IceCream: Yeah, um, coming up when we got into cal-p we really started working a lot harder because after 5 seasons in cal-main things got pretty stagnant and we were a lil inactive so when we made it to cal-p we had new motivation and played a lot harder and had success there. Eventually we were offered the moveup and we carried the same motivation to cal-i and had success there due to the movitivaitporn. To answer your question specifically, the comp is def much harder, the strats these teams have are very precise so at this level we had 2 adjust 2 havin no errors or no lack in play or else u cant win

IceCream: we were real surprised 2 see we were facin zerofade cuz they have 2 ex-c9 members for their cpl team; on top of that we're playin d2 which they know well and our ex-members knew exactly how we played that map. we naturally changd strats accordingly, 2 new pistols, and coverage, but because we heard last minute who we were playing we werent as prepared as we wanted to.

IceCream: Out of the two players, strider left us to join our c9 cod team at the time because he was tired of cs he said now obviously he's back [laughs] hyolozoii left us after an argument on top of him disagreeing with us usin vent at the time.

IceCream: we praced the maps the same way online, and tried 2 use same lineup as often as possible but unfortunately we lost one of our players at the last min which was c9|sj & we replaced him with dtm, so we tried to prac as much as poss to get him used to style of play and we're still not where we wanna be with our strats but we have time before each match 2 prac with dtm and get strats down

IceCream: c9's an older team, averaging 20-21 years old, which naturally helps with maturity as well as people not leaving the clan on a whim; we've also carried a larger lineup than most teams, usually 8-10 people, which allows us to give players breaks when they need it and still have a team on to play for that week, thats helped us to not get burnt out. while we were in main (the maj of our time as team), we really played 4 fun then so even if we lost no1 got angry or left and we became good friends in process. after so many seasons in main we eventually wanted 2 try our hardest and see where we could get.

IceCream: well we played team64 at last cpl and they were #2 seed unfortunately we lost 13-1 but at that time we were also cal-m team at this point we've made it to cal-i and improved play and playing against top cal-i teams such as 3d online has given us more exp and we feel more prepared and confident goin into a match w/ these top teams

IceCream: This summer's been very rough on our team, we had 5 members go inactive for the summer and lost another player, nexus, due to the clan being so inactive. We've had to pick up new players such as JohnnyGM, Tak, Dahui, and even having DTM ring for us at the CPL, but after the summer ends we should get back our inactive players and be ready for the upcoming cal-i season! On top of all those problems, we lost our primary sponsor a few weeks ago, so if anyone out there wants to sponsor C9 stop by our channel #teamc9 on gamesurge or email teamc9@hotmail.com

CS-Nation: You're set to face MiBR next in the tournament. They're known as being one of those teams that performs consistently and yet is never really hyped up.

IceCream: Well we know they're an amazing team but it's so hard to know a lot about them considering theyre from brazil personally i've never seen them play in person or on a demo so i dont know too much about their team other than kogu a new addition on their team whose an amazing awper. other than that, we see the publicity and how much time they put in the game with the teams they have come down to bootcamp (sk), so we have to assume that they're very well organized with that effort.

IceCream: I'd like to say hello to all the c9 members who couldn't come as well as our supporters, especially wdw, also another thanks to our current sponsorship from #lothosting and #xomargamers on gamesurge.net.

IceCream: The big question that I hear 30 times a day! Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you, IceCream is short for IceCreamMan, my original name, which most people don't know. You may see me tagged on irc as c9|ICM, and now you know what it stands for :) Sorry to disappoint you on wanting to know my flavor, sublyme.

Carter: Well there were two main things that lead to the victory. One was scouting eg (watching their old demos on d2), and the other was being able to adjust to their euro-ct defense. I think we took them by surprise with our tricky pistol tactic.

Carter: Someone once said the only way you could lose is to beat yourself, and what that means is if you syke yourself out and get scared you'll play poorly, and that's how a lot of "elite" teams have an advantage. They intimidate.

Carter: We were fortunate two ways, one that our i69 pickups and ourselves have lanned a lot together in the past, and we have played on the same teams with each other in the past, endbringer, crude, carter were in zeddi (former cal-i), and I was in I69 for awhile. However, they being in Michigan, and we being local to Nebraska, made it difficult to bootcamp. We, nonetheless, took the attitude that we should be able to jump on the tournament computers cold and get some frags.

