Hey everyone!

So Insider is gonna be back shortly. First of all, all who had an Insider account before the new site will get his days back + a bonus for the downtime.

What will Insider be from the beginning?
- Servers, we will focus more on this now, and trying to have them top notch. SK players will be on, there will be ranking, gathers etc.
- Forums, we will add one Insider forum, I know a lot of the old insiders wanted this one.
- Extras for all hardcore fans, more raffles of SK gear, signed clothes and so on...
- Even faster downloads, up to 1000KB/sec.

What will Insider not be?
- Content, videos, files etc will still be 100% free, no matter if you have insider or not.

Insider will be a service for hardcore fans, users who would like to play on cheat free servers with their friends, more personal forums, more raffles and faster downloads.

Well it's nice to be here at SK Gaming. We're looking to bring a more PvE/General oriented angle to the /wow/ community which has been a lot more focused on the PvP content in recent months.

While there have been a few basic details of the sort of incoming content I thought I might provide a more detailed breakdown of what to expect here in the blog :)

Firstly there's going to be a LOT of guides. There's sites all over the net that are putting out guides for all different aspects of World of Warcraft. However they are spread all over the place, most of them are of a very poor standard and frankly made by people who have no idea what they are talking about. Our plan is to provide readers with comprehesive guides to get you going at the highend of this game and all in one centralised place you can always come back and check up on. Here are a few examples of the kind of guides you will be seeing here: Classes, Professions, MinMaxing your char, Strategy Guides for all PvE content and also how to setup and optimise your UI including recommendations of the best addons to use. In this field im also going to be releasing a customised SK User Interface that will contain the latest addons that the top players are using at the moment, all setup for you straight out of the box.

Much as you have seen some really great PvP articles coming out here at SK, we're going to be adding some PvE/General WoW articles on topical issues to try and get some debate going. I'm going to be producing a multiple part article on Guild Management. It's something I get asked about pretty often, how to keep your guild running, maximise the performance of your players, manage loot and generally progress the guild as much as possible. In this respect WoW is completely different to many other popular games due to the massive scope and size of the entities involved. It's a lot more like running a company than a sports team. Anyway im not going to sit here and give spoilers on all the planned content but this along with a preview of the imminent Sunwell Raid Instance are definitely on the cards to be released soon !

I think the most exciting aspect however will be the new streaming capability. Live streaming raids for the first time available in high, very watchable quality. There is nowhere else at the moment where you will be able to get this kind of content with high enough quality so you can actually see what's going on :) This coupled with the release of all the new Sunwell kill videos and a few other movies will provide a lot of new more PvE based media here on the WoW section.

Watch this space !

//mek

Virtualized
Our web page runs solely on a bunch of Xen servers. Xen is an open-source virtualization platform (Hypervisor) that allows us to flexibly set up new virtual servers which can share the same physical hardware with other virtual machines. With Xen we can separate services that should better be on separate machines, utilize our physical hardware even better and move servers from one physical machine to another in case of a hardware failure.

Stable
A long time ago we’ve chosen Debian as our Linux distribution because it has proven to be extraordinary stable and it provides a very logical and lean approach to administrate it. Currently we are running the AMD64 release of Debian etch, their current stable version, on both the Parent Domain (dom0) of Xen and the virtual machines (domU’s) to leverage high amount of ram.

Scalable
To scale to the increased demand we’re experiencing since running on the new page we set up the load balancer keepalived to build a redundant firewall (active/passive) which amongst other things distributes the web requests to a farm of web servers. When developing the new page we took care that the code can be spread among multiple web servers safely.

Light
More than a year ago we switched our web server software from Apache to lighttpd which I can say was one of the best decisions ever. Lighttpd, as the name says, has a very low resource footprint, almost no memory usage and a really flexible way of configuring it, without sacrificing any features we need to run www.sk-gaming.com. And best of all, it’s literally fast as light.

