Event: NGI LAN 2
Today from the very morning everybody is playing their WCG qualifier games. All around me I see players battling out for their tickets to Korea. Ryo-Saeba and vicious have decided to keep playing (the prizes are still tempting). From what I have been told, however, these two UT players as well as gion (known for his famous win against makaveli at the previous WCG) do not want to go to the Korean finals to play with monitors like that.

I have finally interviewed the leader of the Italian AMD Pink Squad, switch. You can read it on the next page of the article.

Apart from that it has been pretty quiet, I have seen some Q3 TDM matches (Tulls in particular) and you should get demos from them soon. I have also played frag^m in a a few duels and he basically kicked the living crap out of me :(

Right now I think I will go get some food as I am begining to develop a hate for Red Bull. It is just too much of it. Moving around the FilaForum is really tough without a pass. The security will let you leave but they will not let you in. My VIP pass helps me use some shortcuts but otherwise it is really a problem. Yesterday I was with frag^m and GitzZz to get some pizza and Klaus did not have his pass with on the way back. I had to intervene using my perfect Italian: Lei è testa di cazzo (intended meaning: he is a dickhead; real meaning: she is a dickhead). They let fraggy through.

The finals of all tournaments are played today. I got myself into a new tournament which is a UT 1on1 competition which has a definitely higher profile than the WCG qualifier (unfortunately). About every 1/1 player that was left here took part in it, so did I.

I was doing unexpectedly well, beating some unknown players and losing to Ryo-Saeba after a very close game (he is reading it as I am writing, so I will not tell you how lucky he was ;). After two very good games from me, I met him again and got owned this time.

The upset of the tournament was vicious' loss to icho on Agony. He was doing very well until he started playing like a newbie and attacked the fully armoured German. I have the demos, I will upload the demos. Right now frag^m is the winner of the WB and vic and icho are battling it out again on Codex.

Oh, Ricky won Codex easily. Right now the scores stand:

1-2. frag^m or vicious
3. icho
4. Ryo-Saeba
5. CarMac and matz

I am finishing the coverage from vicious' home. Yesterday, when the prizes were handed, I could not get the final standings. Partially because I was one of the awarded (for third place in TDM with dYe) and partially because if you wanted to get information, you had to go straight to a particular games' admin. And admins were really busy.

Before the final ceremony, UT duelling had its small final between frag^m and vicious. Everyone expected Klaus to lose because he was really very lucky to win against Ryo-Saeba in the winners bracket semi (one frag difference on Agony). Nonetheless, the German was relaxed and vicious was playing *strangely*, so frag^m won Agony and got a nice webcam from the organiser of the tournament Leasir.

The WCG finals and the award ceremony did not attract so much attention. I am not sure, but I think that the screening of my movie (the new XSU) had more people on the seats opposite the stage than anything else. That is if you don't count the awarded players waiting to be called to the podium.

After that there was a lot of packing and saying goodbye. In the chaos, I managed to spot a man with quite a few boxes (24x0.2) of Red Bull. I came to him with my VIP pass and asked for a box, saying that VIPs could get some. He said: sure and even let me take two, when I was persistent. Then we figured that this was not enough for us so I gave my pass to Manzo who came back with another two packs. Then aSim3tRie asked us for a box, so I gave him my pass too. One VIP pass and 120 cans of Red Bull, now that is called cheeky :)

NGI LAN 2 was a nice experience for me. The venue was very nice (a shame that the press area was far away from the BYOC places - the only good thing about it was coffee and the tranquility), the organisation was ok in my opinion. I really had fun. A shame that apart from the LCD monitor thing, the WCG tournament came close to unnoticed. Overall, I can say that I am happy to have been at the tournament.

I have met lots of very nice people - the NGI people, the players, some *argh* hot girls. Within a week I should get the divx from the UT2003 presentation (and my interview with Francesca from Infogrames) and lots of pictures. Stay tuned, there will be news about it. I would also like to apologise to all non-UT fans for my not writing much about those games but the admins of the games were unavailable most of the time and I had to get the info from the players. Knowing few Q3 players and no CS players, I could not get much info. Apart from that, I was also participating in some competitions myself which took a lot of my time.


-CarMac


*I will update the article with the final scores page as soon as I get it from NGI*
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