This soldier 1v1 cup should be the first one of many, this one went fairly smooth and we mostly have Blackhawk to thank for that (so do that, come to #SpA.cup and show your appreciation)!! The sign ups went pretty well, we got the 16 players pretty quickly and even some more that wanted to play but sadly not enough interest to expand to 32 players. In my opinion this cup was a good experience, it had a few problems.. but nothing that couldn't be fixed. Since it was the first cup I decided I'd poke all contestants to schedule their matches as quickly as possible, which fortunately happened. All 8 matches were scheduled for the first four days of the cup. Then the first real problem arose, one of the contestants had his account hacked which resulted in Sonny Black getting a free ticket to round two. All the matches weren't really close except for one (Mclusky versus Koolin) but in my opinion the most fun matches to watch were those of UndeadDruid and FreeStyler, they were the only ones to actually put rocket jumps to good use. Round two started on duel_levor, which isn't a very good map I agree.. but since we -might- be replacing it in future duel cups, I'd say bring on the suggestions. :D Then one of the problems we came across was overtime, the match between Mclusky and TheWeirdo ended in 7-7, we simply had no rules for overtime yet. I quickly asked if they were okay with first to 3 kills (deaths/suicides still count, mind you) and they agreed to it. So all ended fairly well. Then the match I personally was looking forward to most was FreeStyler versus UndeadDruid, while it was a good match.. it wasn't as close as I'd hoped it would be (this was the maps fault I think ;p). Then the first surprise I suppose, Sonny Black (who won the test cup) lost to Genoc1de. The semi finals; I did not watch Genoc1de versus TheWeirdo since I had to play for SpA's warteam but I heard it wasn't that hard for Genoc1de to win. Then the other match was between me and UndeadDruid, which was the closest and most awesome duel any of us had in ages. The decider kill didn't come till near the end of the game, duel_inexistence_b3 is definitely my favorite duel map. After some poking from UndeadDruid (I was originally already for this, but the cup system does not allow it) we decided to also play a match for the third place. This is a nice idea so that in the future we might use these placements for seedings, just like in real tournaments. O: So two matches are still left unplayed, TheWeirdo versus UndeadDruid for third place and the finals between Genoc1de and futari. I'm hoping these games will be a great end to this cup~ so do tune in on sourcetv for these matches and be amazed by their skills. Not to mention that Blackhawk added a small gadget on the Specialattack.net front page that shows future matches. There is no reason to miss out on matches now. ;p And as a last note, we will hold some polls to decide future cups so be sure to vote and participate in those cups and make us grow and grow. Thanks Blackhawk for making this possible, I know you worked hard on the cup code <33