Carter: Sure, Sublyme. We were moved up mid-season to CAL-P after winnng CAL-Main, and after that Pinnacle we stopped practicing. When you don't practice in CAL-P, you don't win. Ever.

Carter: We're going to have to do our research. But with the right attitude, that is, not being scared of these big name players, we have a chance to beat zEx.

image: http://csnation.totalgamingnetwork.com/image.php?id=30534
caption: CPL Team Evenflow Playing EG.

Carter: Obviously with this upset we were underestimated, and I think the next teams are going to bring their A-game and take this very seriously. This goes to show that seeding plays a big role on how you placing. So one team with a worse seed could be better than another with a greater seed, and not place as well due to their easier seeding and schedule.

Carter: This just goes to show that the gap between invite and premier is nil. People don't give premier enough credit and teams that could easily compete in invite may not get the moveup.

Carter: A shoutout to #mmgamers and #omaha on gamesurge. We're also looking for a sponsor; pm crude or carter in #evenflow or email joepots@creighton.edu

Hell: We started playing in summer of 2002, and then we had anotherrosterr and changed it like three times, and this was for 6 months, and w eplayed 3 national camps in Brazil, we placed second in CMCup, and then we played bad in the ESWC qualifier, but on CPL qualifier we made it second again and lost the finals to MiBR by overtime.

Hell: I guess we couldn't handle the pressure. It's our first CPL, I guess we didn't know how to handle the rounds and we were very unorganized. TAU played really well.

Hell: It's not our weakest map, but we didn't practice a lot before coming here, mostly like inferno and train and nuke and dust2 a lot, had problems before we came here so we didn't think we were coming, so stopped practicing before the cpl, and we didn't play dust2 a lot, so it's our weakest right now but not usually.

image: http://csnation.totalgamingnetwork.com/image.php?id=30536
caption: CPL Team Adrena Playing TAU.

Hell: In CPL qualifier 2003 Winter, we met the Intel marketing agency and we got to know him and we got the sponsorship. They help us with the trip and location and passages, everything.

Hell: Yes, they and g3x are our main rivals, we're the main clans in brazil. MiBR wins most of the brazilian qualifiers, and we haven't beaten them before, but as I said we lost in overtime to them at the CPL qualifier.

Hell: Nuke's one of our strongest maps, and we've been scrimming a lot of teams, so I guess we will just keep scrimming, and we'll take a break to talk to each other and calm things down because everyones nervous over the loss and we'll try to do our game.

Hell: Watch out for Brazil in the CPL :)

Hare: Our team came to this tournament to win, and we're not going to take any chances along the way, whether it's a big name or smaller team or whatever, we're gonna play like we're not taking any chances.

Hare: Basically versus D!E we plan on scrimming inferno a couple of times and then watching some of their inferno demos from the pre-cpl bootcamp that they went to. The word is that d!e is pretty good on inferno, and on the flipside I'd like to consider inferno one of U5's stronger maps. We're just gonna go out there, do our thing, get enthused, get pumped up, and not take any chances, play to win.

Hare: We lost moses unofficially before ESWC but not officially until afterwards when he told us. The team really wasn't as enthused or pumped up to play at ESWC, so it's probably in the best interest of the team that moses decided to take a break. As for fRoD, the team had some differences and basically one day we ended up blowing up at each other and he left the team. We were able to pickup T0ol after the departure of moses, and da bears luckily jumped into our world a week before EverLan. Both of our new pickups easily bring us to our old level of play, but more than that they help the team and affect the team in ways that moses and fRoD couldn't.

Hare: The current one we have, as the current roster (despite the fact that two members just joined during summer time) of tr1p, slick, T0ol, da bears and myself (hare) is doing things above and beyond what our last CPL roster could do. With our strong awper now, da bears, we are able to not only do the things we did with fRoD, but also create our own style of aggressive rifle play.

Hare: We had a really strict week before EverLan of practicing online, and since then the only bootcamping we've done was at GameWyze Internet Cafe three days before the event.

Hare: We're a team where friendship is important and we really strive off of in-game and out of game emotion; when one player is down, the team is affected. We start off each match with a huddle and kind of like a pep-up speech from bears, followed by a U5 cheer.

Hare: Actually, it's green hair gel. We found an old bottle of the green gel in my lan bag when we were at EverLan and decided to do it before our 3D match. It's something that I think we're going to continue on the rest of our big match days. Plus, the green matches the nvidia logo on our shirts.

