Last night (read: Freight night) was the final round of the Upper bracket competition for the Alienware Arena Tournament. Everyone you see in the fancy HTML table below is guaranteed a spot in the Final stretch of the tournament, which will begin on the 7th of January next year.
The teams are thinning out now and the forfeits (at least in the Upper Brackets) are all gone, so we're now approaching the much more interesting parts of the tournament. The competition in the Upper Bracket is also getting a little bit tighter, as you can see below by the new prevelance of 5-1 instead of 5-0 that we've grown accustomed to looking at thus far into the tournament, although the majority of matches are still just rolls due to the chasm of a skill difference that exists in these Open tournaments.
(On a related note, teams that got rolled in the tournament so far, have you heard of the CommFT mentor program? I hear that its pretty good...)
For the unfortunate souls in the Lower bracket, however, they still have a fair bit of fighting to do (although based on the past few rounds, it actually looks like there won't be any fighting at all since it'll probably just be a streak of forfeit wins and losses...). Next Monday night, the teams who are stuck down there in the Lower Bracket will be battling for redemption on Yukon, while the winners of each of the 15 Upper Brackets will have a little less than a month to prepare and relax for the final stretch and their share of the $1,500 prize pool... not to mention six really fancy network cards to the team that comes out on top of it all.
MOST-INTERESTING-MATCH-OF-THE-NIGHT AWARD:
EG 5 > 3 TerrorByte
Even though its a no brainer that the #1 ranked ESEA team will win against anyone but perhaps Loaded Complexity or 20ID blight, this was the closest match of the night and therefore deserves a bit of recognition. TerrorByte's TF2 crew is a relatively unknown team... or at least you'd think so after searching TWL, CEVO, and ESEA, Pwnage.tv, Alienware Arena, and Google for them like I did before publishing this article. Unfortunately, I wasn't cool enough to get any attention in their IRC channel to ask more questions about this match or find a demo for you guys, but nevertheless the fact remains that its pretty impressive that the only match that was highly contested involved ESEA's #1 ranked team (EG) and a team that is relatively unknown. Perhaps there is some hope for the chasm of skill difference after all.
As a side note here, I want to let you guys know that due to the equivalent of internet phone tag, I've not been able to scrounge up that precious ingame demo of Princeton Plainsboro sending Knights of Goku Z | Vicious Gaming to the Lower Brackets last Monday night. Whenever we end up meeting and talking, though, I promise I'll post an article here describing the most interesting match of the tournament thus far.
Interestingly, though, if Knights of Goku Z | Vicious Gaming ends up beating clan dw!d next Tuesday night then they will have a second chance to fight against Princeton Plainsboro in the finals of Bracket K. (Man, I knew from the start of this tournament that Bracket K would be the most interesting one...)
So then, without further ado, lets check out last night's results:
(Please note that as always, FFW signifies a Forfeit Win and PP signifies a Postponement of the match in question. Also, it is important to note that all losers of the Upper Bracket this week will have another chance on Yukon next Monday night and that all teams who received the not-so-pleasant end of the Lower Bracket matches are unfortunately knocked out of the tournament for good.)
Upper Bracket:
Bracket A
0
Scout Thugs & Harmony
Bracket B
Epidemic
0
<
5
Loaded!
Bracket C
Businessmen
2
<
5
Farmers Market
Bracket D
Aggravated_Assault
1
<
5
Tribune
Bracket E
team shift
PP
PP
Super Nifty
Bracket F
Team Noise
1
<
Bracket G
the terribles
1
<
5
Failin with Vhalin
Bracket H
#pound
5
1
what
Bracket I
Firebot
0
<
5
VIRGIN POLICE
Bracket J
EG
5
3
TerrorByte
Bracket K
MoB Gaming
5
0
Princeton Plainsboro
Bracket L
Blight Gaming
5
1
Immortal-7
Bracket M
Target Practice
0
<
5
Perplex
Bracket N
5
1
Idol's Sleep-over party
Bracket O
Chuckles Loves Fat Girls
5
0
Bracket P
Pandemic
5
0
Detox-Gaming
Lower Bracket :
Bracket A
XD Clan
0
<
FFW
Narcissist Ninjas
Team apem
FFW
0
Kami
Bracket B
Super Sexy
0
<
FFW
Clan Origin
BYE
Jammmin With Jammar
Bracket C
Crack Clan
0
<
FFW
mainLine Gaming
0
<
FFW
Farmers of the Eastern Caribbean
Bracket D
The Dark Shot
0
<
FFW
eXpertise
The Brassmen
FFW
0
Easy Play Gaming
Bracket E
Burbank Nerd Krew
0
<
FFW
Sub-Zero
myfreecams
FFL
FFL
Futuristic Sex Robotz
Bracket F
Burn it!!
0
<
FFW
Kodai Gamers
A Different Kind
0
<
FFW
My Chemical Bromance
Bracket G
Cliff Hanger
0
<
FFW
Sykadelic
TIBS
0
<
5
Game Theory
Bracket H
Abusement Park
0
<
5
ionic
We Seek Truth
0
<
Bracket I
Combine
0
<
5
Gamer Nation
Team FP
0
<
5
Misfits!
Bracket J
Lawn Care INC
0
<
5
Raged Gaming
Ether
FFW
0
Bracket K
Psychotic Killers United
0
<
5
Clan dw!d
CUBE
0
<
5
Knights of Goku Z | Vicious Gaming
Bracket L
Shorthand Bicycle Design
0
<
FFW
Cascade
watch for falling rocks
0
<
FFW
TEAMBAD
Bracket M
Metallic Vigorouse Pries
0
<
The Medical Doctors
0
<
5
Empyrean
Bracket N
UnderBoob
0
<
FFW
Overclock.net
Double Negative
FFW
0
AFuGsLife
Bracket O
Xeroxed
5
0
Choo Choo Train
A¢£
5
0
House of Rice
Bracket P
Jarate Masters
5
0
Baconators
<
5
Bigger F'ukm Nads, Gayer Grieving Snow
Well, as I said above, The Upper Bracket winners are done competing until January 7th, when the second half of the tournament will begin. In the next couple of weeks though, the Lower Bracket teams must continue to fight for their place in the aforementioned second half. Thursday night will have Yukon as the map of the night and I will be ready to report the results on Friday evening.
Until then.
Originally published on CommunityFortress on Friday, 11 December 2009 18:59 by wand.
Archived from Alienware Tournament Wrap-Up: Round 3 as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of CommunityFortress's TF2 coverage. All rights remain with the original author and CommunityFortress; reposted for historical reference.