at Ground Zero in 1999, stx-wombat beat out an entire field of lan veterans to win 1st place and $10,000. it was his first big lan. he placed over players such as gemini/sujoy/sploidicus/diehard/bane.

fatality won adrenalan in 1999. it was his first showing at a real lan.

sector placed 6th at frag3 over a lot of lan veterans

powerk finished 3rd at razercpl in '00 - he'd never been seen at an international western quake lan before. nb-dethstalker finished 4th at the same event and had never lanned competitively, plus he was on a 150+ ping dialup at home prior to the event. lots of people were seen making waves for the first time at that event, in fact. wasn't that event also Blue's international debut?

at cpl atomic arena in '00, Blue was still fairly new to the international lan scene and took fatality down twice to win the event. also, s21.0, who was completely unknown (and wasn't really seen again after), beat fatality on q3dm13.

at questarena in '00, bitchslayer beat matador. the 2nd place showing was bitchslayer's highest placing that year.

babbages cpl in '00, several players had a coming out of sorts. some guy named czm, who had only played in 1 small duel tourney on lan prior to the event, beat the revered fatality and went on to finish 5th place overall. this was a first lan for cK-insano, his clanmate, and he finished top12. also top12 at that event was All*prozac, unknown as a dueller at the time.

at the qil4 finals in '01, we ran a side duel tourney. a kid named "mojo" finished in 2nd place. this was his first lan event. the other players competing were from the top clans around the country (the lan was primarily a tdm championship - the NA version of eurocup at the time).

i'm not sure how well-known/experienced b100.death was at the time, but winning cpl holland in '01 over lakerman/fatality certainly drew attention back then and is still talked about now.

quakecon '02 - daler daler daler daler and more daler. and then about 5 weeks later, daler and chaoticz both did the deed at the wcg usa qualifier. fatality/makaveli get left behind. that would be daler's 2nd major lan. chaoticz hadn't seen too many more at that point.

wcg '02 - i remember everyone saying "who the hell is akiles?" throughout the tourney. same thing with uNkind, really. neither were complete lan newbs, obviously - but certainly less lan experienced compared to many others on the list. cooller also popped his head in to say "hi" for one of the first times at that event.

in early 2004, elpajuo hit the scene, seemingly out of nowhere (or venezuela) and took down plenty of established players. fooki's major win came that same year - he had done well for himself online, but only had 1 semi-major/exhibition event prior to qlan2 and won it in style over czm/cooller/zamuz/etc. later that year, the USA's "chance" also showed up - namely by finishing top 10 @ quakecon '04. i believe that was his first big quake lan.

in '06, viju had quite a bit of success for his first major lan (winter cpl top5) where duel was the focus.

and if i cared more about q4, i'd probably go into that as well (dahang anyone??)

Quake 3 was officially released on 2 December 1999. Though a number of tournaments were held prior to the public release, all events during '99 and 2000 should be discounted. By the standards I'm using, all of the players were unproven at that stage - the culture of 'official' LAN tournaments was only just beginning, and cumulative experience, while still a factor, played a much smaller role.

We can argue about the exact cut-off point, but it's probably safe to say that the following tournaments occurred during the abovementioned teething stage:

Ground Zero (1999)
Frag3 (1999)
Razer CPL (2000)
CPL Asia Atomic Arena (2000)
Babbages CPL (2000)

You sum up this point very well in your own example of Razer CPL: "lots of people were seen making waves for the first time at that event". The incidence of well-performing newcomers declined steadily from then on.

Please note, though, that I'm not saying these tourneys weren't competitive. They were hugely competitive. I'm saying the maximum experience players could have built up over that time was limited to about a year. Today, that limit is ten years.

However, a few other of the examples you cited have to be thrown out immediately on the basis of insufficient competition:

Adrenalan Frag3 qualifier (1999)
Questarena (2000)
Qil4 (2001)
WCG US qualifiers (2001)

I am only considering top-tier international events. The situation is often quite different in restricted local communities (Russian ASUS tourneys being another case in point).

Moving on to the tournaments that do count, your examples of Akiles (WCG 2001) and Death (CPL Holland 2001) are simply based on a lack of knowledge of the Spanish and Russian competitive scenes. Both players were well-known and seasoned LAN veterans in their national communities. 2001 was simply the year when the various communities started to integrate on a broader scale.

Finally, the problem with CPL '06 is the lack of general activity since ESWC 2005, but considering the field present, I have to give Viju the benefit of the doubt.

So that leaves us with Viju, Daler and Fooki. Possibly Chance as well, though his top 10 at Quakecon '04 is not on the same "omgwtf" level as Daler and Fooki's maiden appearances.