other things to attend to. Might pit my skills against some of the world's best CS players in a minute.

From a recent newspost on UKT you can get the pics some of which are very funny.

Check this tomorrow for hopefully some updates.

P.S. Hi Mum :)

Monday

Went to sleep yesterday at around 2:00am thanks to a rather bizzare Canadian guy I appear to be sharing a room with. I still don't know his name but he accuses me of being boring and says i should brighten up my life. His idea to do this was to order a chinese meal?!?.

Anyway spent a lot of time last night watching Starcraft games on T.V & playing his gameboy advanced. Woke up at around 6:00am this morning to the English classic The Great Escape. No hot showers, blocked up toilet to get fixed for later. Breakfast was fairly good though considering. Now just with the Infinity-eSports' guys updating this and trying to get Dan's PC sorted.

Infinity-eSports are currently playing pcws against top German clan and one of the favourites, Mousesports, not doing too badly either, just some PC problems keeping them down at times. But seemed very impressive on Nuke.

After yet another team meeting I sorted most of the players out so they all knew where they were going and what to wear etc. Also managed to convince the UK's 2nd best FIFA player to be the official flag bearer for the UK at the opening ceremony. Everyone's splitting up now so the room is practically empty...that and the canteen is now open for lunch. Busy afternoon for everyone involved. Sadly for Sid he's the only player from the UK in one of the first groups, which means he will be on his own for the coach journey and at the event. Well besides his dad who is also at the event with him. Though I believe he is staying in the Vietnam room :).

The afternoon has so far consisted of myself playing ping pong with the rest of I-eS (I beat Doug 21 - 3 & 21 - 7), and going down to where expo park where the main competition will be held. Sadly the Counter-Strike players weren't allowed to setup today due to the lack of computers and other people having already setup on those comps. So they will have to do it late tomorrow I guess. Could cause a problem though.

The opening ceremony wasn't that bad :). First we had a bit of a wait where half the audience fell asleep :). Then there were a few videos showing off the beauty of Daejon, Korea & a few speeches which basically said "Thank you for coming, please come again, I hope you have a great time". The actual flag part wasn't bad, except the U.K didn't get a cheer.

We were all patiently waiting, half asleep, while all the other countries came down. Brazil, Chile etc...Being the United Kingdom and them going through in alphabetical order we were going to have to wait a while for our chance to cheer :). Anyway we were half asleep and then came Germany I think, bit of a cheer, then someone said another country and I saw Sohail (the U.Ks) flag bearer coming down the steps with our flag. At first I thought he'd gotten his times wrong. Apparently it turns out that they said Great Britain instead of United Kingdom, by the time we worked out what was going on the moment had passed.

Later on in the video clips of previous events there were a few shots of pb, Greg Edwards (DArtagnan) etc...Then a nice music show, the first and last act wasn't bad. But the middle act really killed the music. They performed Puff Daddy's tribute to Notorius B.I.G, I'll be Missing You, and they really did brutalize a beautiful song. Really does bug me when that happens, especially since they were actually trying to do it seriously.

After waiting on the coach for a while to go we arrived back at around 8:15pm Korean time fairly knackered to discover there was a party. However this wasn't your typical drunken, flirty British bash, this my friends was a KOREAN party!. Music = Trance?, Garage?..no way the koreas weren't having any of it, for them it was a delightful Britney Spears / Christina Aguilera? combo. To drink = Vodka?, martinis?, NO WAY!!!...another great combo in the form of tea and coffee. Temperature = warm, cool...WRONG AGAIN last I checked it was -1'C. Though in all fairness the food was top notch, perhaps a bit overboard with burgers and creamy cakes being the party delicacy.

Thus why instead of being out there right now I'm sitting in a nice warm practice room next to A-laget typing this. Meant to be having a team leaders meeting now, but I think the party has cancelled it. Tomorrow morning the first games begin with UK Quake 3 supremo, Sid becoming the first to represent the UK at this event in 2002.

Sadly due to a complete lack of beds I now have ANOTHER Canadian in my room sleeping on the floor. I mean 2 Canadian's, there's only so much one man can take! :). And guys before you comment it's not AMeN.

Time is currently 12:30am on Tuesday morning, most of the people in this room have left and the rest are being cleared out. I'm currently pretending not to speak english so I can stay for a bit longer until they find a translator, though without knowing which language I speak, I imagine that will be quite a hard task for them. Just done a HUGE and very time-expensive post on UKT about the Counter-Strike schedule, hopefully we will get the same crowd that drew the CPL to all those late night games :).

Hmm, translator is my roommate..lol..better go, l8ers

Tuesday

Did not get to sleep until like 2:30am last night, the reason?, well i was playing Pro Tennis for the Gameboy. The problem is, the gameboy belongs to my Canadian roommate, and when I played this game for the first time I got beaten by the computer in straight sets 6 - 2, 6 - 4. Now being a gamer we must have a certain deficit disorder which means that we refuse to be beaten by a computer game. So I kept playing pcws ;p, until I got better to take the computer on at the game at level 3 again. It was a rather tired me that eventually distroyed the computer in 3 sets 6 - 4, 3 - 6, 7 - 5. All I can say in the word of my country is 'AVE IT!!!'.