Hare: We have another three days of the tournament and we're really just focusing on that, not thinking about anything else. We have a nice staff core; while we're focusing on winning, they're focusing on our website and sponsors and things like that.

Hare: I want to first of all thank nVidia for making it possible for United 5 to bring three different United 5 divisions to the Summer CPL. I also want to thank our official LAN center based in Chicago, Xactek for helping us out financially when we needed it most. Other than that, thank you Qpad, Comcage, FileFront, GameWyze, Plantronics and all the U5 guys for giving it their all.

Bullseye: It's hard to get the chemistry going, they're a good group of players and stuff and it's more of a matter of getting the teamwork down and getting strats setup. It's going to take some time with roster changes, it just takes time to get chemistry going.

Bullseye: 4Kings is a great team, and they kept hitting bombsite A over and over, so we had a bad ct side, lost pistol round, so we couldn't do anything besides that.

Bullseye: I was in the process of becoming a police officer, I took a side job for the summer, that's what I was doing, then I got a phone call from Jason, the numbers matched up, and now I'm back in the game.

Bullseye: We try not to think about that, we try to play our own game, things happen, when playing online there is cheating but we just try to play our own game and if there is cheating we have to beat them regardless.

Bullseye: They understood the situations, I mean, we're all good friends, we talk a lot, we're gonna do good at cpl, and I still have lots of respect for them.

Bullseye: We were playing on nuke and had a good bootcamp, but it's cs and anything can happen, and thats why its a good sports game, so it doesn't matter who we play. It's gonna be a hard game, otherwise they wouldn't be here.

CS-Nation: The Grafx situation from the other night - care to comment?

Bullseye: I wasn't there for the situation but from what I heard it was his fault, he messed up. But he is a teammate, I have a lot of respect for him, but I'm sorry for it happening. It was totally uncalled for, and won't happen again. I'm just thankful we're able to play.

Bullseye: It's pretty similar, and certainly a lot bigger, the venue is amazing, the booths are bigger and more impressive. Sponsors are improving how they present themselves, and the CPL tournaments are always the smoothest tournaments.

Bullseye: Well I heard evenflow beat EG, 4Kings will have a good tournament as always, and tsg will do well.

Bullseye: SK will finish top 3 as always, and NoA's going to be very strong.

Bullseye: I'd probably want to get element or sunman, someone who'd make a big difference to a team with playing smart and good strategies, as we need some more strat calling.

Bullseye: Thanks for the interview, thanks to the CPL and compLexity.

Toby: This event is probably the CPL we've prepared for the most, we've been living together in Wales for the past two months, and even though we've had a roster change in the last two months we're all pretty confident we're going to do well.

Toby: Recently in the last 6 months there hasn't been that many events at all so it's been quite quiet on that front, we've been doing a lot of practicing for the CPL and that's basically taken up all of our time. There's been 2 UK events in the last two or three months, the first being the ESWC qualifier and we had a pretty bad performance there, we were out of shape and went in without practice, hadn't played one game in about two months, went in over confident, and it gave us a good wakeup call. We started practicing straight after that, and within two weeks we went from a pretty dire team to coming in second the UK CPL qualifier with teams such as Gamers.NU, Ownage, and Ocrana.

Toby: Having a mix between countries for our players works for us, I think the Norwegian playing style mixes well with the UK.

Toby: There's no clear cut selection process laid out, it's basically been a matter of what games we think are going to be big, what games past and present players and friends are interested in, really. We started off with QuakeWorld, and the natural progression to that was Quake 3. Counter-Strike started getting more and more attention, so we brought that in. Myself, I started playing RTCW for a bit of fun and decided to start a team up, and then with Warcraft we were close friends with tillerman and we thought it would be great to start up a team.

Toby: We've never heard of Confederacy, we've asked around and nobody else has either. We're very confident on Inferno, in general, so we're just going to play our game and see how it goes.

Toby: I went inactive for 6 months, and I passed the torch to a close friend of mine. During that time, there was a few internal disagreements and the CS team decided they wanted a clean break. Shortly after I returned, we acquired sponsorship by Intel and we decided that playing Counter-Strike would be the best way to expand our brand. Myself, I remained close friends with the players from Infinity e-Sports, so they were invited back and graciously accepted.

