The 3v3 Liquid Tournament of 27th February 2021! LOTS OF DRAMA!!!!!

24 players, 8 teams participated in this "historic (?)" event. The 8 teams were divided into 2 groups of 4. 2 teams would advance to the semi finals from each group after the league phase. Group B was fairly straight forward as my team lost our games badly. Lordy, Faust & Kipp dominated the group and went through in first place with a perfect 3/3 score. Beasty, Gno and Yuzgen took 2nd spot at the expense of Dragon, Eule and Miko. 

Group A is where the drama happened. Kobra, Maty and Wario were eliminated. However, 3 teams were tied on 2 wins out of 3 causing a real headache! Kickn's team, Hezb's team and Tanja's team all had 2 wins out of 3. It was rock paper scissors. There was no real way to decide which 2 teams qualified for the semi-finals! I suggested that they !gamble for 1 of the teams to go through, and then make the other 2 teams play a play-off game. Seemed pretty fair, right? A !gamble happened and Hezb's team came up.

(27) [22:22] <[Lordy-TA]> !gamble hezb kickn tanja
(27) [22:22] <CnCNet5_Bot> Result: hezb

Well it didn't work out like that. Various debates happened on discord, the end result was that Lordy (host) informed that Hezb's team was the one of the 3 chosen to be eliminated! Going forward we need to have a rule in place for what happens in such a scenario. This wasn't the first time we have had a tie for a qualifying spot (it happened in Demon's Liquid tournament almost a year ago). It's a difficult situation I appreciate and there is no easy answer. In reality none of the 3 teams deserved to be eliminated. Fair play to Hezb, Diaz and Jacob for taking it so well and not arguing at all and being good sportsmen. However, I have to admit I would be very disillusioned to be eliminated in such a manner if I were in their position. A couple of other players agreed with this. Hezb, Jacob and Diaz now hold the distinction of becoming the first team in tournament history to be eliminated without being properly eliminated. So they can take a moral victory from this tournament at least. Comment below for what you think we should do in a scenario in which 3 teams are tied.

So after 20 minutes of all this "who is through, who is eliminated?" headache, we finally had an answer. Controversial to say the least!The semi finals were as thus:

Kickn, Ad & Bart vs Bea5ty, Yuzgen & Gno.

Lordy, Faust & Kipp vs Nate, Tanja, Kidzero.

Bea5ty's team and Lordy's teams won and progressed to the finals! The second straight week in the finals for Faust & Kipp.

Bea5ty streamed all of his games including the final check them out here https://www.twitch.tv/bea5ty12

*SPOILERS FOR FINAL* Watch final on Beasty's stream first if you do not want spoiled. 

What an amazing final! The score became tied at 1-1 in the Bo3 final. Would this be the 6th final in a row that Lordy was the runner up? Everyone wants to see the Bear become the bride for a change instead of always being the bridesmaid. The true Jimmy White of Red Alert (man who famously lost 6 World Snooker finals, never managing to win 1, despite being the clear best player in the world most of the years). AKA a bottler. There was some epic banter before the deciding game

Yuzgen with the mindgames <

Lordy's legs must have been shaking like jelly. He knew the trajectory of his Red Alert Hall of Fame career depended on this 1 game.

I think all of the neutrals in the lobby and on Twitch were rooting for G-no's team to take the crown. After all who wanted to see Faust and Kipp win again? Time for someone else to win!

(27) [23:48] <k0br[A]1> haha
(27) [23:48] <k0br[A]1> shakinlike a shitting dog
(28) [00:07] <k0br[A]1> lorrdy buckled under the pressure

Kobra put it very eloquently. 

The neutrals got what they wanted! A G-no victory

The lobby started singing in unison as their hero was crowned the Champion! G-no! There's only one G-no!

Congratulations to Yuzgen and Bea5ty as well for being part of the winning team. However this tournament was all about the legendary G-no.

