KINGZZZ win the first digitec playground cup
Last Saturday, eight teams battled for the title in the first digitec playground cup. Team digitec was also competing. In the end, the favourite came out on top – but the cup offered quite a few surprises.
The first highlight of the tournament was a wasp that got lost in the eStudio and made players and organisers run around like terrified schoolchildren. The wasp didn't get anyone – much unlike the eight teams who showed spectacular «Counter-Strike: GO» battles.
The Cup was sponsored by HP Omen and Logitech, who also provided the prizes for the best three teams.
Clear results in the quarterfinals
The eight teams played against each other in a knockout system: one map was played in the quarterfinals and semifinals. The winning team proceeded; the other team was out. Only the final was played best of three.
Team digitec, the only team that got a wildcard for the final, faced team Equinox.CUP. Luis, Mike, Kevin, Patrick, Tim and Luan – who acted as backup – faced fierce competition from the very start of the game. Equinox started by winning the «Knives Out», which decides which team takes on which side. The game unfolded the same way and team digitec ended up losing to Equinox. It wasn't a surprise that our in-house team, which could only train together a few times, would have a hard time.
In round four, however, they showed a little rebellion and Mike aka Micron won the decisive one-on-one. After that, Equinox increased the pressure and scored a lot of points. In the end, team digitec managed to score three deserved points. However, the final score was 16:3 and the winner was clear.
In the other quarterfinals, KINGZZZ won against Scythe of Seraph, Babos Gaming eliminated Flying_Kies and Swissbulls beat mYinsanity.
Thus, the semi-final fixtures were: Equinox.CUP against KINGZZZ and Babos Gaming against Swissbulls.
Exciting semifinals
Since only one game was shown in the livestream, the directing team decided to show the game Swissbulls against Babos Gaming. Swissbulls had surprisingly eliminated Yinsanity in the quarterfinals and it promised to be an exciting semifinal. And the Swissbulls didn't disappoint. On the bomb defusal map Mirage, they won the right to play CT first. This map layout is more advantageous for the Counter Terrorists. And that showed from the very start as team Swissbulls won the first few points and kept Babos Gaming at a close but safe distance. Swissbulls also kept the upper hand after switching to the terrorist side. The final score was 16:11, making Swissbulls the first team to secure a place in the final.
In the game between KINGZZZ and Equinox, which wasn't streamed live, the final score was almost identical: 16:10 for team KINGZZZ. This meant the final was between Swissbulls and KINGZZZ.
Showmatch with special rules
Before the decisive final round went ahead, there was a breather: a show match between team digitec and team Seeruggefräggo. The latter are the team that missed out on the final by only a few points. The show match was their chance to pay back team digitec for «stealing» their spot in the final.
We introduced special rules for the show match: ten rounds were played with ten different rules. In one round, for instance, only one player was allowed to leave the spawn zone at a time and only when this player died was a team member allowed to move up.
In round two, only one was allowed to buy a weapon and his buddies had to wait until he bit the bullet before they were allowed to use it.
The highlight was when the players had to swap keyboard and mouse. Most players changed the mouse to the left hand and operated the keyboard with the right hand. Only one member of team Seeruggefräggo played with crossed hands. But that didn't help and digitec won another point. The special rules seemed to work better for team digitec, as they took the lead with 3:1. In another round, two players were only allowed to buy arms and smoke grenades to protect their comrades. A little later, the score was 4:4.
Another round required a lot of fair play once again: each team was only allowed to own one Desert Eagle and the players had to hand it over after every shot. Team digitec won this chaotic round.
The last round required players to put away one's weapon after every kill and not use the same one again. All players bought different weapons so that they could exchange them without getting confused. Team Seeruggefräggo won this round and the final score was 5:5.
The final: KINGZZZ vs. Swissbulls
That was it with the fun round. After this pretty wacky show match, the rules were tightened again. Favourit KINGZZZ took on team Swissbulls, who had played a surprisingly strong tournament so far.
And they continued to do so. The final, played in a best-of-three format, was highly competitive from the very beginning and soon the score was 8:2 for team Swissbulls. However, they couldn't hold on to this lead for long as KINGZZZ made a sensational comeback and ended up winning the first round 16:8.
The second round was off to a similar start: Swissbulls took the lead with 7:1 victory before team KINGZZZ could react. However, the Swissbulls only let the KINGZZZ come up to a 7:6 this time, before they shifted up a gear again. From then on, they dominated the round and players faRReSho even achieved a beautiful triple kill with the AWP. Swissbulls won this round 16:6. The third round proved to be decisive.
This time, the favourite dominated from the very start and looked like they were going to win the cup with a clear result in the final round. They were only missing two points when team Swissbulls came back and made the final round exciting. Although they managed to close the gap to 8:14, it wasn't enough to beat team KINGZZZ. The favourites won with a 16:8. Thus, the winner of the very first digitec playground cup is called KINGZZZ.
Congratulations to team KINGZZZ and, of course, to all teams who participated and made this tournament exciting and entertaining.
Want to watch the entire cup? Check out the video below.
Being the game and gadget geek that I am, working at digitec and Galaxus makes me feel like a kid in a candy shop – but it does take its toll on my wallet. I enjoy tinkering with my PC in Tim Taylor fashion and talking about games on my podcast http://www.onemorelevel.ch. To satisfy my need for speed, I get on my full suspension mountain bike and set out to find some nice trails. My thirst for culture is quenched by deep conversations over a couple of cold ones at the mostly frustrating games of FC Winterthur.