This is what happens when a league gets an anti-cheat client! You can afford to run a tournament with prizes and not attract hackers like you offered money for the best pub score on a server without VAC on it. I’m not going to get into too much detail on CAL’s tournament since things are just getting underway, but my initial reactions are guardedly optimistic.

Some of the choices for the tournament might seem curious, but I think we have to look at it more as an exhibition than a competition. This isn’t a major event for the best teams to strut their stuff, it’s more of a promotion for CAL and eMazing servers. Let’s face it, if they wanted it to be the best possible competitive product, they wouldn’t have limited the number of teams from Invite and Main, the top two divisions. In fact, they wouldn’t have limited it to teams registered for CAL. 

If we keep the exhibition mentality, the division limits, the fact that a lottery will be used to determine which teams are selected if they run over the 128 team limit, and using the old format makes more sense. The only division using the modified CGS rules is Invite, which accounts for 1% of the players in CAL. And we all know the immortal words of Spock: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

I wouldn’t quit your day job, even if it’s at McDonalds, to chase the first prize of $500. But if you want to play, enter the tournament and have some fun. I’ll be interested to see if any Open teams can pull off a big upset as the underdog. As for coverage, I’ll be putting up a 128 team bracket … somehow … and I’ll be picking up predictions once the field gets narrowed a little bit. I’ll keep an eye on the early action for any notable outcomes, of course, but I don’t expect anything too intensive for the first few matches.

Predictions for CAL-Invite Week 2.1 are still on the way, and hopefully I’ll have those up in a couple hours. Stay tuned!