ACON4 Tournament

We went to Shanghai to cover an Abit gaming event, and while we were in the area, we stopped by the Abit motherboard factory to take a gander as well.

If you have read PC Perspective or Amdmb.com within the last 6 months, you have no doubt at least heard about the Abit sponsored ACON4 gaming tournament as their ads have been everywhere.  ACON4 was the world’s first international gaming tournament that let competitors from around the world compete against their fellow citizens for the right to go to Shanghai, China and face the winners from other regions and countries.  The game was Warcraft III and the tournament was an exciting one.

Because the tournament was held in China, there were some tight restrictions on the event that included limiting the number of people that were allowed to attend.  Even the local viewers were forced to get tickets and register for the event, and all international media needed to be approved by the government.  I guess they let me through.  😉

Even though the numbers were limited, the area was packed and the fans were very much into the tournament.  Here are a couple of shots of the crowd watching the Warcraft games being played on a projector. 

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The 18 players came from all over the world and it led to an interesting combination of tactics and skills. 

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Besides the gaming tournament, Abit and other sponsors presented a brief presentation to the players and viewers that centered on products for gamers.  Intel, ATI, Kingston and of course Abit were on hand to talk about their products.

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ATI discusses their X800 series and their upcoming PCIe line of graphics cards.

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Intel showcases their Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processors.

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Kingston discussed their HyperX memory line and upcoming DDR2 memory. 

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Scott Thirlwell of Abit discusses the company’s pride in sponsoring the world wide gaming event and then introduced Fatal1ty. 

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Fatil1ty is developing an upcoming Abit motherboard and graphics card geared towards the extreme gaming enthusiast.  The board is scheduled to be out in August. 

And of course, with the introduction of the sponsors and their products, there were some booth babes to show it off. 

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Each sponsor had a booth in the convention hall as well for press, gamers and the public to come up and ask questions about their products.

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The Tournament

The tournament was played in Warcraft III, with best of 3 matches played to advance in a 1-and-out exhibition. 

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Here is the final bracket results board that showed the winners and losers as their completed their matches.

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Here we see YolinY.Suho from China playing in a match — though he didn’t win he did get the most crowd support.  If you look at his left hand, you’ll notice that it is blurry, this is not a camera effect — his hand was moving that fast!!

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Here are a few players in a couple of matches.  The players closest to the front is mTw-Wizard from the US, who won the finals in a cold-war-esque U.S.A. vs. Russia match.

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Here is mTw-Wizard again, on the stage after his win, holding a key to the new Kia car that he received.

Overall, the gaming tournament was a great experience for me to attend.  Seeing so many gamers from different parts of the world show up and play with spectacular sportsmanship was a welcome change to the way most competitions, both professional and amateur, are played out these days.  I am sure the other members of the media and the gamers would agree with me when I thank Abit for putting on such a great event this June.

If you want more info on the Abit gaming tournaments, visit AbitGamer.com.

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