The Dreamhack Summer 2004 Tournament in Sweden with a total of $780 in prize money ended this weekend - members of the GosuGamers Crew were there hosting the tournament and giving you the coverage!
Due to the down time of the server and the fact that the human body needs to recover after LANs (usually by 30+ hours of sleep), the results of the Dreamhack tournament are presented to you a few days later than supposed.
For the ones of you who do not know what Dreamhack is: Dreamhack is the worlds biggest LAN-party. It opens for 5000 participants twice a year (called Dreamhack Summer and Winter). It is located in Elmia, Jönköping,
Sweden. Members of the GosuGamers Crew are responsible for the Starcraft tournaments with $780 as a total prize sum. 
The 1on1-tournament held a total of 45 participants, all Swedish ones. Seeded as number one was last Dreamhack's winner,
TreK, who ended up as the winner at Dreamhack Winter 2003. Seeded as number two - and therefore in the bottom of the bracket - was 
DeliCato, who is now more known as a famous WarCraft 3 player. TreK kept on winning his first four matches until he surprisingly was beaten by
DaZe who later advanced to the winner bracket finals. DeliCato kept on winning from the bottom part of the brackets and faced DaZe in the winner bracket final. DaZe won the best out of three and advanced to the main, live final. TreK beat ZpuX in the loser brackets and faced DeliCato in the loser bracket finals. A game which we won 2-0, thanks to DeliCato's inactivity according to himself.
The main final was played between TreK and DaZe, where DaZe had the advantage of leading with one game since he came from the winner brackets. This year's final featured some changes from last year, though. We had prepared for a Korea-style final and both players brought their computers up to the main scene of Dreamhack. The final was broadcasted on the big screen with me as a commentator and featured cameras to switch between observer mode and the players' faces.
The first game was played at
Martian Cross, a Terran vs Terran. TreK managed to take DaZe's gas in the beginning, building a refinery on it twice! This slowed DaZe down a bit but he handled the first vulture attack with ease. However, he was even more slowed down when he killed his own supply depot by mistake with this siege tank, which resulted in enthusiastic laughs and applauses from the crowd and myself as a commentator. The game ended when TreK took one of DaZe's expansions and successfully had him contained with siege tanks and spider mines.
Second game played at
Gorky Islands where both players picked Terran again. TreK showed off with a fast expansion (Command Centre before Barracks) and lifted it off to the expansion. DaZe attempted to drop TreK just above his mineral line on the island, and sent his dropship containing two goliaths and a tank to that location. He fell right into TreK's trap, however, and lost his dropship to two turrets without having time to unload a single unit. Thereafter TreK dominated the game thanks to his economical advantage, and thanks to his early counter drop. TreK did the same attack as DaZe, except that he had two tanks on the cliff instead of just one. Before DaZe could kill those tanks, TreK successfully killed 11 of DaZe's SCVs and expanded two more times himself.
DaZe tried a couple of drops here and there but TreK successfully defended himself and had a very strong siege tank production in his main. The game - and the tournament - was finished by two massive tank drops in DaZe's main.
In the interviews after the game, some interesting details were brought up by the two finalists. TreK for instance, had accidentally picked Zerg in the start of the first game. When he realized this he was fast on switching back to Random and luckily for him ended up as Terran just as he wanted.
DaZe said he noticed that he had killed his supply depot but blamed it on the fact that he was being busy with handling the sudden attack at that time (which I strangely have no memory of at all...). DaZe also stated that "being in a final like this one on the stage is nothing I want to do again, at least not in the near future!"
They both got their travelling expenses covered thanks to the prize sum and will have a lot of it left for more. We hope to see them back at Dreamhack Winter 2004 which we will hype a lot more here at GosuGamers, turning it into a tournament full of prestige.
| 1) Fredrik "TreK" Nelson | $390 |
| 2) Jens "DaZe" Björck | $260 |
| 3) Rasmus "DeliCato" Wersäll | $130 |
Replays of the finals and more coverage will be uploaded once I get all my equipment packed up and sorted out!
The replays of the final match are now available.
» TreK vs DaZe @ Martian Cross
» TreK vs DaZe @ Gorky Island
Links
Dreamhack.org - Official homepage