Known
That we use PHP as our scripting language is pretty much known and has not changed. Currently we are running on PHP5 and use XCache for caching PHP intermediate code. Interesting maybe for other XCache users is that when we upgrade to the current xcache-1.2.2 we noticed a drop of around 30ms rendertime, even though XCache was already the fastest opcode cacher out there (at least according to this benchmark).

Fast
On the old page we used full page caching on some often loaded pages like the index page, but it was implemented in a very shirt-sleeved way: Every minute a script downloaded the site and pushed the content into the database. The site the user received simply got that rendered site from the database and sent that to the client. The problem with that implementation is obvious: it does not scale beyond a few number of pages cached, needed special coding on these to work and still put certain load on the database.

The approach we needed was a more general one which would work on every page and takes into account, that we have many pages which are user specific (e.g. /member/JFK looks different for me than for you). The solution we now have is leveraging the speed and the scalability that memcached, which is in in-memory cache for data objects, offers combined with some code (which I might share in a future article) that does basically the following:
1. Check if memcached has a cached version of the requested page
a. If yes: deliver it from there and stop processing
b. If no: go on
2. Render the page normally but put the output to a buffer
3. Put that buffer into memcached and deliver the rendered content
With that and using memcached to cache some other functionalities that normally needs database queries, we reduced the number of these queries to zero on cached pages and replaced them with only four, always fast (because non-blocking and distributed), memcached queries. What do zero database queries mean for the users? Page rendering of cached pages only takes around 10ms, which is for most users faster than the page actually needs to travel through the internet to your computers.

Compliant
Most pages are already XHTML 1.0 Transitional compliant which you can easily check with the W3C validator. We still have to work on some issues left, but we are committed to make www.sk-gaming.com completely compliant to current web standards.

Secure
To protect your password from being stolen on logging in, we decided to submit your passwords securely through an SSL encrypted connection. For extra security, we added the “Lock” icon next to the form, where you can enter your username and password, which leads you to a secure login form. This login form allows you to enter your password in a secure environment and makes sure your password is submitted a) only to us and b) only secured with HTTPS. When entering the username and password on the (non-encrypted) front page that cannot be assured, because the content could have been altered after leaving our web servers (man in the middle attack). For that extra security to work it is important that these requirements are fulfilled:
1. You receive no certificate errors when opening https://www.sk-gaming.com/login/
2. You have no rootkit or backdoor on your computer which captures key inputs or has installed trusted root certificates

Future-proof
With this solid basis we are looking into implementing and optimizing our infrastructure even more. For example we are evaluating how our users can benefit from new technologies like CardSpace/OpenID or Semantic Web. I will keep you updated.

I just found crazy article. When i saw it i really got impressed. Myself dont even know that much of a history about me. So i had to mention it. Its a story about me from day one to where i am right now. Big thanks to the guy who took his time to do this. I dont know where to find him but this will be my thanks back to him. Propps to chaOz.

Whole story about me. Click on the linkdown.below.

http://xplayn.com/161 - Part 1-5

Its only in dannish though!

I have added the ability to upload logos to your teams and groups. Enjoy!

Corpsegrinder from the death metal band Cannibal Corpse being interviewed about various stuff and it turns out that he likes WoW - a lot!

The interview was made in August 2007 but is definitley worth a look for those who haven't already seen it. I suggest that you listen to the whole interview but the WoW-part starts around 4min 20sec.

There's alot of fuss nowadays concerning whether or not silent-run / russian duck or whatever you want to call it, should be allowed.

I'll admit, when most professional players started using silent-run it annoyed me a bit in the beginning. I wasn't able to hear them because I wasn't used to the sound of someone silent-running - i'll recognize it now.
Then there's the question about bugged hitboxes while silent-running. That was a pain in the ass in the beginning too. You would aim as you normally do when waiting for someone to pop up from behind a corner but now, instead i'll take into consideration he might be double-ducking around corners.

