image: shgmain2
Copenhagen saw sparks fly in the various tournaments across the shgOpen, whether your game was ET, CoD or CS there was something for everyone this weekend and it was a fantastic advert for competitive gaming, with both ET and CoD putting their names out there with a great response.

It’s only the second time that these two events have been picked together for a major event, and probably the most prestigious tournament outside of Dallas that either have attended. The shgOpen could prove to be the biggest tournament in Europe this year, with only ESWC likely outstrip its budget and prestige, having both mp40 games there is quite an achievement. Not only that but major gaming sites like Gotfrag and more impressively readmore.de took an avid interest in the ET tournament, aswell as CoD (unsurprisingly for gotfrag however).

Looking at the tournaments, both had some fantastic matches. Firstly with ET, I don’t think I will forget standing behind zeroPoint as they left it to the last second to beat Black Magic. A real cracking match, and whilst Dignitas did walk all over the tournament, it has to be said that outside of the Estonians there was a great tournament and more and more new faces coming to the ET lan scene.

You need but only read the comments and journals of the players that attended the event to know how much fun they all had. For the ET players who were getting their very first experience of a big gaming event, they landed on their feet and lapped up the opportunity. As always, nobody walks away unhappy with their experience of a LAN event and it comes as no surprise that many people from the event told me how much more they’re looking to CPC after this weekend.

For me, I’ve attended more lans than I care to remember. Sometimes you go in with low expectations and walk out amazed, others you forget instantly, this one I will never forget. The event had a cracking atmosphere, with a fantastic mix between BYOC and professional. Some of the European top CS pro’s do walk around with a swagger and ego that needs the huge numbers of normal skilled gamers from a BYOC to cut the egosphere down to size, and this had the perfect match. I loved every minute of the tournaments and the events, and CoD2 had a big part to play in that.

I had casted digitalMind earlier on in the week against PCPoint in Eurocup on toujane. They won and to be honest, they raped their British opponent, however nothing indicated that they were going to make the whole of Europe look average the following weekend. It was glorious to watch the perfection play by solz. So rarely has one player risen to be that much better than anyone else in the tournament. Solz is a very effervescent character who is not afraid to speak his mind, his rise to glory this weekend is not only deserved, but should provide platform for digitalMind to push forward from.

No team has ever won back to back CoD2 majors, but after shgOpen, my money is firmly on dM to go ahead and do that by winning CPC2. There is no reason why they cant, they’re strong on a number of maps and they have players who should stay hungry for success. At CPC2 they’ll have home advantage and should look to boost their reputation with a win against a bigger field of teams.

Even though the final was one sided, it was still really nice to watch along with all the games. TeK-9 contributed to that a lot, they have the flair players who kicked into gear on occasion and really got my heart racing with some frags. In true style of CoD2, theres always one team that comes from nowhere to outshine the bigger reputations and suXus did exactly that. They’ve not been the most active team and they themselves had one or two questions about their own future, but resoundingly answered them all with a thrilling gaming against Logitech and topped it off with a professional performance against TeK-9.

The biggest question rising from the ashes of the tournament is about the demise of Dignitas. The side who won CPC and have been there or there abouts in every major tournament for the past year fell apart this weekend and will have to take a long hard look at how they're planning on coming back. Mick was an everpresent at the top of the scoreboard, but even he couldnt pull the team into a respectable finish. They looked a shadow of the side that won CPC1, against digitalMind they were nowhere to be seen and appeared to throw in the towel against suXus. Having not won a tournament since September 06, is now the time for Mick to shuffle his pack with 2 months until the next interntaional event and i30 to get the team lan ready?

The original dates for the Crossfire lan 2 were this weekend just past, we moved it because of shgOpen and I’m so glad we did. The event was fantastic, the tournaments were a real success and now its all eyes on Enschede for both games. I cannot wait to see how that tournament unfolds in both games.

As for the big prize itself, MIBR the ESWC champions went home with 16,000 euros and the WCG winners Pentagram returned to Poland in second place with 10,000 in their back pocket. The CS final was probably the most exciting final of any CS tournament I’ve seen in a while. You can watch all the action on the iTG VOD player and for the CS final, aswell as CoD, I would certainly recommend it. You can catch them all Here

Thanks to chosen, nellie, fusen, crow & Arachon for their tremendous effort keeping Crossfire updated with news and writing this weekend. Thanks to GotFrag for the image!