Hard luck for Lordy on receiving yet another silver medal. I think we can all console him with a virtual pat on the back. No doubt the bear will be back to growl another day! Also well done to Faust and Kipp for reaching the finals yet again!

G-no! G-no! G-no!

G-no winning tournaments like a boss

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2v2 Tournament Report 20th February + MORE!

*SPOILER WARNING BELOW* Click this video link first if you want to watch the final unspoiled:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/922315103

 Maps played were T-dawg [Ore], Foxhunters [Gems] and Break's Vegan Gym [Ore+Gems].

Congratulations are in order to Faust and Kipp of [A] clan for taking down the latest 2v2 tournament, defeating the formidable threat of Hezb and Lordy in the final. Coming back from 2-0 down to win 4-2. Huge congratulations to [A] clan on another tournament victory! The best team won as they had previously dominated the round robin stage 6-0. A sensational display of teamwork.

Full standings can be found here https://challonge.com/qsb4ltmr

Video commentary of the final is above as stated previously. Features extra special pr0 commentary from myself, K0bra and an incoherent drunken Leigh.

However, something even more spectacular happened this week which perhaps even overshadowed Faust &  Kipp's tournament victory. OldPr0's long standing "longest pro game losing streak" record was absolutely blown out of the water. OldPr0 will be disappointed to lose the crown as the losing-most player on CnCNet, however, at least he can console himself with the knowledge that he still holds the record for team games.  

Congratulations to bartsama for achieving the first ever negative score in CnCNet ladder history after a 50-0 consecutive losing streak. You need to have a remarkably low IQ (sub-90) to be able to achieve this. A truly phenomenal feat which he finally managed to snap after defeating Yuzgen in a 1v1 on Ribbon Isle (no doubt that game will make it to YouTube). Huge round of applause and commiserations to OldPr0 on losing his crown. Hopefully this will give him some motivation to get it back!

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A VERY SPECIAL INTERVIEW WITH A LEGEND!!!! 1998 RED ALERT PGL CHAMPION: DEEPBLUE

 

N8Diaz managed to find contact information for this World Champion of Red Alert, a man who won the 1998 AMD sponsored Pro Gamers League RA championship and $7500 first prize. Next follows a very information Q&A with a legend of our game who has not played since his famous victory 23 years ago. [DeepBlue answers in bold]:

1) Can you tell us a little about yourself and what are your first memories of playing Red Alert online?

About 12 years after the PGL tournament I moved to the UK, where I currently live. I've got a family now, and while I still love gaming it only happens as a secondary thing now. This naturally means competitive play is out of the question, as it requires a lot of dedication. I recall, with a degree of nostalgia, a lot of the experiences that came as a result of online competition, namely via Red Alert on TEN. Lots of memories of playing with rivals Nukewintr and CnC_God in particular.

2) Why did you ultimately stop playing? Did you feel you had reached the top of the game after the 1998 PGL win and there was nothing left to achieve?

More accurately you could say that I stopped playing competitively. I stopped playing RA immediately after winning as I had achieved the ultimate goal at the time and newer games would keep being churned out. I was quite content with having won at RA and didn't plan to compete in other games which would require so much practice and testing for competition that would, for me at least, steal most of the joy of actually playing the game. Don't get me wrong, nothing beats the thrill of beating other favourites in a competition, but I was quite content with my 15 minutes of fame and to be honest didn't want to put my reputation on the line on games that I hadn't dedicated as much devotion to as I had for RA.

3) I noticed on Google that you had a short but successful career playing Starcraft. Is that the only other RTS game you played and can you tell us a little about it?

When Everquest came out I got pretty hardcore addicted to it (would spend hours corpse camping rivals, hehe!) and much later WoW. I skipped season 2 of the PGL because as I was testing with my brother (Rui) I noticed that the tanks of a player on a faster PC would always outperform their rivals in battle if that player had a slower PC. I only dabbled a little in Starcaft because it was an RTS game and being new it was quite cool. It was selected as the PGL's season 3 RTS game and I decided to play under a pseudonym (powerpeon) as since I barely played the game (as mentioned I was playing Everquest all the time), I did not expect to go far at all. In fact, I was honestly in disbelief when I won my bracket and gained access to the live finals. At the live finals I knew that most, if not all of the others would have devoted their time to Starcraft and it came as no surprise that I didn't go far.

