Everybody was so happy about the CAL placement tournament, but the honeymoon ended as soon as the actual list of teams was released. It’s not unexpected, if you invite X teams into the tournament, the X + 1 ranked team is going to complain. And in eSports, so will all the teams up to X + 30 that got caught with five golden ringers, four calling wallers, three French hackers, two sixteen-bitters, and an AWPer with a speed hack. Don’t even get me started on the other seven days of Christmas.
The problem is, there’s no specific formula you can follow to determine which teams get to be in the placement tournament. Some teams play CEVO, some teams are exclusive to CAL. Some teams have LAN accomplishments, some teams don’t. Some teams have new members, some teams … wait, it’s Source, all teams have new members. Then you have to consider who they played. A team that won a LAN by beating the only other team there, Grandma’s Geriatric Gamers, isn’t as impressive as a team that lost to coL and 3D by a narrow margin. There are so many variables to take into account that the best you can do is lay down some guidelines and then make some judgment calls. Which means people are bound to disagree with you.
But that’s fine, the whole reason for the placement tournament is the results reward the best teams more than comparing records from three different conferences (Atlantic, Central, Pacific) and at least three different leagues (CAL-I, CAL-M, CEVO). The point is that it’s a process. You find the best teams, put them in a tournament together, and then you do the same thing next season. If there is really a deserving team that was left out this time, they should rise to the top and get an opportunity to prove themselves next season.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the frustration. It’s no fun working for something only to feel like you got shafted. At the same time, that’s an inevitable part of sports. Talent evaluation has always been as much of an art as a science. Gilbert Arenas in the second round? I wish the Bulls could go back and trade up for that pick. One of the best lessons of Gilbertology is using rejection as motivation. After being picked in the second round he rode the bench his first season in the NBA. Now he’s not only an All-Star but an MVP candidate. As a fan of Counter-Strike, I look forward to seeing what the spurned teams can come up with. Hopefully they turn their frustrations into extra practice, come out with a vengeance next season, and make it obvious it was a mistake.
If that doesn't do it for you, there is a method behind the madness. It's not as specific as a formula, but there are guidelines, which I'll shed some light on now. All the inactive and low ranked Invite teams were given spots in the tournament, along with teams that placed third or higher in the Main playoffs. A couple of those Main teams were moved straight to Invite, and some have to prove themselves a little more. Any team that didn’t play in CAL last season wasn’t accepted except for VisualGaming (formerly TeoS), and they were an Invite team during Season 6. There’s been some fuss about 50 Calibre being in the tournament, but half of their starters were also part of their #1 ranked team in Season 6 of Invite. Some of the other complaints have been with fromWithin and Children of the Sun. First of all, there’s been a little confusion about Skull’s roster. The majority of the players are from fW, not Skull, so it’s clearly not the team that went 0-2 in last season’s playoffs even though they’re under the Skull organization. As for Children of the Sun, they did win the Open division and came recommended by some of the admins within CAL. Can you make an argument against these teams? Maybe, but you can make just as strong of an argument for them, as well.
Having said all that, there are actually going to be matches played, so let’s shift our attention to that. There are eight teams that have an auto-berth into Invite, leaving another eight spots to fill with teams from the tournament. Just looking at the list, the teams that stand out to me are: Hyper, eMg, 50 Calibre, Visual Gaming, and riotsquad. Will they all make CAL-Invite? Now that I’ve picked them, probably not. For reference, my CEVO darkhorse was EG. I learned one important lesson from that: it’s hard to have your darkhorse team come through if they don’t make the playoffs. Ouch. Well, at least I didn’t pick Hyper (old roster) to win the Buy.com LAN … crap.
As for the other teams, there’s a good chance you don’t know them very well. So, as part of my coverage of CAL (and because I don’t want to get fired), I’m here to spread a little knowledge. But rather than introducing all nineteen teams at once and putting everybody to sleep, I thought it would be easier to break things up a little bit. Now that you know my favorite picks, aka teams that are already guaranteed to display the LD curse within one week, let’s get on with the first installment of the team predictions and recaps: the pre-tournament tournament.