Aaaaaaannnnnyway. Time is currently 8:33am, in a few mins I'll be getting the UK's best Quake 3 hope, James (Sid) Faulkner, on a coach for his morning games. His group isn't 'that' difficult and hopefully he should stroll through past the group stages into the double elimination event.

He has to be on a player coach at 9:00am, anyone else that wishes to go can do so every 30 minute shuttle starting at 9:30am, so i'll be going down to the expo park on the 9:30 shuttle. My impressions of the event yesterday went something like that it could be a really awesome event, just as long as they listen to the players and not the handbook they're all carrying around with them.

Nothing else, and rather than update you all on what I had for breakfeast (Scrambled eggs, Sausage, bacon, pepsi) i'd rather just wait until I have something to report.

Well I'm now down at the expo park and have witnessed Sid's first game against a Polish hopeful. Now looking at the future of the tournament any competitor that crosses paths with Sid has my sympathy, for he has no mercy. Sid dominated his first game in amazing fashion usually locking onto his opponents with the lightning gun and just not letting them go. Sid quickly took a 5 - 0 lead before his Polish opponent pulled back 2 rounds. Then Sid displaying little if any emotion throughout the whole game demolished his opponent by taking a further 7 kills with only 1 in reply. The final score was 12 - 3 in favour of UK Quake 3 legend, Sid.

The time is no 3:02pm and James (Sid) Faulkner has played a further two games. The first was against the Romanian No.2 seed. Now, I'm all for all countries entering this tournament, but perhaps we should have a standard level of skill throughout everyone. Sid's crushing defeat of the Romainian outsider of 43ish - -1 does not do anyone any favours.

Luckily Sid's next game was more exciting. Sid was playing Belgium's number 2 seed. The game began and Sid took an early lightning frag. Then the game went a bit dead as both competitors were unwilling to engage the other in a full on assault. The Belgium no.2 seed took a frag back to pull it level and for about 5 minutes there was little real activity from either side. Then scored a nice shot, and with superior armour & weaponry chased his opponent all over the map fragging him within seconds of respawning. Sid racked up a 5 - 1 scoreline before things began to settle. However his opponent pulled two back but failed to put any real pressure on Sid. Sid managed to regain himself and once again put his opponent on the backseat fragging in quick succession up to around 11 - 3. Then in the last minute Sid grabbed 3 more to indent his mark upon a very successful game for the youngest player to represent the UK.

Sid was later informed that his next opponent, the French no.2 seed, had failed to show up and as such forfeited the game. Sid is now on a winning streak of 4 - 0. As upsets would have it, Zero4 has managed to lose two games now, once again Russian Quake 3 legend, Cooler, and the other against a Spannish contender. This now means that other results will have to go his way for him to qualify.

The Counter-Strike event is also set to begin as I type with a Netherlands team, which includes Infinity-eSports Kwak, set to play. See schedule for who they are play...

hmm..WOW..what a day...
Right since i last posted about 6hrs ago, Sid lost a game against an amazing player from the Ukraine. This player was awesome and dominated the game from start to finish. Sadly Sid seemed to be having an off game as he crashed to a 17 - 1 defeat. However almost directly after this game, one very pissed off Sid was paired up against the Mexican no.2. Now, Sid had some fury to unleash, 2 mins into the game, Sid had take a 5 - 0 lead and I asked his dad to predict the final score, he predicted 52 - -1 I predicted 47 - 0. Well the game progressed with Sid at all times the dominant player. Then to my horror, his opponent cratered giving himself a -1 score, my prediction could've been wrong! Thankfully his opponent got a kill, and with 1 min remaining the score was 46 - -1, (his opponent cratered again). Into the last dying seconds and not only did the mexican get a kill but Sid grabbed himself two more and reached a very predictable 47 - 0 scoreline :).

Anyway after that and a few interviews we made our way back to the players village. Sid still seemed a bit rattled at the hamering 'chip' the Ukrainian gave him, but will be ok. He has still qualified for the next stage of the competition. Back in the dinner hall the staff told us at 6:10 that all the players for Age of Empires, Unreal Tournament, Fifa 2002 and Quake 3 were meant to be on the coach at 6:30pm to set up their equipment at Expo for the next day's competition.

Now i really didn't appreciate having to run around for 30 mins only to discover that the players (with the exception of Dreg) were already at the event, only without their equipment. So that could possibly put us at a disadvantage tomorrow. We'll see...

Anyway been furiously updating the UKT coverage since I got back and can happily say we were much more up-to-date than the official WCG website (faster too). So that's taken up much of my time. Infinity-eSports have been taking on their Swedish counterparts in what even I must admit was a rather poor game on the UK side's behalf. Hopefully they will perform better at the tournament tomorrow.

The team meeting was once again, representatives of various countries, which will remain nameless, just moaning about various settings, and rules that went against them. The koreans also had the bright idea of bringing the head-ref down from the expo centre, so the same countries moaned at him too until he had had enough. I wasn't too bothered, I don't expect anymore from the meetings than to be informed of what's going on the next day and any rules changes.

