Alright! Here's what happened to me on Friday and there was lots to talk about actually. I focused on Q3 and UT2004 and saw a little bit of the ridiculous PainKiller game. The groups in UT2004 progressed more or less as I anticipated. Burnie beat everyone in his gorup although it has to be said that Forrest was real tough opposition for the German. It is enough to say that they had a nine-minute overtime on Ironic where Burnie was down to 1 health once! My first impression of Burnie was that he is worse when he the game is slower. He prefers to be in the action all the time and pressing the opponent is what he enjoys as well. Second place went to Forrest.

In the other group GitzZz started off with a game vs Varagh which ended with a 30 to -3 score. GitzZz was hitting a formidable 50% from the LG and 48% Link Gun. Really, he was freaking incredible. Then GitzZz won 12-10 on Rankin. As expected, th0r did not make a difference in the group, even though he took a map from Lauke. To put a cherry on the UT2004 pie we saw a game between GitzZz and Lauke. Before that happened, though, there was considerable controversy.

Earlier in the day GitzZz was accused of using centerview. It was overlooked in the rules and not really forbidden. He himself declined having done that and given his good reputation I would be inclined to believe him. The next controvesry came when the players who were already sure of a spot in the top four of the tournament wanted to arrange the semi final pairs with their games. In the end the admins said that the semi final pair would be drawn randomly, which forced Burnie, Lauke and GitzZz to play seriously in their last games.

Lauke - GitzZz... What a feast! I remember I thought that their Turbine game from WCG 2002 was the best UT game I have ever seen. Now the pair did not fail to deliver the goods again. It started off on Ironic. They met at the 100a for the first time and GitzZz jumped down to Lauke to get in close range. Lauke was wielding the flak cannon so I thought GitzZz was in big trouble. I thought wrong. Some awesome feinting from the German coupled with not a single miss from the shock rifle and the lightning gun and the title defender claims the 100a and gets the first kill. Then GitzZz racked up a few frags and got into a good lead just to switch to a ZTN-style hit and run game. Despite that, Lauke managed to equalise. That did not help, the German was outaiming Lauke heavily and did not let himself be outsmarted at all.

The second map was Roughinery. Supposedly, GitzZz had hardly played the map. Maybe, maybe not. The fact remains that it was incredibly close. I have to say that I am impressed with both players. Lauke is able to weigh risks very very well. He is a good gambler - he knows when he can surprise the opponent by coming close to him instead of backing off and most of the time it really does the job for him (for example vs th0r). On the other hand, GitzZz has got immaculate aim and he plays UT2004 Quake style. I am serious, he uses the same angles, in fights he feints like Quake players and his non-hitscan weapon useage looks like that from Quake. Again we saw a really good show on Roughinery where it ended with an overtime 11-10 victory for the Dutchman. The third map was Rankin and GitzZz's aim prevailed here. He just did not let Lauke fight him where Lauke wanted him to and let his aim do the rest. When he got an eight frag lead I left to watch the Quake 3 game on stage so I can't actually tell you what the final score was.

Oh... Before that, though, I have to mention one amusing thing. During last night's debauchery we were talking about someone's theft of Fatal1ty's mascot tiger Smu. Hell filled me in on that one because he was accused of doing that. Basically it was Hell's mate that did it and the Welshman took the blame. On hearing that UK's Jay says that he's gonna nick the toy and I told him that I'll wager five beers that he doesn't. Today, when the PK area was empty Jay took the poor teddy thing and carried it outside (he was going to return it) he was stopped by one of Fatal1ty's goons. I think the American is pretty much pissed off with me now that infinite told him all about the bet (we hardly made a secret of it). Oh well, I'll survive somehow.

The Quake 3 tournamant is beginnig to be interesting. Belarus beat Russia 2-0 (courtesy of Evil -ZTN- and Morfez -Aerowalk). That outcome really disturbed the Americans and the Swedes because it meant that the winner of today's big game would have to meet Russia in the semi final instead of having an 'easy' game vs Belarus. I know for sure, though, that neither nation watned to lose here and the last group game was played fair and square. It turns out that we managed to predict the pairs correctly with Jay (he's not the very best of thieves but he turned out to be a good predictions specialist). ZeRo4 played fazz on T4 and got a surpsisingly close game. I think that was because like ZeRo4, fazz is a thinker which is the exact style ZeRo4 would not appreciate from the opponent the most. In the end it came down to a one-frag difference after Z4 got enough spawn delay time to go very defensive.

Then we saw czm play fox on Aerowalk and as Jay predicted (really, he did say it would be THE game of the match) it was intense and immensely interesting. Fox surprised czm with a defensive style. The game was very close and really came down to who spawned closer to the RA after both players killed each other attempting to take it towards the end of the game. The lucky one was czm and he got control for the last bit of the match. It WAS damn close. The US win puts them into the semi final with Russia. That one will go down in history as a classic.

When I came back from the stage game I instantly found out that the Italian kid stermy beat Fatal1ty. Well, what do you know, did I name him among the three big favourites of this event or what? He mangled Fatal1ty in the first map, got badly beaten in the second one and took the third map. Looks like little Allesandro managed to break Fatal1ty's record of winning tournaments for games that had just come out. In the other semi the best European dueler Vo0 did not fail to do the job right and beat the dr.m0ersr 2-1 in maps again. The game seems quite ridiculous and random really but well... They asked for it :P

Apart from watching games today we did a very nice interview with Sylka for ESR Uncut 2. We had lots of fun in the process, but I guess you'll just have to wait and see...

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