Hey Venom, did you do that China thing yet? If so, how was it?
Yup. I still need to upload a couple photos I took and figure out where the official photos/videos were posted.
The travel was painful. Almost 40 hours to get there (3 hours at airport + 16 hour flight + 6 hours at airport + 3 hour flight + 6 hours at airport + 3 hour bus ride). Coming back was worse, my flight got delayed for 2 days in Hong Kong due to the snow storm in NYC.
The tournament itself was alright. There were a total of 16 teams. 12 from China, Navi from RU, GGWP from EU, Arete from Korea/Asia, and RUllete from US (the team I was on). The later 4 teams all won 1st in their respected regions last season.
The matches were broken up by bracket, 4 brackets of 4 teams the first day, with each team playing 1 map vs each other. If you're seeding a tournament, the correct way is to put the top teams into
different brackets. Unfortunately, this concept was too foreign to the Chinese company organizing the tournament. Our bracket ended up being vs 2 Chinese teams and GGWP. We only lost vs GGWP but that knocked us out of the tournament on the first day. They ended up either 2nd or 3rd place overall. We placed 9th by points, Navi won 1st (as everyone expected).
The rest of the time we spent shopping, going out to eat, exploring the city and watching a few of the other teams play. It was an awesome experience meeting and hanging out with everyone on the team. I'm definitely glad I went.