This weekend, Wire hopes to be flooded with coverage from the floors of Games Covnention, but we are not forgetting the World Series of Video Games tournament in Toronto, Canada. When Johan “toxjq” Quick’s name is (hopefully) read out for the Player of the Year eSports Award, the Swede should be railing the living hell out his opponents for prize money and ranking points.
Toronto will be the third WSVG tournament to feature Quake 4 this year. The retirement of players like Jason “socrates_” Sylka and Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel has not really made the competition any weaker. Alexei “Cypher” Yanushevsky and Maciej “Av3k” Krzykowski, two players too young to be eligible to compete last year, have pushed Toxjq more than those that have quit.
Surprisingly good performances of seemingly average American players also added color to the circuit. Toronto will tell us whether these players can keep up the pace.
But the focal point of this tournament will be something else. It will be the battle between Toxjq and Av3k, who dared to stop the Swede’s hegemony by winning the first WSVG tournament in Louisville. When Toxjq was picking up his check for first place at WSVG Dallas, Av3k was winning the Electronic Sports World Cup.
We have been waiting for two months to find out just how even and how exciting the rivalry between those two gentlemen will be. Can Av3k be a consistent counterweight for the Scandinavian beast, one that he did not have in 2006? Or was he a fluke, where he was prepared and Toxjq was not?
The wait was two long, but that will only make finding out just that much sweeter.
The above does not mean that there are only two players to watch in Toronto, let alone two capable of winning. There are more players with a shot at taking the first prize and the tournament is not only about winning first place. While the lead roles are reserved for the likes of Toxjq, Av3k, Cooller, Cypher and Magnus “fojji” Olsson, the supporting actors will each have a story. Each of those players will want to get ranking points to make sure they qualify for November’s grand final in Sweden.
POTENTIAL WINNERS
The player to beat in Toronto will be the Toxinator. Av3k’s great shape this year cannot erase what the Swede has achieved so far. At two out of three tournaments the Polish kid took part in this year, Toxjq was not present, and a defeat in the WSVG Louisville final did not mark a trend.
Av3k still needs to prove himself against the WSVG 2006 champion. He will have difficulties in doing so as well, because his preparation for Toronto has not been as good as it was for Louisville, where Av3k had his sights on winning the ESWC. Few doubt that he can do it again, but Toxjq remains the favorite.
PARTY POOPERS
Two other players could come into the picture - for Cooller, not winning an international tournament for over a year has been a painful experience. If his disappointment after losing the ESWC final gave him a valid reason to really practice, then he can leave Canada the winner. For a long time, his problem has been the lack of a consistently good aiming. If he worked on that, writing him off could be a bad, bad mistake.
The fourth player that could take a win should be Cypher. The Belarussian youngster has shown that he is well able of reordering the top 3 of any tournament, but not finish first himself. There is reason to doubt that he could win here. The same goes for fojji who plays great games in early stages of tournaments but seems to choke under pressure. Those two will be more likely to spoil a big player’s party than make WSVG Toronto their own.
ANGRY AMERICANS
There is a wide array of players that will really be fighting for something in Toronto, even if it is not a first place finish. The Americans that did so well in Louisville and Dallas will need to show that their good showings were not flukes. In all fairness what separates Chance “chance” Lacina or Tim “DaHang” Fogarty from fojji today is consistency. Add Purri, the ESWC 4th place holder from Sweden, to this list - for the very same reason.
Rafik “LoSt CaUzE” Bryant will try to re-work his way to the position he used to hold. The American was a feared player in 2006 but has not done anything noteworthy this year. He definitely has it in him to do better so far this year, so perhaps he will wake up in Toronto and beat players whose names appear a few paragraphs above in this story.
Most likely, the angry pack will not make a major impact at this tournament, but you never know. Bits of data that you read online do not make anyone win or lose. Who knows, we might just as well see a Chinese fellow climb onto the podium?
