Last night was the opening Contender Series round for the first ESL UK Overwatch season.
There are three nights’ worth of contender cups, with points to earn for the group stage seeding. Each team in the competition was competing for these points in hope of getting into the cash prize group stages.
One of the biggest challenges for teams coming in was dealing with the 4/6 UK player rule. Many UK teams in the tournament relied on subs to be eligible to compete. With that in mind, anything seemed to be a possibility – and the night did indeed have a lot of surprises in store!
The winner of the Contender Cup
Firstly, the biggest feature of the night was Choke losing to Team EndPoint. Choke had previously been the dominant UK force since the launch of the game.
Although, the last few weeks of UK competition has shown that Velox, Reason and EndPoint were catching up. TeamEndPoint and Choke met once again in the semi-finals. EndPoint (with a sub team) managed to 2-0 Choke Gaming and moved up to take the finals against Computerised Gaming 3-0, making them the victors of the first contender cup.
You can watch the second game here.
The final standings are as follows:
1st: Team Endpoint
2nd: Computerised Gamers
3rd: The Last Resort
4th: Choke Gaming
5th-8th: Velox.GG, Ryuu Ga Wagamama, British Tea Time and T4ngo
New Teams
Another great part of the night was seeing the random UK teams that turned up. The majority of these teams had little to no presence in ESL UK cups prior to the night.
New teams like Computerised Gamers, The Last Resort, Void Gaming and many more all appeared to make it unpredictable. Who are these new teams? How good are they? Lots of questions came to mind for these teams, but it was an interesting showing.
Computerised Gamers was seeded into the quarter finals. They previously played in the G04OW tournaments with decent results, but never entered any of the ESL UK competitions before.
However, this team showed that the seed was worthwhile. They made it all the way to the finals and lost 3-0 to EndPoint. Kudos to them for having no experience in the UK scene and showing up when it mattered.
Another name to enter the scene with little competition before is The Last Resort. An org with competitive history and players from other games, they made a statement on their path up the bracket. They climbed the bracket with a strong effort, only losing to Computerised Gamers in the semi-final with a 2-1 loss. They entered the 3rd-4th place decider against Choke. While this match had point implications, Choke forfeited the match prior to the start, so Last Resort took 3rd.
Community streams
I also want to give praise to casters Tridd and Dowsey here. The Contender Cup had no planned stream, but Dowsey contacted ESL for a stream on his personal channel. Tridd was also in these games taking notes and being active promoting matches on Twitter.
Comments in the Facebook group illustrated the need for infrastructure in this young competitive scene; moves like this can only help its development.
Was it Reasonable?
However, there was some negativity on the night. Reason Gaming players have experienced some discontent with a decision made by the ESL admins.
Reason Gaming players state they had 4 players with British nationality. Nevertheless, Cals lives in Europe (British national regardless) and was disqualified for 24 hours when the cup started, which prevented them entering the cup.
Everyone wants the ESL UK OW Premiership to be as competitive as possible, so that the scene can develop well. Hopefully a resolution can be made so that the team can compete next week before it’s too late to qualify.
On that note, check back next week to see how the second contender cup goes. It will create an understanding on how the group stages will look and what teams are the most dominant.
You can sign up here if you have a UK team willing to go.
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