I think being able to do this manually (ctrl or whatever your +duck button is) _IS_ a skill and has become a part of the game, the same way past changes of the game has become a part of it eventually.
Basically every professional Counter-Strike gamer uses silent-running and tournaments should recognize that 'top-gamers' are pro-silent-running.

If you, as a Counter-Strike player want to be the best you can be that concerns all aspects of the game. If you on the other hand totally despite silent-running, there are always these awfully boring servers with a modification which disables double-ducking.

Either allow it, or have it removed from the game.

Yesterday we spent in Infernoonline, Abdi was back playing his first pracc in months, i was chillin trying to learn dota.. nuff said..Seeing Abdi back in Sks lineup was fucking sweet! and the whole team did excellent. U could se the hunger to win was bigger then ever..

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnfBatAqeyA&feature=related

// Yohannes

Since alot of people are flaming us for removing GeT_RiGhT in the favour of SpawN after only one tournament I thought i'd give you some more insight from the teams' point of view.

GeT_RiGhT is a huge talent skillwise and yes, he might need some time to evolve routine- and experiencewise and he will, for sure. We all needed that time.
SpawN and GeT_RiGhT are basically the same type of players, great aimers and aggressive players who can win a game themselves on any given day.

After Extreme Masters we had a talk concerning whether or not GeT_RiGhT filled SpawN's position in the game and yes, he does. He does a great job in-game.
On the other hand, we all agreed that chemistry is more important than anything and all of us were very comfortable with SpawN in the team. There's a big age difference between most of us and GeT_RiGhT compared to SpawN and we like to have fun together too and we prioritize SpawN in this sense.

GeT_RiGhT might very well go onto another team and be successful and end up destroying us in some future tournament, but still - we're gonna go with chemistry here and see where it takes us.

All of us hope for your contiuniung support, it is greatly appreciated!

Dennis 'walle' Wallenberg

The years was 2001, 14 guys in suburb in sthlm sharing a room smaller then the one ur in now, screaming fighting and having the time of our life or as we say in sweden "fakkar ur".
The game was Smash brothers on nintendo 64 and we played that shit from a.m to p.m allday everyday.
Smash bros was our life, when we didnt play we talked about playing, and when playing we talked about how awesome it was to be back kicking donky kongs ass.
The time was insaine and like every game/sport it got its stars, the guy everybody wanted to team up with to secure succes and local stardom :)

In this case we where talking about 2 guys Abdi Wahab Mohamed and Abdi Samad Mohamed, u know them like MegatoN and SpawN i know them as Metroide Prime and Yoshi.

But nuff bout that! to be continued!?

My name is Samuel Yohanned and you can consider me Abdisamad Mohameds P.A. If u have any questions, request, or just shit u need to get off ur cheast dont hesitate just hollar and i will try to hook u up :)

due to a crazy workload on abdis sk page if you need to get in contact with abdi u will find the easies way is to contact me here..

awesomejobsamuel.blogspot.com
www.myspace.com/psyamuel
www.sk-gaming.com Alias: Yohannes
www.facebook.com Alias: Samuel Yohannes

Well I just found myself with some spare time. I arrived at CEBIT last night, there were no crowds but as the taxi driver passed it I saw a huge airport sized building, that is just just Hall 1 of many!!! The place is massive, stick a few airports together and you have CEBIT, it is immense.

I´m sharing an apartment with Quish, my co-caster who casted events like W3 in Korea, we did a showmatch cast this morning with two of the members of game-TV Lalle & Norbert. It was pretty nerve racking, not because I don`t know the game but just the fact there is a crowd infront of you as well casting with Quish, I´m unsure when I can talk!!

The inside of the event is amazing, just the scale of it compared to any other event i`ve been to before. The SEC is in Hall 22 which houses next to it a popular SK Gaming booth where people can relax on the SK seats and plaz some FIFA against their friends. There is also Roccat, AMD, Razor and many others, all fighting for the attention of the crowds wandering the Hall. Booth babes are present, leaning seductively over cars, computer hardware and drooling fans.

