As soon as me and hodek (a part of eSports.pl crew) arrived to Pozna?, rest of the writers from our site picked us up from the train station. I've heared some time ago, that Pozna? is the city of beautiful women, as the matter of fact the most beautiful ones in Poland. Well, you always can find a good looking women almost everywhere in the world, but YES - they were right, right as hell. As we've found our place to sleep (our cantonment was quite nice, with a hot tub with bubbles, shower, nice and comfortable beds, kitchen 'n everything), we went out to meet with all of the writers & admins from esports.pl, as we were doing live coverage from this event, we wanted to discuss few thinks and of course - drink some nice, cold polish beer.
When we entered the "old town" of Pozna?, I started looking at the people, who were passing me by at the side-walk. Guess what I saw there (in most of the cases)? Yes - beautiful women. Couldn't move my eyes from them, I wonder what would my honey-bunny say about this... anyway, as we got ourselves into the trade centre, rest of eSports.pl was of course... late. We waited couple of minutes, enjoying ourselves with the nice.. views of the side-walks. After having a quite big group of writers & admins, we started to think about some nice place with good beer in the old town. As we arrived to the centre of it, we've found a nice bar with cold Tyskie & Lech. Most of the crew were journalists, admins & writers from our gaming site, but we had some players out there too, well - without counting me, as a retired UT oldschooler - there was zoom, who most of the Q3 players know very well, we were suposed to meet cooller aswell, but as Carmac phoned me, he said that they're too tired to meet with us today, and they're looking for some hotel at the moment. Without thinking any longer, we bought our beer and enjoyed the long preparing conversation, before the tomorrow's start. We (Me, Xaos, hodek and Rostek) decided to leave the old town at about 23:00, and so we did. After getting back to our place, someone said, that we should drink some vodka, for better sleep. Well, noone was against that idea, so hodek went to buy a liter of Smirnoff. After half of the bottle, most of us decided to get some sleep before the start of the event.
As I got up at about 6:00 o' clock with a bit of hangover, I decided to take a fast shower and remind myself and read again a player description, as I was going to do a live shoutcast from the Q4 1on1 finals. We left the place about 7:30 o' clock, and arrived to the ESWC 2006 Poland hall at 8. The place was well prepared, having all the advertisements, logos & everything ready for the visitors. PC's for the players were ready aswell, same as the scene & telebims. The hall was huge, well - this event, was the first big gaming tournament in Poland, so it made an impression on most of the people. As we entered the hall, someone directed us to the VIP's places, to meet the rest of the eSports.pl crew & few important persons, who were responsible for organising the event. After few hours of preparing, nerves & excitement Carmac & Coller arrvied (as cooller was suposed to play a showmatch vs. av3k). We had a short chat, and I had to get back to my buisness. Most of the time I was running & helping with organising things like music for dancers, shoutcasts & players presentations, but I've found some free time to chat with few well known players from polish gaming scene. Then I phoned Carmac, as he was free atlast from taking care about cooller, who played some showmatches at Creative scene at the moment. We had a short chat, and "dated" at some not noisy place to talk a bit more. I asked him if he will help me & Pajda to run a shoutcast from Q4 winners bracket matches & of course - the final. He agreed. After few exciting and some boring matches, we got ourselves to the show match between the russian star and polish youngster. The match was suposed to be between the ESWC Q4 1on1 tournament, and so it was.
First, there was a press conference, where cooller and av3k answered few interesting questions, and some dumb ones, which spectators asked. Afterwards there it was at last - the match. We've (me&carmac) seen it from above, from the studio and the view was nice, as we had telebims near ourselves, plus the direct in-eye spectator's views at monitors in the studio. Match was really exciting and ended with score 2:1 for cooller. Someone said, that av3k had a slight problems with Windows XP 64, for Athlon 64bit, that's why his mouse had a different sense, so he couldn't shaft/rail that good, but he still played a good match. Cooller seemed to rest after 2nd map, so some people thought he just gave up - well, we didn't think like that. After a showmatch, time came for the most interesting winners bracked matches and of course - finals of Q4 and CS. As Counter-Strike was totally dominated by Team Pentagram, which won their 1st place with score 16:01, the Quake 4 final was a lot more exciting and interesting. Matr0x and Cs3 were fighitng till the last frag for the 1st spot, which gave a winner the trip to Paris & some nice prizes. After a two dubble elimination matches (as the Cs3 entered the final from winners bracked, and matr0x won the first 2 rounds), we had a 5th map. Realy nice map controll and fresh thinking from matr0x's side gave him a win, but still I was cheering for Cs3. I think matr0x had another adventage - experience from big LAN tournamnets. Those two things gave him a 1st spot.
After 16 hours of walking here and there, drinking redbulls and eating disgusting mc'donalds, there it was - the ending ceremony. Some of the attenders had a smile on their faces, some of them were sad.. but hey - that's the sport, well as the matter of fact, e-sport.
I think this was a good event, on a high level with a thing , which wasn't organised never before - an invitation of a foregin top-star player, Anton "cooller" Singov to play a show match with the best home-country player. Like the cooller himself said, this was a good idea and other countries should take an example from Poland. I hope, that next ESWC qualifiers will be the same and maybe even more exciting not exactly for me, as me and eSports.pl were the organisers, but for spectators and players. For people, who never saw e-sport on a top level in action.