Oddly enough both of my Canadian roommates were absent from my hotel room that night, so know idea where they've gone. Tomorrow we have our main day, with 25 UK games taking place in total in what should be a classic triumph for the UK team.

Wednesday

I woke up at 5:00am knowing that something had woken me up, u know that feeling you can sometimes get?. I'm sure it was my door closing, so I went outside and checked, nothing. The T.V was on but I don't believe that was what woke me up. Anyhow both my roommates were still missing (forgive me for my lack of caring :) ) so I put on the ongamenet channel and watched a few warcraft 3 games on t.v. One of the competitors was a French guy wearing enough logos to make an F1 driver feel ashamed. The other competitors is sitting next to me right now. Now i'm kinda bemused that a guy i saw on t.v this morning at around 6:00am in a live show, could be sitting next to me during a major tournament a few hours later. Especially since the show is filmed in Seoul, 3 hours away. I asked him but the response i got was similar too: 최강테트리스 <- no idea if that will show up on ukt correctly or not.

Breakfeast I was the second guy down there so spoke to some nice chap from the Czech Republic. The oddest thing is that he sleeps from 7:00pm - 3:00am, every day, for no reason. No work, family, anything etc. Could be a bit disturbing I suppose.

The previous night I informed everyone of where they were meant to be, so I had a fairly easy day today, generally making sure that everyone got onto the right coach at the right time. As I was getting on my coach to the Expo I saw yet another of the guys I had seen on T.V that morning, live show...yeh right!.

Sadly Piers Jolley decided not to get on the coach I told him to and was <-> close to getting disqualified from his event. I have a feeling after i speak to him when he gets here that he'll be on the right coaches in future :).

ah, So tired, i sleep so little and work so hard, it's almost like, a job! ;p. I will update more later. Just to say that Dreg won his first game 10 - 8, after going from 7 - 1 up to 6 - 5 at one point. cya soon.

Right now Thursday as I didn´t have any time to write this yesterday so let me update you with yesterdays events. In what was an awesome day for the UK players they overwhelmed their opposition in the majority of their 25 games.
Fifa

We had two players entering this event, Aaron "FifaApostle" Knight & Sohail "Pacman_UK" Gooding. Aaron´s first game was at 3pm vs the top Korean player AND last year´s champion. The Koreans you must understand, live for this game. They list their profession as "Pro-Gamer". So they are pretty much the last team you want to play on Fifa, Starcraft or Age Of Empires. Anyway Aaron played the best Korean player and probably the best player in the world at present in what was a fairly good game to watch. Amazingly Aaron pulled off a huge upset to win the game 7 - 3. A VERY VERY good result considering the opposition.

Next up for Aaron, who was fast making a name for himself, was Dimitri, an Australian who had so far won his first game and lost his second. Aaron went into this game as the favourite and handled the pressure very well. He took the game to Dimitri and won the game with a comfortable 5 - 0 scoreline.

Now Aaron was looking a strong contender to come top of the group and was set to play Vietnam champ, Tu Hoang Thach at 5.30pm. The vietnamese athlete was not really looking to strong having lost to the Korean 1st 1 - 8.

Oddly, and perhaps convenienty, Aaron had a very off game, and after taking an early lead allowing the Korean to get back into the game to leave the last few minutes hanging onto a 3 - 2 scoreline. Conveniently I say for Aaron it might be better if he got his bad game out the way before he played another world class opponent.

Aaron now had a fairly easy game at 6pm vs arata, the Bulgarian FIFA 2002 WC representative. Not really that thrilling game with Aaron dominating throughout racking up an impressive 9 - 1 result.

This means Aaron probably the UK´s best shot at a gold medal, tops his "group of death" and goes on to play German champ PG-Zero at 2pm today.

Sohail Gooding sadly did not experience the same joys of Aaron today. His first game was against the Korean no.2 ´Crazy´. Again VERY tough opposition for the UK no.2. Although he made a bright start, scoring the early goals he sadly lost 2 - 5. Not a bad result really. Just upsetting when a player believes they can do better, it brings them down.

Sohail still had 2 games remaining in his group, and the first of them was against Typhoon a rather unknown Spannish representative. Pacman played fairly well, but just couldn´t break through his oppositions defences. He lost the game 0 - 2. Not a bad result, but unlike Aaron, Sohail only had 4 teams in his group, meaning he couldn´t afford to have a bad game.

Having already been elminated from the tournament he played his final game in good spirit ready to unleash some anger on a rather helpless player from Panama. Despite ´Fury´ trying hard there was no way Sohail was going to lose all his games, without mercy he destroyed the Panama competitor 6 - 1. Sohail is a bit upset about being knocked out, but in my opinion he did fairly well in a tough group of only 4 teams. Next year if his skill holds out and he gets the luck he didn´t get this year he might be looking at a top 8 placing.

Quake 3

Obviously i´m not going to explain all of Dreg´s games in detail, only that he was looking to follow Sid´s leave and advance into the second round of the tournament. He started very brightly defeating Terminator from the Ukraine 10 - 6, this was after going 7 - 1 and hìs opponent pulling it back to 6 - 5 before Dreg confirmed his supremacy in the game.

