Briefing of the tournamentos:
Organizing this sort of tournaments is quite heavy as I say myself. Where the preparation is quite the same as starting a normal game, you get to deal with 15 (or more) people you don't know very good.
And if you start a clan then you start with a lower number of people. At least I would advice that. Good for me was that I had my trusted World Clan host Kuky for hosting. As organizing & hosting at the same time for such a tournament seems impossible for me. Just an example is having 7 different chat mirrors opened at 1 time at the start of the game. :eek: Then its good to see somebody else taking care for the saving part of the game thats also very important. Also the draw was fun as I say it myself.
Some less fun:
* First thing that always occur is that some people apply and don't show up. No problems with that as long its not too many people doing that. We had two people not there. We filled this up with the reserve spots we had. So I think its better not to call their names in here. One of them let me know today that his computer was dead. So forgiven.
* Further we had a guy called Mballack who I don't forgive!
He may thank God that he got a chance in this competition with the bad unreliable reputation he already had. First there were the problems with not be able to join the chatroom. And when I tried to help him I had to wait 15mins for an answer while he asked some of the same again and again. At the end he was helped which took me too long though. But....he could play and went in the draw. Drawed Italy (great team with title chances), but what happened. Italy didnt add manager in the 1st hour. What seemed he was asking for a crack file because he couldnt connect to the server.
How annoying can this be, if you are doing your best to get such a guy to play CMOnline. So he was kicked from MSN-group and a new Italy manager should be searched for with just 30 mins of T&T to go. Thanks to MBallack!
Less irritating was the loss of Da88en. This guy didnt get his game to work properly and gave us at least 1 hour for searching a new Denmark manager. This is the way I expect it. At the last minute we came in with Dogs as Italy manager and Royalman as Denmark manager however both didn't play many matches due to different reasons. Can't blame them as they were very late entries. At least thanks for your help.
* After the T&T we went on holiday what is not that smart, as our squads went back to default. Just an idea for future games: Don't go on holliday before confirming the squads.
OK some fast discussion with the host Kuky: we went back to the saved games and costed us some time, but is was a good choice I think. Good point there weren't people moaning about it. Nice this was.
Back on story:
On friday evening we decided to all play 1 match and that went how it was planned. Game was finished at 10.30 UK-time so we could go to bed after some surprises. Scotland took a point against the French side of Paul Bray. My Russia got a 2-1 win against Spain from Danish oldie Birk (aka Michael Nielsen). Also Italy, Holland & England lost points on the first day of the tournament.
Back on track on Saterday with an long afternoon session from 12.00 till 17.30 UK-time. It was nice to see all teams in the fight for the 2nd round till the last minute. Unfortunately for me Luis Figo had a bad day against my rivals Spain what costed me a 2nd round on goal difference. Surprises of the 1st round were the France shocking 4th place ( :thup
aul Bray), Englands' 4th place (
) and the narrow escapes by Spain, Italy and Germany. Everything ran smoothly during the group rounds. However we got no Italy & Denmark manager most of the time. Think the Denmark manager played only 1 match over the whole tournament himself however they reached the semis.
Quarter final teams: Italy (1 game by Dogs), Spain (Birk), Portugal (BelfastNiall), Czech Republic (Wee_Ian), Germany (Stev0NUFC), Scotland (james Newson), Denmark (1 game by Royalman), Bulgaria (Rdysn).
At that stage of the tournament we got to deal with a young online newbie, that needed to be taught how to play online. But I assume that are things where you have to deal with if you give newbies a chance. You could see some others started irritation on waiting. This problem came from the game up the forum and spoiled some of the thread' fun. Especially when people outside the game think they know it better. So two online rules you can see are:
<UL TYPE=SQUARE><LI>Play "social" and keep up a decent speed. Tactic changes and substitutes are no problem as long as you don't make them TOO much.
<LI>Keep your problems from the forum. It gives a bad taste to the game :o.
</UL>
Semi Finals:
Italy (Dez replaced Dogs at this point) vs Bulgaria (Rdysn>>great result mate) [2] - [0]
Czech Republic (Wee_Ian) vs Denmark [2] - [1]
This all ended in a breathtaking match with about 9 supporters to see Wee_Ian win the tournament. Happy to see a guy win that played all matches from start till end. A red card for Italy late in the game just after the 1-0 gave Czech republic the comeback. A great freekick goal by the Czech brought them in Extra time. With a penalties as result. With many misses the Czech Republic made an end to this tournament.
With the winner:
IAN PATON! :thup:
The positive points afterwards:
* A tourmanent like this takes much waiting as all teams play after each other and not at the same time. I haven't heard anyone moaning about this and there was some fun inside the chatroom.
* It was shown that its important to see some other clan organisers taking part as well to meet these new online guys. BelfastNiall was searching a new guy for his clan. At the end it was James Newson (Scotland manager) who got a spot in his clan. And from what I've seen he is busy making an EDT-file for that game.
The winner (also unexperienced gun) Wee_Ian already signed a contract at Steffs' "Old firm in the Premiership Clan" before the tournament started.
A third guy that proved his 56k didn't slow us down gets a spot in my own World Clan. He got in talks with 36EE fat tits, who already gets a chance in my clan. And a new friendship seems to born there
. Birk told me he especially like this short term tournaments is looking forward to more of this sort of games. For other "newbies" Stev0NUFC and Rdysn I hope they will find the right online clan soon. Only thing I can say is make contacts on MSN what gives you a much better chance joining one. Royalman & Superayrunited didn't play more than 1 match. So can't say much about them.
* Thanks go to all players that made this a good story. Good luck all.
Tips for future organizers of these tournaments:
# Make sure you have some support organizing the game.
# Contact the "unexperienced" guns before the game on MSN. Tell them the Game version + times again. So give them answers on the questions they have.
# Do not overkill these tournaments. Don't organize them each week as I think 6-8 hours is quite heavy. Once in the 2 weeks or once a month can be enough in my opinion. Looking to myself I can see me organising such a tourmanent again. But not more than 2/3 times a year as its quite heavy.
# Try to get some clan organisers in also. These gives a fresh meeting with other clan people and gives "newbies" a better chance to get contacts.
Overall a nice tournament if I say myself. And if you have questions you can ask them in this thread.
Cheers,
Kozakov, Russian manager on Euro 2004
Linear Mode
