Day 1 - Friday

So here I am the night before yet another major event getting mentally as well as physically prepared for the weekend ahead. Tomorrow the team is heading to Indianapolis, IN to compete in the XFX Counter-Strike: Source qualifier. For me, it’ll take a little over 10 hours to get there including a few quick stops along the way. The rest of the team has it much easier as they are leaving from Wisconsin which is only like a 4 hour drive if I remember correctly. I will be blogging every day of the trip so that you guys can gain some insight as to what it’s like going to tournaments and what I do to prepare for them.

Pandemic.CSS at XFX Challenge
Grant "Griff" Hall
Mike "Paradox" Stanowski
Kyle "Mustang" Cummings
John "Juan" Mumm
Nick "nickn0it" Nowakowski

Just like our CPL trip my wife Jana will be accompanying me to Indy to watch me play as well as get some photos of the event. Right after I finish my writing for tonight I’m going to do my pre-tournament ritual which I do before every event. My pre-tournament ritual consists of things that I like to do before tournaments to ensure that I am in the right frame of mind and that I am as prepared personally for the trials ahead. I have a custom config for Quake 3 Arena that I will post on the site sometime; it allows me to play insta-gib (enemies die from one rail shot) vs. a group of bots with a frag limit of 500. I have my sensitivity set in Quake 3 Arena to the same as it is in CS:S so it really helps me with my aiming speed and accuracy. I will also most likely get in some CS Deathmatch to make sure my aim is as fresh as it can be since I won’t get a chance to practice any tomorrow. Another thing that I like to do is look at the list of opponents that will be at the event and mentally go through what I know about them from previous scrims or matches so I will know what to look for when it comes match time. Last but certainly not least I go into my own server and run over my spots on T side and CT side to ensure that I remember everything that I need to come match time and most importantly that I feel comfortable in the match. Our team is feeling great after our CPL win and we are confident that we can win the entire tournament this weekend. I hope you have enjoyed part one of this blog look for parts 2 and 3 in the days to come.

Pandemic.CSS

Day 2 - Saturday

Part One (AM): The alarm rings far too early in the eastern time zone. After a long drive my companion and I arrived in Indianapolis at about 12:00 am CST. I was pretty exhausted from the trip so I was ready to go to bed and get some rest for the day ahead. As it usually goes, however, that wasn’t the case. Kyle “Mustang” Cummings and Nick “nicKn0it” Nowakowski were hungry and insisted that we hit up the local 24 hr. Dennys. After a filling and satisfying meal we headed back to the hotel finally to get some rest……at 3:00am. The Super 8 has probably the most powerful A/C unit in the entire world no matter what setting it’s on it just blasts out arctic air all night. So after waking up at 8:30am I was pretty fried and not in any kind of mood to play CS. But, as always, duty calls and we loaded up in the cars and headed towards Net Heads. This place is actually one of the nicest LAN centers I’ve visited in my travels so far. The PCs run really nice and overall the place is very clean and well setup.

The XFX Counter-Strike: Source Qualifier here consists of four teams. We have played two matches so far, our first one on de_nuke and the second on de_train. So far we have played well and won both of those matches 16-0 and 16-3 respectively. I just ordered a chicken sandwich from the Net Heads café here and I must say its pretty delicious. I would even go as far to say that it almost rivals Chic-Fil-A :). Right now Mike “Paradox” Stanowski and our leader Jon “Juan” Mumm are engaged in a crazy game of Warcraft 3 while Mustang and nickn0it have just loaded up a game of classic Starcraft. We are currently the upper bracket champions of this tournament and we are waiting for the lower bracket to finish out so we can play our finals match. We also received an interesting piece of news today. It turns out, if we make it to the second day we are entered in a vote to go on tour in Europe which is extremely exciting.

Thanks for all the support you guys are giving, keep it up it really keeps us going ! I’ll post an update to today’s blog later tonight and let you guys know how we came out on the first day here at Net Heads.