Toby: Thanks to our sponsors, all players in 4Kings are able to compete on the fastest computers on the market. Recently the team has stepped it up a level and has moved to Wales where the team are now full time employees of 4Kings.

Toby: I'd just like to thank our sponsors Intel, ATI, Steelpad, and Alienware for their continued support, and I'd like to wish our guys the best of luck.

Mohammad: Definitely the more and more international tournaments we compete and perform at, the higher our ambitions will grow. We originally set out to be a team to pretty much rise to the calling of a Canadian national team, to have one team that kind of stood out above the rest, to represent Canada abroad.

Mohammad: All that really happened before this current team came together, the original Evil Geniuses team competed in CAL-invite and withdrew from it due to inequities like ping imbalance and such. After that, the EG team at that time came back to compete in CAL-open for fun as a team of friends under the guise of Trash. After that whole movement, we basically consolidated the talent in canada, some from LaR, some formerly of EG, and Matt and I who have always played in California teams.

Mohammad: Prior to this event, two weeks before, we competed in the EverLan tournament. We basically had no practice before that event due to a family emergency with one of the players. In some ways, EverLan was a good preparation for this event, but we did bootcamp for one week at the lan center we're partnered with, EuphNet in Sunnyvale, California.

Mohammad: I'm not going to make any excuses for the match, we made a lot of mistakes, and evenflow capitalized on those. It's definitely disappointing to start off with a performance like that, but now we have our work cut out for us and we know what we need to do, and hopefully we won't have any more repeat performances like that.

Mohammad: Honestly, I don't think of it between a CAL-P and CAL-i team, our goal and our responsibility to our fans, sponsors and friends is to get out there and play every match with the same intensity as if we were facing a world class team. The discrepency between CAL-i and CAL-P, in my personal opinion, is largest in terms of international competitions. In the game of Counter-Strike, any team can win, especially if their opponents make mistakes or underestimate them, which, surprisingly, seems to be the case in our match versus Evenflow. Our cardinal rule has always been to never underestimate our opponent, and we seem to have done that today, but I guarantee we won't make that mistake again.

Mohammad: I think one thing we've always prided ourselves on is the amount of work we put in as a team. We believe very firmly in hard work, discipline, and teamwork being the key ingredients when playing teams at a high-skill level. Europeans tend to reply more on intricate strategies and teamwork than North American teams do, but fortunately for us, we focus a lot of our efforts in the same direction.

Mohammad: At every national level qualifier canada's had, there's been some teams that showed up and consistently were leading competitors behind EG, such as neRve. I'm expecting, especially after their placing at EverLan, that neRve will train hard and be gunning for that top spot, but for the past year and a half we've defended our Canadian championship and have been undefeated in our home country, so we just hope for more of the same.

Mohammad: Threre's a possibility we'll be bootcamping in Mexico City sometime in August against a team that recently came into corporate sponsorship and is trying to establish themselves as the number one team in Mexico. We also may be attending another bootcamp session at EuphNet, just prior to the actual WCG finals.

Mohammad: Well just after the CPL we'll be competing for a chance to represent Canada again at the WCG event in San Francisco. Definitely a lot more practice is in store; we've got some exciting announcements from our sponsors we're excited about revealing in the coming quarter. One of them I can talk about right now is an initiative by Team EG and our gracious sponsors to give something back to the community. Team EG's Project Robinhood aims to provide disadvantages kids who don't have access to high-speed computers and broadband connections a chance to explore the world of eSports to see what it has to offer. In 2004 and 2005, all hardware won by Team EG will be donated to an afterschool program to make such an idea a reality.

Mohammad: I'd just like to thank, first and foremost, our sponsors ABit and ATI for their overwhelming support, along with our fans, friends and family out there who are THE best motivation for us to try our hardest at these events. Lastly I'd like to thank CS-Nation for the opportunity to reach your audience. Cheers!

Another small upset occured earlier in the day when revolution Sports, a strong CAL-Main team and last season's CAL-open champions, beat CAL-invite team GameWyze. Some people were calling it a bit of a fluke, but then rS played Team AMD Gamer, one of the top teams from the UK. rS was down 2-10 the first half and then pulled a miraculous comeback, forcing the match into overtime. They eventually lost, but nonetheless it was a testament to how strong they really were. I was able to get an interview with two players of rS, Moofer and SK^_^.

Interview with revolution Sports - Marc "moofer" Cizravi and Mark "SK^_^" Kantardziski.

