Sorry for the delay no internet last night :)
After an early start, 6:30am (thanks to ph33r talking all night) we headed for McDonalds for something to eat, we spotted a 1 mile to McDonalds sign and off we went. After getting there, eating, and walking back we had killed sometime. After planning our day we decided to head off to the CPL. ph33r, Gekko, Boon headed off in the first taxi to the Magna Centre (hosting the CPL UK Event). I went with Smurf to our new hotel for the weekend, we managed to throw our bags into bds' room since it was to early to check in. Once that was done we got a taxi to the CPL. We arrived at about 10:30 and proceeded to wait for the opening. We waited some more and also waited a little more. The gamers from all over the world started to arrive. Brazilian CounterStrike teams, Chilean and Japanese Painkiller players, they were all here. We had along walk into the venue itself, walking around the science venue to get to the Big Hall. There was suddenly a rugby scrum at the registration desk. Eventually we got signed up and was ready to roll.
While waiting for the seedings and brackets to come out we decided to have a look around the venue, there was a chill out zone which got filled quickly, an Intel stand with 4 high spec laptops running Painkiller. Across from the entrance was the nvidia stand with the latest graphics cards on show on some high speed machines. We made our way to the BYOC area and got setup, one major problem for us producing coverage was the lack of Internet and lack of hired monitors. With a tight schedule between filming and rendering the lack of monitors was painful. Luckily we was able to keep in contact with iantje via mobiles. The admins were alway helpful on letting us know when matches would be starting and continious updates. Eventually the action got started with some great Painkiller action. I was lucky to watch SteLam vs Mjolnir in the Upper Bracket 1st round, with commanding wins, 62:0 and 54:-2, SteLam had a good start to the event. While writing this zyz is in action against the Italian CraZy.
SK CounterStrike have been delayed all day and about to start at about 20:30. I can imagine it has been a drag for them today, but they have kept their spirits high by using the 4Kings computers from time to time. The event has got going and everything seems to be working for the players. Lets hope tomorrow starts off smoothly and we get some great action and great coverage. Also I hope our Internet is running all day tomorrow and that TGI Fridays is still open when I get back to the hotel, a sausage and egg McMuffin isn't enough for a whole day.