It is not often you will find me reporting back to ESR on matters concerning CPL, but the UK stop is a little different. It's on my doorstep (so to speak) and as I hadnt had a chance to attend one this year, the gap between events for iTG allowed me the time to come and check it out.

A 5am start for myself and TheRogue (who joined me last night in Cardiff) meant we were a little weary when we arrived at Aza's (Aaron) house a few hours later. Never the less, the traffic was pretty calm for the trip we made and after a quick stop at Aza's (waking his dad up in the process, whooops), we proceeded the remaining 40 miles to the event.

A little detour round Sheffield (thanks to the crappy directions from theaa.com) meant we arrived just a little before the doors were due to open at 11am. The science museum is set in a huge old Steelworks factory. The reception area had a few people on duty and one of these decided to question me on entry, enquiring "are you here for the CPL thingy?". "Do we look THAT much like geeks?", I replied. He said actually it was because we were 3 adults without any children, which apparantly is pretty rare at this Science Adventure Museum. I believed him, NOT.

Once into the actual venue, we had to wait a long time to sign in as press (and this after a further 30 minute delay). In fact, the PK players and the CS players also had to wait a fair while before being admitted. I have no idea what the problem was, but the only people who got in were the spectators! Once the issue was solved , we grabbed our passes aqnd then had to wait for the opening ceremony before being taken to the press area. Turns out the Press area is located behind the main stage and the main stage was to be the scene for the opening indoor fireworks display to officially open the tournament. This was due to be about mid-day but with the opening of the event being a little later than planned and then issues with the passes, it got put back a bit further.

I managed to catch up with v00 and Zaccubus before the fireworks started and Zacc then relayed a story about why it was running late, claiming that they had "no pens and had gone to the shop to get some...", he really didnt seem to appreciate just how ridculous this sounded and then later admitted that he'd been duped by a fellow 4K'er telling him total lies!...doh.

I grabbed a 10 minute chat with Alex from TSN (here covering the event of course) and he seems to be a genuinely nice guy and he was certainly happy to be skipping school to be here! Whilst I dont want to get into the history between iTG and TSN (suffice to say its never been great), it was at least nice that the pair of us could have a civil conversation about casting and coverage of events we had both done recently, without the awkwardness of working for two different stations getting in the way. Just two guys who love what they do, chatting about it.

The firework opening display was ok (accompanied by Frankie Goes To Hollywoods, Two Tribes remixed and some Intel lazer lights and sporadic displays of counter strike images), nothing amazing, but one loud bang sent Zacc (standing alongside me) skywards with shock. By now, we had been joined in our little huddle by Dave and Mark (aka 215 and 315 from Levitation), here for the day to observe and make rude remarks about people (:p). With very little going on, Mark offered to drive us into Sheffield to grab some food, which we gratefully and out of boredom accepted.

Refuled and ready to go again, we came back to find the PK had started without us, how dare they! PBX had a straight forward win in his single elim qualifier to reach the PK finals proper, but would face v00 in his first match. Garpy meanwhile, a Zaccubus protege, won his match and also proceeded to the tournament proper.

Once the actual double elim started, PBX gained experience, but little else in a 49-10/35-10 beating from v00. v00 assured me before the game, that he had practiced a lot and had not been playing much WOW any more. It showed too with a comfortable win over PBX (Jordan). To be fair though, Jordan took the defeat well and as I write this is busy warming up for his losers bracket game. Zaccubus came through his upper bracket game pretty easily and now we are starting to think about food.

I then had a bit of a ciggarette break where v00 and I proceeded to discuss recent events, quakecon, dallas CPL, ESWC and finally agreed that Toxic had the sickest aim, either of us had seen in any game. Its incredible how much v00 loves his gaming really, seeming really enthused by other events he himself, had not been able to attend. Taking a real interest to the point he even corrected me on a result at ESWC and I attended the event and he didnt! (he was right too, but he still wont play poker with me :().

I'll break off for now as Im totally unsure of the net situation here, it seems to drop out a lot at the moment. Game frontier told us its something to do with the telewest 36mb line they paid for in advance and they have some engineers working on it. They also assured us that the wireless and lan would be fixed correctly tomorrow for net access and that the press area would also be ready for use. (we still havent been given access to the press area, so perhaps it got blown up in the fireworks display!).

ReD

p.s.Photo Gallery starts tomorrow and I may try to upload the "opening ceremony" If i can squash it down in size a bit.