He was due to play another of the favourites for this event, Unkind from Russia. Now when I mean he tried to follow Sid´s leave perhaps he tried a bit too hard to copy Sids 1 - 17 result as he crashed to a 0 - 17 defeat. A bad game, good to get out of the way early so he can regain focus for his later games.

Dreg, who recently insured his fingers for 375,000 quid, was next up against Johna from New Zealand. Most people expected Dreg to win, and he did so with a comfortable 17 - 9 scoreline.

Next up on Dreg´s hitlist was Cho3en the Kazakhstan no.1. Again most people expected Dreg to win but rather perplexingly, he didn´t. The Kazakhstan representative played extremely well always managing to keep one step ahead on the frag charts winning 18 - 10. I´m not sure if this was another poor game by Dreg or not, but it left him requiring other results to go his way for him to qualify for the next stage of the tournament.

With 2 games remaining his first was against Kranus from Korea. On home soil and in pro-gaming country the Koreans are always x-factors in fps games. Janus played well giving Dreg a good game, but not well enough. Dreg won the game 17 - 10. Leaving him having to win his last game against Tropf from Austria to qualify.

In his closest game yet Dreg barely inched a game against Tropf in the dying seconds to win 12 - 10. Not that good a result considering the opposition but good enough to get him into the top 16 Quake 3 players in the world.

While talking about the Quake 3 event I would have to mention the Zero4 situation. As those of you that follow Quake 3 probably know, Zero4, last year´s champion went out in the group stages of this competition after being beaten by Cooler and Logon. However in the game between Cooler and Logan the outcome if Cooler had won would´ve meant Zero4 would have went through into the last 16 instead of Logon. So Cooler deliberatly lost the game to ensure Zero4´s elimination. Obviously the Americans are outraged, especially since Cooler admitted it in an interview with the commentator. As such a petition was going round to get Cooler disqualified for such unsportsmanlike behaviour. A petition which i may add, i signed. I´m not bothered how good a player Cooler is, unless he behaves as well as plays as a professional then he does not deserve to be in this tournament. That´s my opinion anyway, perhaps i´m biased.

Age Of Empires

I must admit to not actually following this tournament and just being informed of what happened at the end of the event. Piers "Geek" Jolly lost his first game against his Hong Kong opponent and then won the rest against Mexico, Taiwan & Vietnam to qualify second in his group, he´s due to play tomorrow I believe.

My apologies for my complete lack of Age Of Empires coverage but I really can´t cover every tournament can I? =)

Unreal Tournament

I couldn´t see this tournament as it was taking place in the corner and had little coverage, but I know Sam aka "shaggy" had to rely on other results for him to get through into the group stages.

His first game took place against the South African, not that a difficult game for the UK Supremo who took a fairly clear 26 - 11 victory. This should in theory, settled his early nerves and prepared him for some of the more difficult games to come. However his next game against German champ, shuukGitzZz did little favours. It was a fairly big disaster for the UK based UT player, who despite trying his hardest could do little to avoid the 1 - 26 scoreline.

Without having much time to pause to regain his composure he to play Pasarel from Romania. A game that he should, no doubt, of won. Sadly despite a VERY VERY VERY close game he lost 8 - 9. Thankfully Shaggy refused to allow that to get to him and pulled out all the stops with fairly good victories over Russia (13 - 10) & Belgium (21 - 14). Although this did leave him relying on other results such as Dromer vs Pasarael. He managed to qualify for the final 16 phase of this competition.

Counter-Strike

Now what you've all been waiting for, this being a Counter-Strike website, an analysis of the Counter-Strike event. By the time Infinity-eSports were playing they had already witnessed several upsets and even more close calls.

Their first game was against fairly easy opposition in the form of Hong Kong. A rather unknown team in the big bad world of Counter-Strike. The game began with Infinity-eSports winning the pistol round and the subsequent 2 eco rounds by their South-east Asian opponents. As Counter-Terrorists on De_Prodigy they managed to hold firm racking up several rounds before, from seemingly out of nowhere, Hong Kong grabbed 2 - 3. (Forgive me for not remembering exactly). This meant as Terrorists Infinity-eSports required 4 rounds to win the game and secure their first victory of the tournament. However they started poorly losing the pistol round and their own eco rounds. This meant that they then needed 4 out of the final 9 rounds to win. I believed they secured the victory in the ninth round after dropping 6 more to Hong Kong. The final score of the second half was around 6 - 6. Hong Kong played old school Prodigy defence with two players on each corner as Counter-Terrorist, which took I-ES a while to adjust.

After attending many LANs with I-ES they usually need a bit of a scare to shake em into shape. Hong Kong accomplished this in the second half with a mixture of good defending, and poor attacking by I-ES. I was hopeful for their second game against Thailand.

This game was to take place on De_Cbble, a fairly good map for the UK champs. Not much to report on this game really, Infinity-eSports led from start to finish not allowing Thailand even the faintest whiff of dominance. The final score was a convincing 22 - 2 victory. A very good performance which set them up for their final tie with French LAN team GoodGame (GG).

