ESL India Premiership kicked-off with their regular announced Challenger series today and we have the complete report of the development on the very first day of ESL India Premiership. The first day of the event featured some of the games from both CS:GO and DotA 2, which were streamed live on Twitch after innumerable glitches in the setup, and were also resolved from time to time as the day progressed. ESL India Premiership Challenger #1 will be a two-day event and will conclude on 30th of July 2016.
The games overview
Counter Strike: Global Offensive
Quarter-finals
The CS:GO matches which were scheduled to begin at 12:00 PM (Indian Standard Time) witnessed massive delays as the matches finally began 4 hours late than scheduled time, at 16:00 PM (IST). Cast by Bleh and Aequitas of SoStronk, the first quarter-final was to be played between Team Brutality and Team Goutfits scheduled at 12:00 PM which was later on swapped with a DotA 2 game Beyond Infinity vs Standin 5 because of the unidentified technical obstacle in one the Team Brutality’s members. The first CS:GO game of the day was convinced a rather one-sided affair for Brutals as they disrespectfully thrashed their opponents Team Goutfits from Calcutta, out of the tournament with a strong scoreline of 16-1 on Brutality’s favorite map, Mirage, leaving the team in clouded thoughts of dubiosity.
The following match between SemperX and Dare2Dream (also from Calcutta) was pretty interesting to watch as the favorites for the match SemperX had the old-school beast couple ‘The Bhatia brothers!’ (WuZz and PeXxer) who had their performances replicated from the era of their Counter-Strike 1.6 as they were able to beat Dare2Dream 16-11 comfortably on cobblestone. The significant comparison of the players from the days of Counter Strike 1.6, necessarily was to shout out to the guys on the team and also greeting them with best wishes as they made into the top 4 teams of CS:GO in India after a trajectory difference. SemperX will face Team Brutality in the semi-finals. The third match, Invisible Wings vs WeBreakTeams was a hell of a match, no, not in terms of the quality of the match, but due to the delays. The match, unfortunately, had to be reset thrice which progressed later on which ended up with Invisible Wings beating WeBreakTeams by 16-8Â on cache.
The fourth and final match of the day as per the schedule was between Team Overcome and GoEasy, which was by far predicted correctly by the analysis desk and the community people who forecasted an easy win for Overcome, which held on its fate and the match ended comfortably in favor of Team Overcome, GoEasy could only get 4 rounds on the board and got knocked out of the tournament with the scoreline of 4-16. The second semi-finals were then destined to be between Team Overcome and Invisible Wings for the CS:GO stream.
Semi-finals
Entering into the finals of CS:GO ESL India Premiership Challenger #1 was with no doubt the tournament favorites, Team Brutality, which beat SemperX 16-8 on Dust2 in the semi-finals. The second semi-finals was also a dominant show by Invisible Wings as they completely outplayed Team Overcome with a monstrous performance by Simar ‘psy’ Sethi who utterly destroyed the dreams of Team Overcome and closed the map at 16-8 on de_train. It will be Invisible Wings vs Team Brutality in the grand finals of CS:GO – ESL One Premiership Challenger #1 tomorrow at 2:00 PM which will be a best of three matchups.
DotA 2
The DotA 2 matches, which were streamed by CloudX of AFK Gaming, were seen running smoothly. With few matches played offline and the rest being broadcasted live, the results of the matches were favorable as Beyond Infinity, Aggressive 5, xRg and Invisible Wings were advanced to the semi-finals. The very first team to enter into the finals of DotA 2 ESL India Premiership – Challenger #1 were undoubtedly Beyond Infinity as they beat Aggressive in the first semi-finals. And on the other hand, Invisible Wings will be playing Beyond Infinity in the finals of Challenger #1.
TL;DR- In the grand finals of ESL India Premiership Challenger Cup #1 tomorrow, Invisible Wings will face Team Brutality and Beyond Infinity in Counter Strike: Global Offensive and DotA 2 respectively.
Event execution – The positives
India hasn’t seen any large scale event of such level and the credits are due for Nodwin Gaming, ESL and the sponsors ASUS and HyperX for making this event possible. The venue is surely jaw-dropping as it seems like the setup has been constructed for International level events, and since ESL has been taking care of the majors in India, this should quiet be a benchmarking theme set for the event organizers out there looking to assemble gamers at a place.
Another point to be noted is that, ESL India Premiership, the parent series to the Challenger Cup #1 was launched a couple of months ago without any sponsors, the supporters have later joined the brigade which also suggests the trust and significance of the ESL’s continued vision for the growth of the sport in India. Of course we had BYOC back then in the CS 1.6 times, but the setup and the production quality of this level were never foreseen so soon to be available to us. The conviction by the moderators, administrators, the staff entirely exhibited
The conviction held by the moderators, administrators, the staff entirely exhibited the intentions and patience of the people out there. It was really a test of patience for the team behind the scenes to pull this thing off without getting agitated even though the event ran at the utmost delay and out of the schedule. Cheers guys!
Things to get resolved for better finals tomorrow and following events
Technical glitches, delays
There is no doubt about the intentions of the organizers, but sometimes things don’t go your way and the victim isn’t solely you.  The unnecessary delays and change of schedule were a bit too much for an event of this caliber. Viewing it from the perspective of the attendees or the visitors who planned to come to the venue to know about this emerging industry would have been surely disappointed by looking at the way things were going.
The delays were really really massive and turning a blind eye to the technical glitches, it was the viewers and the participants who were the victims. Not being ignorant of the existence of these petty issues in a larger event, but imagine if you were one of the people sitting in the audience waiting for a match to begin and you witness that almost all the matches have had delays back and forth.
 The LED Screen for Audience
I am not sure how relevant will this appear to the readers and to the organizers of the event but thought that it is our responsibility to share the opinions if it makes a difference. The LED Screen right behind the playing setup can quite arise controversies if there is any misuse observed and the result will by then be irreversible. From my POV, I can easily visualize any of the members of the team who can look around to have a sneaky glance onto the screen and can communicate the valuable information over to their teammates which will surely give them an unethical advantage over the opponents.
I am not accusing anybody of doing so, but that seems possible to me. And to counter the argument that the organizers have set cameras on the teams, that might not be a very feasible solution to this as nobody can monitor the 10 players playing at the same time. The solution to this could be an artificial wall or a back-drop just behind the players’ sitting arrangement so it is entirely impossible for them to gather some information through misconduct. And to back my point I asked some of the professionals about their views, Karan ‘Excalibur’ Mhawadkar of Team Invictus said, “They wouldn’t look back, but if they do, it is easily visible.”
