ChrisyB at the WCG Euro Championship

Posted by: xilef

The following article is written by Chris "ChrisyB" Bullard.

As of last week I was sitting in my house, training for the FIWC on the PS3, knowing I would not be going to SEC because I had missed the sign up. So I go to the gym and get a few missed calls from Wizzo (Multiplay UK). I ring him back and it turns out the Georgian Fifa player has dropped out so I can go! Initially I thought “YES! I can’t wait” but I was now getting into my flow on PS3 and flying into the top ranks rarely losing games so I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or bad.

I jumped straight on PC training hard, I had been doing it 50/50 before I found out I wasn’t going to SEC. But I bumped up my PS3 training as PS3 competitions would all be over by the end of March.

A couple of days before the tournament the seeds we’re announced. I was seeded 15th! So I quickly queried this as my seeding should have been much higher up and it meant I had to play the reigning European Champion in the 1st round Dignitas.Walkman. I was soon informed the seeds we’re made 3 weeks ago and so I took the seed of the Georgian Fifa player.

However this wasn’t such a bad thing I thought to myself, after all because of the long CGS season I have only had 2 months training on PC against all these guys who have had about 5 months, plus hardly any of the players played on PS3 as well so I decided this tournament would be all about experience, watching players and seeing what they we’re doing. I would of course do my best to beat Walkman but I did look at what my Loser Bracket run could be and it seemed ok in hindsight, probably being Greece – Switzerland – Denmark and that would get me to top 6 if I could beat them guys, which I believed I could do.

So the UK team travelled to Hanover on the Wednesday, I met up with Apollo (CnC3), Grunt Dude (DOA), DeMuslim (Wc3) and Doc from Multiplay as our UK Rep. We arrived in Hanover nice and early but there was hardly anything to do all day apart from the flag ceremony which me and Apollo took part in. Went back to the most horrible hotel on the planet 1 hours coach drive away from the event and got a good nights sleep…..setting my alarm for 6:30 to be on the coach at 7:30 the next morning.

I wake up, look at the clock….uh-oh 07:04…..jump out of bed and quickly get ready, get my controllers, wash etc and jump on the coach thinking I have everything. Then I realise I have forgotten my Pass to get in the Tournament Area. What a great start to the day. We get to Cebit and I’m playing at 3:30pm, I get up at 07:04am to play a game at 3:30pm……..perfect. So again nothing much to do at Cebit for players apart from sit in a players lounge and drink Hot Chocolate. My game finally comes around where I get off to an ok start against Walkman with the score being 0-0 at Half Time. 2 corners and a keeper mistake later I find myself 3-0 down and looking forward to the next game thinking I can win as I’ve just been unlucky. Almost like last time when I played Walkman I had had an unlucky 1st game and then bang in the 2nd game, I was 2-0 down after 30mins. Trying to get attacks and actually finding good opportunities and a fairly even game, another well taken corner by Walkman and its 3-0, so ok let’s look forward to my next match.

To my surprise Adonis from Greece isn’t my next opponent, Andruxa gets knocked out and put in to the LB, the i-32 champion and a player tipped before the tournament to do well and maybe win the whole thing. What to do? I decide to keep things the same, and play like I did against Walkman. To my surprise I find myself 3-0 up within 26 minutes and playing really well but against a player who has had a lot more preparation than me I decided to take my time in attacks and defend tightly and I managed to come out a 3-2 winner. The next game starts and I get a 1-0 lead again with a nice build up and keep attacking. I managed to play my A game on Defence which is the best part of my game and get to the 90th minute at 1-0. Still watching the clock tick down I manage to get a nice little break and some luck and get the second goal to put me in the next round against Mirodeniro from Switzerland….or would it?

This was before Mirodeniro vs hero had finished, which I would imagine 99% of people would think hero would win this match hands down and 120mins in to the 3rd match hero was going through to the Winners bracket semi-final, only to concede a goal and be beaten on penalties. So I had to play hero as a reward for beating Andruxa….

