The Event
ACON5 Regional Qualifiers : Birmingham
Saturday saw me climbing into the wife’s car and hacking up the M1 to Brum to have a look see at the last of the regional qualifiers for this years ACON5 tournament. Just in case you’ve totally missed the dedicated ACON5 forum on HEXUS, I’ll fill you in on what it’s all about.
ACON5 is a global gaming tournament for Counter Strike 1.6 and Warcraft 3, with regional hest deciding who goes through to the UK finals, the winners from that get an expenses paid trip to China for the world finals and a shot at gaming superstardom.
With this being an open tournament, winning a regional was all that a team needs to get to the UK finals, so you’d expect the gaming centres hosting the events to be rammed to the rafters with eager gamers. Sadly, last Sunday’s qualifier in Harrow only drew 4 teams, so I was heartened by news that there were 18 teams wanting to play in Birmingham the following week.
A trip up the M1 any day of the week is not the most pleasant of experiences, especially so when it’s early on a Saturday morning, so it was nice to be well accommodated by Simon Murrell and Derek Curtis, the guys who run the Global Gaming Arena which was hosting the ACON5 qualifiers. There’s nothing like a mug of coffee and cheeseburger to set you in a good mood for a day’s gaming, which is exactly what was supplied, cheers fellas!
With help from Richard on behalf of IGUK, the event was split into two heats with four teams in each. Due to space and time constraints, 8 teams would be playing today for 3 places at the finals, with the top two teams from each heat going through to a single elimination semi-finals. As Simon had said, he’d had a lot of teams wanting to play and had allocated spaces on a first come first serve basis, with at least two more teams on stand-by should anyone fail to show on the day.