4) Honestly, have you ever returned to the game in the last 20 years or so? Are you aware that EA remastered the game and re-released it for its 25th anniversary in 2020 and it has been quite successful?

I never returned to RA for the reasons mentioned in second reply. I believe I had seen that it was remastered at some point, but that wasn't enough to get back into it.

5) Does it excite you to learn that there still exists a large community for original Red Alert on CnCNet in 2021 and your playername is remembered as a legend? Dare I say it, you even have some fans.

I was quite surprised to hear that it is still actively played, but I am glad to hear it.

6) Can you remember the name of the map on which you defeated Soulja in the PGL finals? Which maps were used throughout the tournament as the press release doesn't provide much information?

I had to beat him twice to win the competition as he did manage to win the 2nd game we played, which setup a winner takes all 3rd match. If I recall correctly, there were 3 maps that were specifically made for the live finals, with one of them being a modified (basically symetrical) version of Path Beyond. But the one we played the final match on wasn't that one, it was one of the others. I still vaguely remember it, including where I sent my sneaky infantry assault!

7) Do you still keep in touch with any of your old rivals? If not can you remember their names/location and message in private and we'll try to get in touch with them and do a similar style interview?

Nukewintr, CnC_God and I think hoggleford/snodgrass I have as friends on Facebook, although we're distant to say the least.

8) Do you remember any of the other legends of the game such as Niklas, Porker, Nike1, Milo234, JJFjr or FallenAngels? Can you tell us a little about your encounters with them. If not, do you remember who was your toughest ever opponent?

This was sooooo long ago. Either Niklas or Nike1.. or both, I remember, I think! Can't recall specific matches, but as a norm a few other great players came over from other services such as Mplayer, etc to play on TEN shortly before the PGL competition started. Can't recall too much about the matches with them. I think the only one that concerned me a bit initially was Soulja as I think after 5 matches he had taken 2. So I did more hardcore testing of tactics with my brother to improve my win rate against him.

9) How do you think the top 90s players would compete with the top players of today? (Ill send you links to current top player vids)

Nowadays players have a huge advantage of being able to learn from watching replays from others, something I had no access to at the time. The sheer amount of what one can learn by watching different replays would give current players an edge over ones from the 90's as I believe you could say the level of play has improved as a result. However, if one of those players from the 90's continued to play until now, and also took advantage of this new thingymajig called 'Youtube' (haha, I did that on purpose to show how long ago I was playing RA), good luck beating them!

10) Finally, is there anything you would like to say to the community? Is it possible we could ever see you return, maybe even to do some commentary on a path beyond tournament, if you feel like playing isn't an option nowadays?

I have one question, although I know the chances of it ever being answered are low... Who the hell were the two guys (likely aliases) that joined TEN and only played in 2v2 (I think they may have been using names like tech_100 and unloaded or something). They were incredibly good as a team and I don't think that my win ratio in team games against them was positive! I think they were the only people to ever have that over me in RA.

Thank you very much for your time. It is greatly appreciated. And you sir, are a legend in our community.

Thank you! It was fun revisiting this bit of my past :-)

Bonus question to follow, which you may remember...

Steelbeed also played in the 1998 PGL and reached the 3rd round. He remembers you and others you mentioned. His question is: Do you have your Solja rag on?

I do remember a player with Steel in his name, I know it had around 9 characters (odd how memory works!). It was probably Steelbeed as there weren't THAT many players with similar names back then. I think he liked 2v2, or at least I played him in some. To answer his question, I had to google what the hell a solja rag would be, lol. That sort of asnwers it.

 

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