Sadly I-ES had to play GG on their favourite map De_Inferno and one that had not had much chance to practise the previous days. Usually I would label these as excuses and it was a mixture of the 2 reasons here and generally GREAT play by GG leading to the scoreline. Infinity-eSports started poorly, glock rushing bombsite B with grenades to little effect as they were slaughtered after an initially successful entry. They then ecoed the second round. Now it is at this point where all the trouble began, as half way through the second round Dan Lucking crashed out from the game, and thus the game would be paused at the start of the 3rd round so Dan could rejoin.

At the start of the 3rd round the game wasn't paused for around 20 seconds. Then when it was paused Dan could not rejoin the round as he was classed as 'dead'. Now I-ES complained that Dan had lost out on a lot of money as well as the opportunity to compete in this rounds. The admins therefore called a meeting to decide what should be done. I-ES wanted to restarted the game (quite understandable, whereas Korea wanted to play on as it was not their fault, also very understandable). Then in one of the most bizzarre (note bizarre does not = bad) the Admins (after 35 mins) decided the game was to be restated, but on the first round everyone would repeat what they had done, all buy the same grens, weapons and kill the same ppl etc. Now this must've been very confusing for everyone watching the game live.

After this the game would begin from the 2nd round live. The 2nd round began and typically I-ES ecoed that and the 3rd round losing them both. Setting the game up to begin properly on the 4th. Rather oddly perhaps is the fact that I-ES failed to gain any real grip on this game as Terrorist, constantly being wiped out as terrorist as their tactics and aim repeatedly let them down. After a somewhat disastrous first half they were 1 - 11 down and not looking too good. They had also received a yellow card for talking when dead, I think Doug's exact words went something like "My oh my".

The second half was a little better but not much. Unfortunatly I had to leave seconds before it started because of a team leader meeting at 10pm. So I learned the result of that half was 4 - 8 to the French team, GG. The players were rather down and kinda angry with their performance so spent a bit of time in the praccy room and went to bed early that night (For the first time). They practised extensively the next day on the maps for the double elimination phase of the tournament (De_cbble, De_Dust2, De_Inferno, De_Nuke).

As I just mentioned, there was an admin meeting that night to decide maps for the final stages of the tournament. I can't really remember them all offhand but it was generally well planned with several maps appearing up to 4 times for some games. It would probably have been better to pre-select the maps, so test the players skill out on a wider ranger of scenarios.

Ordered a Pizza that night as I recall, spending my first Korean money (soz mum & dad). 6 quid isn't that bad for a large pizza and large coke, pity i couldn't eat all of it. At least I didn't spill it down the stairs unlike some people (Stu, Greg).

That basically concludes Wednesday, a very big day and a very successful one for the UK players with 10 out of 11 qualifying for the group stages.

Thursday

Woke up fairly late today (8:00am) and couldn't really be bothered to get out of bed for another hour. No-one had any games for a while, so I skipped breakfest and had a lie in for once. Got up at around 9:10am, and went to see what everyone was up to. Typically I-ES were in the practise rooms furiously testing out their Cbble tactics. Sat down nearby and began to write up my diary for the previous day, Wednesday was a big day u know?.

A rather humerous incident occured, well not funny now, but was pretty hysterical for me at the time. I'll just type it out how i heard it, funnier that way perhaps. I've had to change the names to protect the innocent :D + o changed the swearing cos, well, my parents are reading this guys :).

Dan PLuck1ng - "Out of money, can anyone buy me AWP?"
Greg PEDwards - "yeh, ok"
*round begins*
Dan PLuck1ng - "Greg's where's my awp?"
Greg PEDwards - "I chucked it at ya"
Dan PLuck1ng - "No you didn't i haven't got it"
Greg PEDwards - "I did, i chucked it at ya"
Dan PLuck1ng - "FFS Marc u stole it didn't you!, this is exactly what screws our game up"
Marc MangiacapraT "I bought my own, look at my money"
Dan PLuck1ng - "I DON'T CARE ABOUT UR MONEY, U STOLE MY AWP"
Marc MangiacarpaT "I didn't steal your awp d00d"
Dan PLuck1ng - "We spend too much time messing around, we should be serious about this" <- not entirely sure if this line is right :)
*Marc MangiacapraT running back to cover teammates at BS A*
Marc MangiacapraT - "d00d ur awp is at respawn"
*Laughing all round*
Dan PLuck1ng - "FFS GREG THAT's NOT CHUCKING IT AT ME THEN IS IT"
Doug PWight - "dan u can't possibly blame this on greg"

- hmm, guess u had to be there....
Anyway that was pretty much the highlight of the morning, that and having to hold the coach up so ies could run back to their rooms and get their IDs.

In the afternoon we had Piers(AoE), Aaron(FIFA), James (Q3), Alex (Q3), I-ES (Counter-Strike) and Sam (UT) all competing for top prizes in the top 16.

Age Of Empires
Now i paid slightly more attention to Age of Empires this time, and saw some fairly good games involving Piers. He won his first game against one of the top players in Korea. (The UK really are doing an awesome job in becomming the bogey team for this tournament) to take him into the winners bracket of the top 16. .He was then sadly defeated by Hanlon, another one of the favourites (This guy really does get unlucky draws).