SEC is in just one of the Halls outside is a maze of halls, more like a city than a convention, it is just HUGE, it is just unbelievable, it is so easy to get lost. After my first Warcraft3 cast, came a FIFA cast with Carmac, Carmac is more direct with suggestions and I struggled a little with knowing the right time to speak. I know the game well enough so its not a case of not knowing the game (like FIFA although I love football) just a case of knowing the appropriate time to take over from my co-commentator.

Hopefully over the course of the days I will get better, I`ve been thrown in the deep end so I pray I will learn to swim in time. I´m at the event courtesy of Game-TV, they are in charge of the coverage and SEC tournament, lead by a happy chappy German Lajos. Compared to the ESL and NGL crew I met on my past two e-sports trips, the group are much more relaxed, a collection of passionate fans hoping to provide for the community they are a part of.

I ran into Lloth, Moli & Paisy from PGS, with the latter two playing a friendly 2on2 versus QUish and I, we unfortunately lost due to Quish´s supposid "rustiness"! Even with SaSe watching over Quish he still couldn´t managed to get it together!!! ;) In 15 minutes will be the SEC official opening ceremony, at the moment the Hall is void of SEC players but over the next 3 days, it will get much busier!

Extreme Masters is way out in the wilderness, not in CEBIT itself until Saturday & Sunday which Quish and I found out the hard way, wandering through the huge halls packed with people and products of every kind. After 1 hour of walking and having INtel people shrug cluelessly, we ran into Sven, co-ordinator of Coverage for the ESL who told us what is what. At least we bought an ice cream each in one of the booths which I had decided at least make the trip fruitful!

Enjoy the gallery from the event, provided not by my shaky camera work but instead by SK´s latest addition Pigvomit, a Polish cameraman with the "skills to pay the bills".

Lta from Knockout was kind enough to share this clip, a quite funny bug that happened to him in a 3vs3 game on Blade's Edge Arena.

Ali G interviews Posh & Becks



Ali G - Drugs



Ali G - Dangerous Weapons



Conan O'Brien show, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog





Korean Starcraft Comedian (courtesy of SK.reis)



Tickle me Emo (courtesy of SQRQH)



Borat - A Real Man



Back with more soon, enjoy.

Leave a Comment!!! IF people like it I'll do this more often :D

I'm sure many of you have been following the Bloodlust 5vs5 tournament, and some of the drama that the game between SK and TSG (teh super gosus) brought.

Sites like Gameriot and Gotfrag were not slow to pick up the drama that "SK" had caused. So I figured I might say a few words about my view on all that has happened.

I think trance made a very wise desicision with adding the new rules about disconnects. I mean, I do understand how it sucks when someone really disconnects (which was what happened in SK's case), but since it's online there's really nothing you can do about it. If you disconenct you just have to deal with it, it doesn't happen that often so it shouldn't be a very big problem, it shoulnd't even happen more than maybe a few times per tournament. So this rule is definitley good for the tournament although it's definitley not going to be fair sometimes - which everyone just has to accept.

Since there wasn't any set rules about this, and from what I understood this happend in the fnatic vs CLC match also, and CLC got that match replayed. I mean, when someone really does disconnect, it's pretty obvious that the match should be replayed. TSG claimed that it woulnd't have affected the outcome of the match, while SK did. TSG's word against SK's and a lot of ugly words were said, something that many people seem to have reacted to.
You have to know that these players are extreme winners, you don't end up in the top of bg9 if you don't have an eager to win, and in the heat of battle people say lots of things that they maybe shouldn't had. Being an ex football athlete myself, I do understand how this works, although I don't agree with it and it's definitley something that many people, especially wow players that maybe some day will end up as pro gamers have to think about.

