Power Gaming

Hello everyone and greetings from Hangzhou, China.,

Like you all know, we have been here in the heart of esports for the past 4 days. Unfortunatily though, it didn't serve us too well this time around. It's safe to say that the tournament was a disaster for us but that's something we've got to live with now and move on when we get back home next week. I don't think it's necessary to go into more detail as I'm sure most of you have seen our games and know how gutted we've felt about it. So let's move onto how life for us is in China instead...

Our trip over was around 14 hours in total, as we flew from Helsinki to Amsterdam and from there to Hangzhou. The WEM people were waiting for us at the airport, as usually they do here in China. We arrived here together with Fnatic, SK and FX so we had a joined bus transportation to our hotel. Once we got to the hotel, it was the usual chaos with the hotel-rooms. After about an hour of volunteers running around arranging our rooms, we could finally settle in. We were also informed that there was going to be a news confrence early in the afternoon, so there was to be no rest for the players yet. Ben arrived in a few hours later, as he flew in to Shanghai instead of Hangzhou. He apparently enjoyed his 2,5 hours long bus trip over - with the ukrainian Na'Vi guys keeping the noiselevel up throughout the way ;).

The newsconfrence was just as you'd imagine here in China, very professional and seriously taken. After about an hour of speeches in both chinese and english, we had the bracket draw. They used a very unusual random draw, without any kind of seedings. With all the official part being gone, we were taken to a dinner organised by the WEM. It was the usual traditional chinese food, with weird things on plates one after the other. The funny part was, that even the locals sitting on our table didn't always know what they were eating - or thats what it looked liked when looking at their impressions. As pretty much throughout the whole trip - we then were so tired that we just ended up crashing in beds around 8pm later that night.

Opening ceremony was pretty amazing. They had these weird danceshows and it was all just really hyped. The teams were introduced with rockmusic playing and you surely feel like a rockstar for a moment then. There was quite alot of crowd aswell, as the tournament takes place in the university of Hangzhou. Local kids were running around screaming Grubby's name with their pens and papers - as they were hunting autographs. I think China is the only place in the world - where one could imagine to be asked for an autograph by a policeman. Atleast if you're an esports player that is.. :)

Apart from being at the venue, we've mostly been resting and chilling - as jetlag has really hit all of us pretty hard. Only today have been able to do a little shopping and looking for something interesting to buy. We also planned on hitting Shanghai tomorrow till sunday, as it's only an hour and 100 RMB (around 10 euros) away from Hangzhou. It would be stupid not to use the opportunity to see one of the biggest cities in the world as it's literally next door. I'm sure there's going to be alot to see and we've also planned on getting a nice 5 star hotel right in middle of the city, so that everything is within a 2 mile radius basically. I'm also looking forward to experienceing the maglev train which goes upto 400km/h.

Eating here is always a little challenge, and we've been hitting the local KFC quite alot. But there's a certain limit to how much a man can eat chicken so we've also tried a few other options - such as a westernlike restaurant next door. Rib eye steak was a let down though, eventhough the steak was huge - it was mostly just fat. But that's all from China for now - I hope you enjoyed this sneakpeak on how it's like here in Asia.

For now, have a good one! :)