He was now in the lower bracket and due to face 'IamJordan' from Taiwan. Now when you get to this stage there are no easy draws. Also Piers aka Geek could no longer afford to lose a game or be eliminated from the tournament. At this stage he had presently had $1000 for a secured top 8 place finish. Thankfully he defeated this Taiwon opponent and progressed further up the losers bracket.

His next game is against Dante from the Unites States in a game he seems very confident he'll win.

Quake 3
Now I know from my previous post I seemed very hopeful about my Quake 3 players, sadly it was a very bad day. Dreg crashed out early on with a defeat in the last 16 bracket against Rocketboy from China 5 - 9, a fairly close game against a VERY good opponent and a defeat in the losers bracket at the hands of Phantom from South Africa 5 - 22.

A great shame for Alex, who despite playing well in all of his games still couldn't perform at the level required for this event.

Sid on the other hand, perhaps playing better of the two and the UK's no.1 seed had better luck, winning his first game 17 - 5 against if22, one of the several favourites for this event following the elimination of Zero4 and Cooler earlier in the event. if22 was the c58 champion and had looked impressive throughout the tournament.

Sid's next game took place against Akiles from Spain who had inched a victory against Cooler (Russian favourite) 5 - 4. Akiles dominated the game from start to finish and in a game with fewer frags from normal, most of them went Akiles' well as he won 9 - 2.

This left Sid stranded in the loser bracket to face KuKu from Canada. With just one victory away from a garunteed $1000 as a top 8th finish the pressure was quite immence.

Kuku took an early lead racking up around 8 frags with only one in reply from Sid, then Sid started to make his way back into the game with barely 2 minutes back. Although Sid put all he had into the game, he failed to make up the difference and lost 18 - 12 to the Canadian.

Sid had a very good tournament and can easily claim to be above the top 16 in the world Quake 3 rankings. Sadly however a bad game on a bad map twice cost him his chance at winning a major cash prize.

FIFA 2002 World Cup

Now Aaron Knight (FifaApostle) made a VERY promising start, defeating all players in his group which included the former Korean world champion. (note UK -> Korea). Aaron played very well again in his early games, advancing through to the winners bracket of the final 16 with a 6 - 2 victory over German contender [pG]Zero.

This left Aaron one victory away from a garunteed $1000 prize. He began his game against China very brightly taking an early goal, however, China pulled one back before the second half and in the 90th minute, struck their final, and most deadly goal, knocking Aaron out into the losers bracket. A very harsh turn of events as Aaron's luck ran out, but not his skills.

Aaron once again had to play a Korean player, but this time the no.2 and not the world champion he had defeated in the group stages. The game was fairly level for most of the first half. Then Aaron accidently fouled a player outside the box, and the ref, in bizarre fashion, pointed to the penalty spot. Now I don't claim to be an expert but that's a free-kick right?. Anyway the Korean scored the penalty even though Aaron did guess the right way to dive taking the game to 1 - 0.

The Korean throughout the game also 'illegally' pressed the escape key 3 times and only recieved one warning, which is imo;p wrong. Anyway we protested the game and I was taken to meet the head-ref who was a cheery looking fellow *NOT*. Nothing I could've said in there would've made them change their decision, and there was no point in really getting angry about it, we were eventually forced to accept the result despite the absence of a Korean representative. A very sad way for Aaron to end the tournament despite playing SSOOOOOOOOOOO well. He has calmed a bit and accept it. Stuff happens. nm.

This dumped him out of the FIFA tournament with 0 money. The 3rd time today such a thing has occured. In the words of Nirvana

Oh well, whatever, nevermind....

Counter-Strike

Obviously the most important subject area for views of a UK CS website. Well Infinity-eSports were set to play Switzerland on what of their better maps, De_cbble.
Infinity-eSports had practised the map as you read earlier to great effect and were feeling quietly confidences, well, stu's version of quietly confidence differs from everyone elses, but still confident.

They began the game as Counter-Terrorist and quickly racket up, according to pb, 9 straight victories before dropping a around and taking the other 2. Terrorist was close enough more of the same story, they may have lost the pistol round can't quite remember was trying to sort out the fifa argument at the time. If they did lose the pistol round it would explain the rounds they got as Terrorist. As they were beaten again by the UK CS team, 10 - 3 making the final score 20 - 4.

This took them into the winners bracket of the final 16 against the winner of Malaysia and LnD, the previous year's champs. Despite an impressive start by FMJ from Malaysia, the canadian supremos who have suprised many in this year's event turned the game around and came out eventual winners.

So the UK team is set to play LnD (Last year's champs) in around one and a half hours. Should be a VERY VERY close game. So goodluck to them as they are on the coach now to the event.

Unreal Tournament

Now, I'm not really into religion, but what happened here was a flippin miracle. Our Unreal Tournament guy absolutely 0wned.

He began his double elim campaign (remembering he already had $1000) with a 18 - 5 victory against Falcon from Austria to put him on $2000, he then quickly followed that up with a 19 - 9 victory over Dutch contender Lauke to put him on onto $5000 and into the final of the winners bracket + a garunteed bronze medal.

Now in the winner bracket finals he played Evenflow from New Zealand, a strong contender from previous rounds, and in a superb display of skill defeated the Australasian competitior by a whopping 36 - 2 scoreline. To put him on a garunteed $10,000!!!! and a silver medal.

