When the computer game club Comma contacted developers of Uptime and offered to participate in their CS:GO e-sports tournament, it didn’t take long – the team got together quickly and for the first time in this composition for a new battle. The risk paid off – after a tense competition in the finals, such well-known Estonian players as Bolt and Telia teams were left behind.
Without practice, however, you couldn’t just go and win. Before the tournament, two Fridays were taken to play the game and to find out who would be interested in participating in the team. The best players were able to play together and practice teamwork in the pre-competition rehearsal.
However, some players who had had only several hours of practice behind them went to the tournament. Many had not played very actively recently.
Teleworking is popular nowadays, so the competition was played in homes. Developer Mikk adds that the reason was purely technical: “Every player has a little harder hardware at home to play games. This gives a small advantage. There was no time to drag it all to the office, the tournament started at 6 pm.”
The competition took place in two parts: Upper bracket and Lower bracket. If team lost the match in the first, they had to play with the other losers. In the finals, however, the Upper bracket, the winner of the winning games, and the Lower bracket, the winner of the losing games, faced each other.
In the meantime, Uptime team had four hours to wait for Lower to catch up. This meant a difficult moment again, when the game momentum had cooled down and the fatigue was felt. The tournament started at 6 pm, but the last Grand Final between Uptime and Bolt did not take place until two o’clock at night.
According to the participants, the brightest moments of the final game were when different people from difficult situations brought out the victory of the round with their personal performance. “Of course, it was a lot of fun when Bolt, after a tactical break, did the new tactics to eliminate only me from the game – unsuccessfully,” added team member Kuldar.
“I never thought there were so many competent players in Uptime,” Mikk sums up what ultimately led to the victory. “It was a good feeling to compete in a friendly way against competitors and, of course, to do so for companies that have developed teams in this field over the years.”
One of the two toughest players, Kuldar, aka Everest (currently named Iiv in the games), commented on his experience of winning the tournament as follows: “I personally have more than 20 years of experience with different versions of CS professionally in the international arena. In preparation, we probably did not anything special, everyone made their game familiar again after longer pauses and oiled rusty techniques. We played pretty intuitively and had fun, but in a few places, I used my experience and told the boys what exactly to do.”
You can watch the tournament while it is still up on this platform.
Highlights from the broadcast:
- 2:00 – Against Telia
- 3:33 – Final, Bolt, Halfway
- 8:00 – Grand Final, against Bolt
Uptime’s winning team included Kuldar (Iiv), Dan (ddddddddddddddddddd), Reiko (Connu), Tair (Mütsu), Kaspar (Lendorav).
Winners after the tournament.