I had a chat with Neilyo about this and the advice that I gave him, and I think a lot of other people (especially good players) is that they should let their performances speak for themselves. When you are a successful player, people will always trashtalk you, simply because everyone won't like you and definitley not agree with you. There's no point in being defensive about it (or agressive for that matter), you just have to let it go and just face the fact that some people will dislike or even hate you.

Anyway, I have to say that I'm very relieved that we managed to come back and win three straight games. Actually it was four wins since they won a rated match (+22 points!) also. Incredible job by them I must say, since they didn't have any experience whatsoever against that comp, since it's very unusual.

TSG still remains in the tournament and I really hope that we get to play them in the grand finals again.

A few days ago I ordered King of Kong. I guess a lot of you have seen the movie, if not, you should!

It is documentary about the quest to beat the old world record of the arcade game Donkey Kong.

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Remember, those rules were created to improve everyone's experience with the site, so please stick to them!

Finally fixed albums so you can edit all details. Also added description to photos.

Another day has been and gone and today proved even more enjoyable than yesterday.

Phil from MYM showed me had written a blog which included a photo of me (which btw is extremely ugly, my left side is definately the best ;). Was generally pissed off as I look like a ghost in it. Cassandra said I looked "very fair" in a poor attempt to make me feel better.

The MYM guys are quite cool to be with, I've made an attempt to make sure I chat a little to all the people in the press area. So far I discovered that Readmore.de has a head-in-chief called Beeemit who was asking "who is maly?" as he wanted someone to proofread his cArn interview, in exchange he said we could use his readmore photos, a fair deal.

Readmore.de is clearly the top dog in the German E-Sports news scene and its easy to see why, in particular their photography which is top notch. Beeemit (pictured left) is a happy chappy and seems someone who wants to push E-Sports news further and seems to be a jack of all trades.

It is not until you go to events you realise how wide the E-Sports scene really is for specific communities such as Readmore.De for German viewers and fragbite.se for Swedish ones. I need to work on my Counter-Strike knowledge of players, going to IFNG I did not even know who ins was and was unable to recognise f0rest here at the NGL!

The mTw guys are really cool and despite coming from all over the world seem pretty close, Rukie said it was thanks to the 3 day bootcamp with Protois, Rainbow and later Kikikawi. Rainbow is keen to make effort to make friends with the Europeans and is probably the most outgoing of the Koreans, Rukie said in interviews most of the time he will just answer "good" or "not good" since most of the time he does not understand the questions but he's obviously keen to meet new people wherever they are from.

Kiwikaki as I mentioned before despite looking like he should still be in school, is actually 18 and seems pretty known by the Koreans of MYM who just yell "KIIIWIKAKKKIIII" whenever they see him, that is the end of the conversation and they walk off but recognition is always nice.

Generally the conversations between Koreans and other players revolves around the words "you all-kill yes?", I think European players sometimes assume the Koreans are more stupid than they actually are, most have a wider vocabulary but are happy to play along just to not complicate matters.

Lucifer is the complete opposite, he's changed a lot from pictures I saw of him and has become a proper little "Westerner" smoking like a chimney wearing his Prada coat and is very confident in his spoken English and not afraid to speak about something more substantial than "you kill yes? good.".

Of the Warcraft3 teams there the Mouseports camp seems like the team with the least team unity, they seem to be a group of individuals rather than a team. They rarely socialise with other people and seem generally happy to play custom games although they are a relatively new team and would perhaps benefit from more opportunities for “team bonding”.

I tried to collect some videos of atmosphere as Mr SK.Immo suggested, and had a little look into the Counter-Strike tournament. Team Alternate had a good crowd of fans (admins/writers) behind them whilst roccat had just their coach Bob Marley watching them over their shoulders. I’m unsure of how much of a role a coach plays in a team but I guess as long as the players benefit it is useful.

Aside from posting stuff I also walked around and chatted to various staff of the NGL, I met mr Kekko (left) who is also Head Admin of the ZOTAC Cup, I asked for a photo but he told me “admins don’t smile”, but he did not think twice before flaming NGL-Perdita (left) for his ability to eat 4 cheeseburgers by himself.