He plays in the Unreal Tournament final on Saturday, so stay tuned for more info.

Well that's all the games done, Wednesday night we camp home on a hugely overcrowded coach with ppl standing up all the way down. That night I didn't really do much except watch Lord Of The Rings on a very impressive home cinema system they have here and spent a while writing this diary and playing a bit of CS.

That's all, will update tomorrow, well...tomorrow! :D...cyas

Friday

Well, well, well, what goes up must come down I s'pose. The day started off very brightly, nice breakfest, everyone in good humour etc.

Counter-Strike

Infinity-eSports were the first team to play, facing off against last year's champions LnD in what would no doubt be a very good game.

Rather than simply re-write what I've already written as a newspost i'll simply refer to this post which tells you what happened that game.

Their next game was against Russian hotshots m19, a team that is well known for underperforming at LAN events and we were very hopeful for a positive outcome. Though one setback was that the game was to be played on De_Inferno.

The game started off very poorly with Infinity-eSports losing the pistol round and repeatedly losing various other rounds withotu ever seeming to be in a position to get themselves back into the game. They pulled a couple back but seemed very crushed by a 10 - 2 scoreline from the first half.

They second half started off about the same as they lost the first 2 rounds then managed to win the 3rd to leave themselves open with a shot on the 4th. But as things would have it, fate is cruel at the best of times and they crushed to a 13 - 3 defeat. Not quite sure about what happened after this, I know the WCG website reported the final score wrong, however I think as soon as the game is unwinnable it's over anyway.

The first loser-bracket for Infinity-eSports game took place on De_Nuke with little time to prepare. Again they did poorly losing the eco round to their German opponents. They did fairly well as Terrorist gaining several rounds to put them in with a shot of winning the game. However as Counter-Terrorist they were left exposed many times and they were crushed fairly quickly.

This defeat bothered the players greatly as they were greatly hoping for a top 3 finish. It's not a game that they should dwell upon though, finishing top 5 - 6 in the World Cyber Games final is hardly that bad. With more preparation and a bit more discipline it's almost certain they could win this event next year.

Age of Empires

Piers "Geek" Jolly, had been constantly performing in this event, defeating many of the favourites. Sadly, as you may recall, he had been relegated to the losers bracket and was now due to compete against Dante from the States.

This is a game Piers easily expected to win and advances into the next stage of the loser bracket, sadly this might of been his undoing. He was defeated, No i don't know the score, and eliminated from the tournament. Again Piers could at one stage of easily won the tournament and he was more unlucky than anything else. Next year if this game is played then he will no doubt finish in a medal spot. Still we have Unreal Tournament to look forward to.

Got back to the players village at around 8:00pm, had dinner, which wasn't as bad as the usual 'ass' as doug calls it, and just hung around for a while, playing table tennis, pool, whatever. Me and Stu went to get a few souvenirs with thanks to our local room-neighbours.

Ah!, and my Canadian roommate took the key to the room and had gone to Seoul, so I couldn't get into my room, I slept with the Infinity-eSports guys (no gay comments plz). Also we accomodated another roommate which I shall explain in my next newspost.

Saturday

Saturday, woke up in the Infinity-eSports room, neck ached from sleeping on the floor, dunno how those guys managed it for a week. Had breakfest, the usual junky food (chips for breakfest!?!?!?!). Then went to type the diary, might goto the expo later.

Right as you know i'm writing the rest of this several days after the event, they took the comps out of the practise rooms on sunday so was unable to update my diary, until now.

Anyway down at the Expo it was Nations & continents day. We had Aaron & Sohail competing in the FIFA 2 vs 2 event, Sid & Dreg competing in the Quake 3 2 v 2, Marc & greg playing for a european team in the continent vs continent & Shaggy + Belgium also playing in the continent vs continent.

Out of these games I would thought FIFA and Quake 3 would of been our best hope at winning some medals.

FIFA 2002 World Cup

I missed their first game, I believe it was against France, but they seemed to win fairly easily, and their second game they stormed through. This put them into the semi-finals vs China. Now China are VERY VERY good at FIFA and have played well in the singles competition of this game.

Unfortunatly China took an early 2 - 0 lead, due to poor mistakes by the UK side, and China managed to maintain a tight grip on this lead throughout the match. However in the last 15 minutes, Aaron and Sohail pulled one back, then almost straight after they got another (much to their delight) to pull the scores back to 2 - 2. Now into the dying seconds of injury time they grabbed a 3rd and well, they were ecstatic, when that 3rd went in I think everyone nearby was shocked by how much noise they made. Sympathies go out to the Chinese players though, they no doubt will be VERY upset by this result.

This result put them into the Final which was played out live on a stage infront of an audience of around 300. Now this is where the pressure really hits and it strikes me as to how amazingly well they handled it. Calmly walking onto the stage and setting up their computers.

The final was quite an event, commentators, lots of flashing lights, the works. However as impressive as the final was (against Germany too, as luck would have it) the performance wasn't.