CS-Nation: You guys just got out of a close match with top UK team AMD Gamer, losing in overtime 16-12. Give me your thoughts on the match.

Moofer: First half was really sloppy on our part, normally our ct side is a lot stronger than our T. Losing pistol round really shook us up because we almost never do, then losing fifth round after winning fourth put us in a tough position moneywise. We managed to scrap another round by the end of the half, but a lot of rounds came close that we couldn't finish off. T side was an incredible comeback, but overtime was a little disappointing.

image: http://csnation.totalgamingnetwork.com/image.php?id=30549
caption: CPL Team 3D's Ksharp Playing Match.

SK^_^: I don't think any of us have ever played a match this important so far in our CS careers; I think we also prided ourselves getting this far and beating CAL-invite team GameWyze by such a large margin (13-2). What's important now is just to concentrate on our lower bracket.

Moofer: This current lineup only has one player (myself) who was on the roster that was CAL-o last season. Midseason we made some changes because we weren't getting enough practice time to do well at CPL, so Mako and I decided to go local to Toronto in hopes of having a stronger team and a long term team as well. revolution Sports was formerly known as Reckless Theories, a team that I led for two years, but the roster's totally changed since then, and we're basically a one month old team.

SK^_^: Drakkon, Teknikal, Mako and I were all recently part of CAL-invite team DeadZone at one time or another, so we never had a chance to really have teamwork amongst each other.

Moofer: We haven't played soby on nuke yet, just because it wasn't a map that we were concerned with just yet. The last team I wanted to play here was soby, just because we get along so well with all their players and I'm good friends with all of them. Basically we're going to try as hard as they will and we're gonna try to come out on top.

SK^_^: As for me, I really had no idea who soby was until this CPL, so I don't really have a background relationship with the rest of them. After scrimming them on multiple maps multiple times, I think we feel pretty confident that we can do this.

Moofer: Since we've become a team, for the first two weeks all we did was practice nuke because it was the current cal map and important map at an upcoming CPL qualifier. We haven't practiced it recently, but I feel pretty strong on it as long as we're getting out shots we should be able to win.

SK^_^: We're going to pretend they're GameWyze. Period.

Moofer: I wouldn't necessarily say that this version is the best, even though we've done pretty well for ourselves so far. Former versions of this team ran into several obstacles, online as well as stability problems really got in the way of that team ever really being successful on a professional level.

SK^_^: This version was by far the best. Period.

Moofer: This team will be definitely attending WCG Canada Finals this fall in aspiration to attend our first WCG Finals. The team is also currently in the works of developing sponsorships from diverse companies, which would secure travel and lodging at future events, and possibly more...rS house :O....

image: http://csnation.totalgamingnetwork.com/image.php?id=30547
caption: Amped Interviews Local CPL Team TAU.

SK^_^: ...yeah...doom 3 looks like a good game.

Moofer: Shoutout to glostik and the whole rs crew as well as www.evogaming.net (http://www.evogaming.net) / #evogaming for all their continued support, and shoutout to last year's eminence squad who was dispersed half half between gigalan and GameWyze. Shoutout to nomine impunidad. See you at Winter CPL.

SK^_^: Before Schroet Kommando was ever a team, I was SK^_^, and the face has been stolen by many *cough*Gosu*cough* but it will always be mine. Shoutouts to rampov, DANgerous, thelawman, viciousness and all of our sponsors for helping us out. PS - Shop at Tek's tiki hut.

3D played the very strong Gamers.Nu and put forth a hard fought match. Eventually 3D won in overtime. The funny story behind this is that as soon as Steel made the final kill in overtime and went to defuse, 3D got excited and screamed and yelled. Moto slammed his hand on the table in victory...and steel's PC froze. Everyone's jaw dropped, as suddenly they were wondering - have we lost it? But the defuse continued despite the freeze. I got some great pictures of 3D.

Then something enormous happened. What was supposed to be a normal squash match became unreal, as TAU made their name's synonymous with upset. Unfortunately, NoA didn't have any Pepto Bismol on hand, and thus lost in a close match on inferno to TAU by a score of 13-11.

Besides the obvious matches you can read the scores of, I was quite happy to see 4DN eliminate GateKeepers, who was said would go very far. I must confess I've become a bit of a fan, as these Japanese players really have proven their skill and I enjoy talking to them. I took plenty of pictures today, so enjoy them all and I'll see you back tomorrow!