I also met vash another NGL-admin, vash looks like a “wigga from the hood” with his baggy trousers, white shoes and hooder. Although Soe claimed he is like a “teddybear you just want to hug” so he’s not very dangerous.

It was not until I went down to each lunch and was watching the big screen I realised how well tournaments created the appearance of a state of the art studio. Take for example the shoutcasters they are shown on the stream with a nice desk, computers, NGL-t-shirts, headset & a professional looking backdrop.

In reality they are sitting in a corridor, the viewers will never know that however and to be honest it really does not matter but just shows how you don’t need a state of the art studio to create a good “image” of your tournament.

In the evening the SK.wc3 + reis decided to go back to the hotel, I decided to stay at the event and watch the Counter-Strike and sort out some videos. My aim was to wait for the “free bus” which would follow the roccat vs fnatic match. However as anyone who followed the tournament knew the match went onto the last map with roccat coming from the lower bracket and thus lasted about 3 hours.

It was not that bad for me as I found some time to relax a little and enjoy myself as I played 2on2 with mtw. I played with Nightwolf versus Protois and their team manager Rukie. There is a good atmosphere in the mTw team and even though they came to the event knowing they’d probably lose they don’t flame or moan.

Finally the Counter-Strike match ended, I managed to get a few good videos of Counter-Strike and photo the teams as they were claiming their prizes. $20,000 for Counter-Strike 1st place but only $10,000 for Warcraft3, bit unfair isn’t it?

roccat took 2nd place which is a shame really after their huge effort in the final. As I was watching I saw Plandu tear fnatic apart and roccat went from 9-0 on dust 2 to 9-8 I think it was, really great play.

By the end of the night Toad was very moany at having to wait so long for the end of Counter-Strike and continued to announce he was going to get a McFlurry from MacDonalds, I nodded unsure as to what I was supposed to say.

“NO WAY? A MCFlurry? You CRAZY BOY!!!” Toad was a dedicated fan he sat from dusk until dawn watching his favourite players and team, I’ll make sure I interview him post-NGL!

When we got back we hung out with miou and reis in their hotel room before going off to bed, I was just about to nod off to sleep when Toad started the loudest snore I have ever heard.

It was horrific, I know I snore a little but this was unbelievable, debating whether to “punk” him or not, I finally decided not to as he was quite tired, instead I had a text wars with my girlfriend waiting for the beast to settle so I could sleep.

Finally the blogs are back. Feel free to post!

We got up and met Miou for breakfast as reis had to go out to buy Remind some new shoes as Remind had arrived in Nike shoes!

THe NGL-One had organised a bus for everyone to take them from the hotel to the event, we were a bit late getting down but as reis said "they won't leave without me", and sure enough the bus was waiting for him to appear as everyone else was waiting outside.

The event itself like the hotel is impressive on the outside but not very practical on the inside. One the first floor is the Bistro where we are given coupons to eat and where spectators can enjoy the matches however they are far away from the players, admins and coverage people are all on the fourth floor! It does not make a huge difference as when I went down there were only about 15 spectators...

For the players however its a dream come true, no hassle of people wanting autographs or wanting to talk to them. THe event has no stage, just 8 lines of 5 computers so there is no "centre point" and is generally just similar to an internet cafe. There are no presenters shouting out the scores, but players of each game have their own way of expressing their emotions.

The Counter-Strike players like the Mousesports guys were screaming their heads off and it was only the warm-up.

I've tried to capture the atmosphere in some videos I will try again tomorrow, it is just crazy animal screaming and if I was the opponent I would be slightly disturbed. Warcraft3 is more gentlemanly, dead silence followed by a small clap.

The tournament area is quite calm & the press area is quite good and has representatives from various E-Sports websites and despite really poor internet connection at the start of the day the guys at NGL fixed it so it was quite fun to do coverage.