Germany took the lead within 5 minutes of game-time, then by 15 minutes of game time had grabbed a second. The UK despite having the higher % of possession failed to pull the goals back. At one point Aaron had an open net and shot, hitting the side netting, the funny thing about this was that he thought he'd scored and jumped up to begin his celebrations.

At the very end of the game Germany got a 3rd and took the gold medal in this event. However Silver is still a great achievement for the UK and no doubt they'll go one step further next year.

Unreal Tournament

Not much to report. Shaggy got paired up with a partner that wasn't of equal abilities and got knocked out by the winners in the first round. He seemed very upset that this was only single elimination, as there was clearly enough time for double elimination. It seemed they just got the best team in the first round, it happens.

Quake 3

Now I had very high hopes for the Quake 3 combo of Sid and Dreg, both 2 very good players in their own right. Both finishing in the top 16 of the single events.

They started brightly winning their first 2? games in fine form. Then however they were set to play the Ukraine, of whom both players had lost to in the tournament.

Despite trying their best they were unable to get past their awesome Rail abilities as they slouched to a mediocre defeat. A very good performance from them both throughout though.

Counter-Strike

Well the continent vs continent team which both Marc and Greg had been placed in all consisted of INfInIty from a-laget, Perry from TeG & a player form bulgaria, who was also a very talented player.

From the start I must confess to expecting this team to walk over the competition, and from what I saw they did pretty much that. Cruised their first game against probably their toughest rivals from Europe. Then defeated the other team while watching the favourites from America get eliminated by Asia. I missed 1 or 2 of their games for reasons i'll explain soon, but watched their final, again with all the flashing lights and commentating, against the top team from Asia.

Our european team won convincingly and collected their awards, did some pr work then went back. The manner in which they won might of perhaps diluted their victory, I believe if the final had been a really close game they would've relished winning more. However a win's a win :)

Despite how well organised the event was they were always going to make a few bad calls. This one was to have a preliminary awards show for the competitions of the day. I have yet to work out a point to this, they were having one on Sunday, so why not do all the awards then?. Anyway after waiting for a while in the main hall and watching several videos demonstrating how great Daejon is, and the World Cyber Games status within Korea, they began the show in typically boring fashion. I'm not really complaining, it's very difficult to make award shows interesting.

To cut a long story short, they gave out the various awards, Marc, Greg, Sohail & Aaron all got their moment in the spotlight and various prizes. The odd thing about this was the prizes seemed all muddled. 3rd place = Geforce 4, 2nd place = neckphone, 1st place = Headset???. Unless this was the very latest technology from Planatronics I fail to see how this could be right. This turned the show into a bit of a farce, watching the 1st place winners faces as they were given their headsets ;p (which btw were the typical £15ish style) amused me for a while.

After the prizes were given out they introduced the infamous Korean group The Rock Tigers now, it's very rare that i hear a sound so awful it actually offends my ears, this was unfortunatly one of those occasions. They were, in a word, crap!, pure awful. Dressed like elvis, sung poor Korean songs in the voice of a football team. After 2 songs, they were impressively clearing the building. In dodgy accent the lead singer asked:

Are you happy?

To a resounding response of no's! he began his next song, it was at this point I finally lost my patience, I left with Rob, James, Alex & his dad. By my reckoning only around a 3rd of the audience was still there, pretty much all of them being the referees who have no other choice...though i did spy a few of them sneaking out :).

That night was fairly dull, can't quite remember what i did, probably went to I-es' room and hung out for a bit, seems to ring a bell, watching a crappy Arnie film.

Sunday

Sunday, the day of all the finals. Today we had Samuel 'Shaggy' Boult playing in the Unreal Tournament final against GlitzZz, who's only been beaten once this year, earlier in the tournament against New Zealand's Evenflow. Also today were all the other finals and some big events they were too.

Can't quite remember what I did earlier in the morning, I think I got up fairly early to make sure Shaggy got on the right bus, breakfeast was the usual. Shaggy's bus left at 9:00amish with his final being the first of the day. Despite my warnings Shaggy still managed to nearly miss his first bus. Anyway he made it and got there on time. However his opponent GlitzZz had missed the bus so the final would start late. I would've moaned and tried to get a default, but it would never of happened and I doubt Shaggy would have wanted to win like that.

The game started at about 10:30amish. Sadly it looked a lot like Shaggy's luck had ran out. He was being beaten quite badly. He did have some bad respawns, but the overwhelming thought that crossed my mine was how did Evenflow managed to beat GlitzZz earlier? That must have been a huge upset for last year's champion.

Anyway GlitzZz won the first map, I forget the score but was something like 12 - 7. Not too bad for Shaggy and he still had another chance to win this event. During the brief half time intermission they (jokingly) began typing a few messages to eachother which i shall not repeat here. It was all in good humour. However these messages were being shown on the huge projecter screen behind them.

I tried to signal to Shaggy about this and he eventually got my message and was having difficulty in not laughing as the next game began. This map was much worse than the last one as GlitzZz demonstrated why he was quite simply the greatest Unreal Tournament player ever to walk the earth. It was an utter destruction. Shaggy did his best but he was never going to come back from this one. So GlitzZz won the Unreal Tournament WCG 2002 Gold Medal. A big well played goes out to him.