E-sports World Cup diary

UK gamers Team Dignitas are competing at the grand final of the E-Sports World Cup in Paris. The team is keeping a diary over the next four days as it bids for glory against competitors from around the world.

DAY ONE

It has been a successful day so far for the team and especially the CounterStrike 1.6 squad who have qualified for the next round under nail-biting circumstances. Our group had the top teams from both China and Germany in it so we had a tough job before we even started playing.

Our CounterStrike team is made up of the Team Dignitas squad of Luke Green, James Smale, Sam Gawn, Pete Wright and James Wilson. Our first match was supposed to be against the Algerian team noT, but unfortunately they failed to show up so we received a default win.

Team Dignitas
Concentration is everything - UK gamers in action
This meant that we went into our second match against the German team Mousesports cold having not played a match. The Germans won their first match and we lost against them by six rounds.

Our third match was a formality with a big win over the Austrian team Plan B 27-3. This restored a lot of confidence as we moved on to play the Chinese team, TR Victory.

The Chinese are real professionals and they even own a house where they train full time. We exploded into the game and took the first half 12-3 and held on in the second half, winning the match 16-14.

Our last game in the CounterStrike tournament was against the Slovakian side FU.SK and we needed to win by as much as possible as we knew round scores could decide the group places.

We won the match 22-8 and while we were playing, the Chinese and Germans were playing each other.

TR Victory won the match and sent the Group into a three-way tie. For 10 minutes we waited for the referees to give us the final group results as they added up each teams round scores. The Chinese team topped the group with 35 rounds and we took the second qualifying spot by just one round over the Germans.

ESWC
The event is being held at the Paris Expo - with more than 750 gamers in competition
The team is now into the last 16 and this will be another group stage with four teams of four.

In the Trackmania tournament UK representative Ramesh Singh from Team Dignitas finished 27th in the qualifying round. This was enough to keep him in the tournament and that will continue tomorrow against a high class field.

In the Warcraft III competition Ben Baker from 4Kings won his first two matches in the tournament. The third match was a tough one against one of the Korean players WE.lyn and Ben lost that one.

His fourth was a make or break match and he pulled through taking down the very good Bulgarian SK.Insomnia. Ben qualifies for the second group stage and that will contain 24 players in four groups of six.

The Quake IV and Pro Evolution Soccer 6 events start for the UK on Friday with players Gareth Marshall from Team Dignitas and Rob McClean from Infused Gaming involved. We will all try and sleep well and wait for the UK team manager Philip Wride to wake us up in the morning.