Astute readers (I know you’re out there) will notice I said nineteen teams and think, “Mike, you fool, you can’t have a bracket with nineteen teams!” True enough. Hence the pre-tournament tournament. There were unique circumstances for these teams, so there are three early matches to determine the 14th-16th seeds and then it’s a regular 16 team bracket from there. The matchups are: eMg vs. riotsquad, Frag Facile vs. Cyber Phenom, and Nothing To Prove vs. Legends. Cyber Phenom and Frag Facile were both chosen as alternates for the PT once Legion of Terror dropped, and Nothing to Prove has to face Legends for a spot because of their forfeit loss in playoffs last season. My personal favorite is the circumstances around riotsquad and eMg. They’re competing for a spot because each team has half of the starters that played for NPU last season in Invite. Think there’s a little friendly rivalry there?
Since they’re all best-of-three, I’m just going to give the results from that rather than breaking down every map and every score. Enjoy!
Cyber Phenom vs. Frag Facile – Before I get to the prediction, I need to get this off my chest: Cyber Phenom, please change your name! Would the San Francisco Giants rename themselves the Raging Hulks? It’s like Tom Brady wearing a Yankees hat – you’re just asking for trouble. The “online” label is one that’s thrown around pretty often, and it usually sticks whether you like it or not. I’ll forgive you though, since your team is formerly known as the Chaotic Penguins. I don’t know what chaotic penguins would look like, but I laugh every time I try to imagine it.
With that out of the way, they’re a pretty good team. They’ve finished third and fourth the last two seasons in CAL-Main (Central), and finished ninth in CEVO-Main. Unfortunately their only LAN performance was submarined by an excess of alcohol, which I think isn’t a rare problem in the eSports scene. (Memo to LANers: drink responsibly or Ksharp will knife you.)
Frag Facile won CAL-O in the Pacific division, and I’m just not sure they’re going to take CP. I think they’ll give it a good shot, but the penguins (of the phenoms, if you prefer) should have a little more experience with the top competition, and I think they’ll take down FF in the best of three.
CP > FF 2-1
Nothing To Prove vs. Legends – I have to say I was a little impressed when I talked to the leader from Legends. He showed me an old-school screenshot of the CAL page, back when times were simple and the web was still 1.0. WONIDs frolicked happily among the people, not knowing they would be extinct in a matter of months. There wasn’t any money to be made in online leagues, so people just played for fun. And I didn’t have any clue what a forum was. So young, so innocent.
The more I look at the three pre-tournament matches, the more they make sense because all these teams seem to have similar finishes. A lot of decent finishes in Main, a couple decent LAN finishes thrown in here and there, but nothing overwhelming. This is another one of those situations – Legends finished fourth in Main, n2p finished third, and the only notable LAN finish was n2p placing fourth at a w2z in late 2006. I’m going to give this one to n2p by a hair, but I think it’ll be another close matchup.
n2p > LgD 2-1
eMg vs. riotsquad – Honestly, I wish that these teams weren’t facing each other because I think they both have enough talent to move on. (That’s the subtle, “you should watch these matches if possible” endorsement.) The other two matchups featured teams that were just coming up for the first time, but the guys filling these rosters have mostly been in CAL-Invite before. AC, Dutch, vertigo, helix, LeKtriK, hiCKEEEEY, and projeKte are all aliases I recognize.
eMg hasn’t been together very long, but I don’t think riotsquad would win any contest that starts with “established in”. Although they’re both playing for a low seed, it wouldn’t surprise me if the winner of this best-of-three was in Invite next season. And since I already mentioned eMg as a team to watch, it would be silly to pick riotsquad here, right? Right.
eMg > riotsquad 2-1
That ends the coverage for tonight, but I have a couple side notes. I’m sure you can tell the site looks a little different than it did before, I hope you guys like the changes. If you have any suggestions or complaints about the site or the writing, as always you can leave a comment or e-mail me at mike@landodger.com. I’ve been a little swamped, so some things are still going to be changed, transferred to the new template, or updated. Thanks ahead of time for your patience.
I’ll also be traveling the next couple days. I’ll be bringing my laptop along, but I’m not sure how much writing time I’ll actually have. Those pesky friends are always around to annoy me when I try to sit down to write something. But hopefully I’ll have at least a little time to write, and if not I’ll have a lot to cover on Wednesday.
