In an incredibly close series, closer than the 3:1 scoreline will suggest, Maciej 'av3k' Krzykowski has bested his friend and mentor Anton 'Cooller' Singov. This victory puts av3k through the final where he will play his team-mate Cypher. Cooller will now place strenx for 3rd place.

Anton 'Cooller' Singov 1:3 Maciej 'av3k' Krzykowski (t7 - av3k, t9 - av3k, dm6 - Cooller, ztn - av3k)

The series began in bizarre fashion as the game had to be halted and restarted due to a timer bug, apparently from stermy's config, on the first map: tourney7. When the map was restarted av3k got a bad spawn and Cooller quickly ran up the game to 6:1 with just over three minutes played. av3k was visibly frustrated and took of his headphones and decided to end it there. While everyone allowed av3k to cool down, and with the timer still running in-game, Cooller offered the Pole a restart on tourney7 again. av3k told him he didn't want to restart but Cooller explained that he would still respect him and that they could restart the map if he would like. av3k accepted the offer this time and the map was restarted again.

For the restarted t7 it was av3k who got the lead and seemed in control for most of the game but Cooller put on a big comeback with some great shots to get himself back into it and force overtime. In the overtime it was av3k who hit the shots and Cooller who missed them and map one, av3k's choice, went to the Polish player.

The second map was Cooller's choice and with it being tourney9 many were expecting Cooller to level the series by virtue of how strong he has been on the map. It was av3k again who seemed to get the decisive runs in the game though and despite another close ending Cooller couldn't stop himself going 0:2 down in maps and heading into a third which could have seen him put out of the tournament: dm6.

One of the upsides of this series was that with the exception of t7 Cooller is arguably not an underdog to any player in the world on the other four maps, and dm6 is a map he has produced some of the best play in Quake history on. This match was very back and forwards as av3k showed nice runs but Cooller continued to put on a masterclass of aggressive retakes and took risks at the right times to take key items. The map finished with av3k chasing Cooller, as opposed to the other way around, but the Russian made it out with the slim victory to stay alive.

ztn was the fourth map and anyone who knows anything about competitive Quake 3 will know Cooller is one of the best players ever on this map. In this game av3k found himself in the good position and running up a lead which looked to be getting close to insurmountable based on the time left and how set out ztn is for the running player. Cooller made his push and once again looked to do the impossible and he got kills to leave himself two away from tying it up with a few handfuls of seconds remaining.

av3k chose to hide by the jumpad leading to the rocket launcher and Cooller checked there last of all, by which time he needed everything to go right for him to tie it up. As he chased the Polish player through the plasma gun room Cooller found himself missing a rail here and there so the timer ran down and av3k took the victory. The last few minutes on ztn proved to be frustrating for the Russian as av3k continued to move and despite hitting rails Cooller chose not to go overly aggressive until towards the very end, instead ensuring he got the items each time.

Cooller finds himself left for the second tournament in a row with only 3rd place as the best he can achieve and another semi-final loss to av3k and on a deciding map of ztn again. Amazingly Cooller played some of the best Quake at both tournaments but came up short in those one or two kill moments which could have turned the game towards him. Meanwhile av3k again managed to absolutely maximise his moments of pressure and defeat the man he has looked up to for so long.