This past weekend the Emirates played host to EGL4, so I went along to have a nose around.
It was massive, much bigger than I expected. Spread over various rooms were Gears 3, Black Ops, Street Fighter and FIFA events, as well as some old school Halo LAN play, complete with 14″ SD tvs. Beautiful Stuff.
The event is standard eSports fare, complete with banter. Everything is extremely professional and well looked after, with each game having dedicated admins to resolve any disputes. For the FIFA tournament, the format was 6 minutes, World Class, No custom sliders or formations, best of three.
The most interesting to me was one of the tactics being employed. Although no customisation was allowed, quite a few of the players, were switching to a deep 4-5-1 immediately after taking the lead. Not cheating I guess, but I was pretty amazed to see people doing that in a live tournament. I’d expect it online, but not face to face. From talking to a couple of the players, it was a sticking point.
You can see how the results panned out here, with Ty Walton from Team Dignitas pushing past the other 31 players to be crowned champion, and view the photos from the event taken by Dave Witts on Facebook.
The next event will be i44 which runs from Friday the 18th to Monday the 21st of November at The Telford International Centre, full details of which can be found over at Sweetpatch.tv.
Big thanks to Dave for looking after me, always a pleasure to see you fella.
