Yesterday was a big day for the Quake Live community.
The Quake Live Invitational by Razer had its début act with two intro matches: fazz vs madix and PURRI vs Weird plus a showmatch between polish “wonderboy” Av3k and Italian “indie progamer” stermy.
The show was hosted by James “2GD” Harding and Joe "joe" Miller who both did a very good job in shoutcasting and hosting the matches.

The intro matches were exciting and well played. Giving a nice 3 mappers to the people watching the live stream offered by ESL TV. In the end was the old schooler baby face Fazz to win the first spot to get into this tournament , Weird played a tight third mapper vs PURRI, had some nice shotgun actions and managed to pass through a very strong opponent. Too bad for the “Kaptain” that showed, even thou he lost, he’s still got a scary aim.

The most anticipated game of the day was Maciej "av3k" Krzykowski vs Alessandro “stermy” Avallone. The game was introduced by a small interview of both players. Av3k was interview by journalist superstar Michal “Carmac” Blicharz. Even thou Av3k hadn't practised a lot for these games (this is my personal opinion) he seemed confident saying he probably was going to lose first map T7 (stermys home map) and destroy his opponent on the others.
Alex was interview by 2GD and was really smooth and polite with his answer, showing to be a little more nervous than his opponent and willing to clear the “Lesson” incident that happened on ESReality.

As the game started T7 was close for some minutes, after stermy got warmed up and a good lead there was nothing to do for the world champion. Some very nice rails were hit by stermy who proved to be really strong on this map.

DM13 was the most interesting map of the series. Av3k had strong confidence to take home this map but this didn’t happen. With a 3 to -1 score stermy won this map by playing a conscious game showing everyone that he improved as a player. His game was careful enough as he created himself the good spots to take the lead, letting Av3k rush at the end of the game and controlling him with a strong defensive mode that gave him the last deciding frag and leaving his opponent with no frags on his home map.
Av3k then wrote in chat: "LOL you are stupid" [n.d. cYmoZz], probably frustated by the conservative play of the italian pro in the last minutes of the map.


DM6 started off with Av3k writing to his opponent in chat: “show me your skill” [n.d. KvaZaR] and stermy replying “there is only one cooller”. Probably this was due to frustration or to get his opponent head, I personally think that wasn’t really a smart thing to do. Av3k is supposed to be a professional player and behaved in a well mannered way. The event was hosted by his team www.serious-gaming.com main sponsor and I think he should have put more effort into this if not for the sponsor or his team, at least to show respect to his opponent.

Alex on the other hand had a really strong apparition. Even thou Av3k had little practice, it’s never easy to win 3-0 versus a player of such a calibre. It was also his first official match since his switch to FIFA in the CGS. Alex showed the community the big effort he put into regaining his skill and cover the gap that was created during the time of his inactivity in the FPS scene.
I personally think everyone should give some credit to this kid who is a hard working player and always available to answers question on his site www.stermy.com

In the end DM6 was a close map, Av3k did some nice action, the best was gapping the distance with the shaft with stermy controlling the position with the rail at the RA location,
That was really smart and the polish player thought was enough to write again in chat “This is skill” but by doing this he gave the chance to his opponent to steal the mega.
In the end after an important frag Alex rushed the pillar zone without even picking up the red armor. This was to get the spawn frag and have total control of the map, cutting his opponent out of the mega and red + picking up the shaft.
I personally think that was a nice strategy that showed a brilliant strategy by the Italian player plus showing his cold blood.
His decision proved to be worthy as he went into more spawn frags to seal the game into a overall 3-0 maps win.

I guess now 2GD will have to book stermy a lesson, if not a “pack” for the 3-0 sweep of this show match.

Av3k vs Stermy rivalry will have round 2 in Dallas.
Will Av3k find the right motivation to came out on top or will Stermy invincible aim be enough to win this major tournament?
Qcon will answer to all of this questions.

Big thanks to ESL.tv and Razer for hosting such a nice tournament and giving everyone the chance to follow it via stream.

Demos available at: www.stermy.com

Vod available at: http://tv.esl.eu/de/vod/view/21464

Riccardo “vicious” Zanocchio