Luckily thanks to Mr Forever_Manutd I don't deal with entering the scores of the matches, instead my aim is to add content which you could not get if I was at home! I've uploaded some videos of the players playing after the matches and a gallery and will do some interviews over the next few days.

TGenerally doing the news and videos was quite enjoyable as I get to chat with the news writers of MYM despite their ridiculously late arrival, even the fact they were wearing suits did not cover up for that!

The first I met was a Polish graphix artist who's name is similar to Sweetie so I just call him that who was from MYM, he was then joined by Army, The1crow, Phil and Alisha. Despite them having a huge numerical advantage and a superior camera I think I'm doing ok with keeping up with them although tomorrow they will have reinforcements!

I find it more interesting to meet people who work in the community than the players, so I try to chat to anyone there and see where they work or what they do to get a wider scope of the scene as well as obviously make a few contacts.

I met Lancia who it turns out is not just a random girl who writes on my guestbook but a writer for fragbite.se! I also met Soe, someone I had added to my msn for my reis interview to get a statement from and who i've chatted to ever since. She is the "pretty face" of NGL and is used for the camera shots but very very friendly, although she's dating the boss of NGL so don't get your hopes up guys!

Although the E-SPorts news scene does have its battles I try to not get into website rivalry and chat to everyone to same, we're all in it for the same purpose to provide for the viewers, but don't worry of course I want SK to win! :D

So the afternoon was more enjoyable as I had Phil from MYM to talk to as well as THe1Crow & "Sweetie" + Soe of course! Army was too busy marking his territory to chat keeping extremely close to Alisha :D
SK Gaming 's match versus MYM did not go as planned, watching Moon you can see why this guy is called the 5th race. He just makes it looks so natural, bashing that keyboard so hard he could get done for assault. Moon defeated both Soju and Lyn leaving only Reign left who rose to the challenge and played a perfect game, the only way to beat mr mym.moon.

However he then faced FoCuS on Lost Temple and Remind was right as he said "it is almost impossible for undead to beat orc on Lost Temple." all the SK guys sat behind Reign for his match versus Moon, and even though we thought it was over when he kept losing his Death KNight he did enough damage and once the wyrm came out it was all over for Moon.

The loss comes as quite a surprise but Moon is just a beast on LAN with his fluffy girly coat he knows how to get down to business when he wants to! After the match we went to a Korean restaurant, the sk.wc3 players, reis, toad, myself and Mr Yoan "ToD" Merlo.

The food was actually quite good, I was sat next to Soju who went between stuffing his face and playing on his PSP, he seemed quite content to have some Korean food instead of MacDonalds.

Sharing food is culture as I've learnt from my girlfriend, when Asian people share their cuisine it is important to not reject if they try to share their customs with you. Knowing this I joined Soju in stuffing my face full of Korean food while the other guys talked about AWL, Extreme Masters and some other tournaments.

Reign and Soju are the quiet ones of SK Gaming, Lyn and ReMinD lead the show and the conversations perhaps due to a higher level of English or a higher motivation to practise it. None of them seemed too annoyed about losing to MYM, perhaps they were drowning their sorrows in Korean food secretly.

Reis is the big daddy of the group making sure everyone is ok and happily organises everything without expecting thanks which obviously sits very well with the players.

ToD had joined us as the only non-SKer there, from what I've seen he does not seem too close with his team-mates although he watches every match his team play. He opts for a more direct "you lost because of reason x,y and Z" instead of going for the "oh better luck next time".

Every player will watch the replay the moment they lose and as SaSe did so ToD was commenting how his tp could have better placed, I guess ToD has a role to play in heightening the skill level of the team.

After we were all well stuffed we went off home to the hotel, to sleep and prepare for the next day.

P.s. By the way "Sweetie" is getting a bit touchy that I did not include his real nickname which of course is NieSwiety!