Still I watched his game and thought maybe I can beat this guy, ok he’s the current World Champion and has one of the biggest e-sports reputations, but this was a nice opportunity to take down a giant and continue building my own little legacy, but I would have to wait a good 16 hours for that opportunity.

The next day began and I decided to keep things again the same and see what happened. The tactic I was playing I had only trained a week with and it seemed to be working so let’s see….. ChrisyB 1-0 Hero, was the score line after about 3 virtual minutes and in all honesty I was shocked, hero had made a mistake which I jumped upon to take the lead and I was just thinking in game, “What the hell do I do now?”, 5 minutes later it could have been 2 goals, I was dreaming but angry of wasting the chance of going to 2-0. I think all that thinking hit me though and the flood gates opened, I went down 1-3 at half time and found my self up against it, angry that I had been a little unlucky in one of the goals and failed to take my own chances. The game ended 4-2 but still after this game it was like I had jumped over another hurdle in my journey and I went in to the 2nd game optimistic. The 2nd game was a good game and hero slightly edged me out, I was 2-1 down for the main part of the game, missing chance after at chance in one flurry of the game and time was running out. I missed a 1on1 in the 85th minute and paid the price in the 90th when I conceded a 3rd, so close to drawing and forcing ET but it was a good game and hero deserved the win, like he did vs mirodeniro and ended up coming 4th in the tournament, getting knocked out to fellow SK member Mario.

In hindsight I probably should have chosen safer tactics to play hero but I’m still experimenting at this stage so it was a good lesson. Which at the end of the day was the whole point of the trip. I knew I wasn’t as prepared yet as the other guys so I just wanted to experiment and see where that got me, and in a way I was glad to play 1st, 2nd and 7th seeds because I learnt more in this tournament than I would probably learn in 2 months training at home. Just watching what the other guys are doing, seeing what works in 2008 and the tactics people are opting to use. I’m really confident after the tournament, Fifa 08 really suits my playing style so I feel this could be the year that maybe I get that CGS 1st place in the Individual or WCG Medal I haven’t quite got in my locker yet. Hopefully I get a better draw than this tournament as well, but I’d rather have a bad draw here a good draw in WCG than the other way around. Of course there is still work to be done and I will aim to be comfortably amongst the top players come the end of April.

My Tournament was over, however Grunt Dude’s and Apollo’s we’re just beginning as they both took home the Gold Medal for the UK. It occurred to me Ukraine had won the whole thing with that tally last year, and we found ourselves in 1st place overall with a bit of help from our Ukrainian friend Hot who took stopped Sweden from overtaking us in the Warcraft Final.

EUROPEAN CHAMPIONS!! The last day was great celebrating with the other guys. Although me and Ben (Warcraft) hadn’t contributed to the Medal tally it was still a nice feeling to be a part of a European Championship winning team and I was happy for our 2 gold medallist winners as they really did deserve it. Up on stage at the end was one of the funniest bits of the trip, a team of 4 brit’s who had won it for the UK.

All in all it was a great trip, I was worried before as it would hinder my FIWC preparation but it’s more than helped my preparation on PC. I learnt so much and I was part of the Euro Championship winning team, the trip couldn’t have gone much better. To think my competitive gaming career started 2 years ago, I could probably write a book already about a good e-sports career but the book still has a lot of blank pages **Spoiler for CGS Fans** like that time where London Mint win the World Championships in 2008!!

Next for me will be FIWC Qualification. If I don’t qualify online I will plan to qualify offline in the UK Qualifiers. In the mean time I will also attend i-33 in 2 weeks time and I will hope to qualify in both the PS3 and Xbox 360 Tournaments on Xleague.TV. Also the ESL Nations Cup starts very soon so I will look to captain a winning UK team in this competition and compete in the upcoming Team-Dignitas EA Challenge Cup. There is also a secret competition that I will compete in, it will be really cool if I win it, but will probably mean another distraction. I may have to start saying “No” to Fifa Tournaments soon, I don’t want to but might have to.