Insomnia52 was one of the largest UK CSGO events, if not the largest ever, and felt like a really communal event that had a CSS style thriving CS community. But obviously this can grow, expand and we can become a consistent force at UK events with large prize pools.

The Good

The Turnout

Like I mentioned previously the turnout for this event was so large this could have been the biggest, if not the biggest, turnout ever in UK CSGO. This may have been due to the large prize pool, hopefully due to the large turnout this tournament we’ll be able to get equal amount of funding for the winter tournament. 54 teams joining in on the fun in the tournament with only a couple of European players coming over, hopefully this will change in the future, we’d love to see some European teams coming over to compete.

vexstaR Surprising

Not many people knew what to think of vexstaR previous of LAN, many thought they were onliners but with their solid 5th-8th they proved themselves, coming close to finishing higher than this after some close games with Rasta, PCHire and Netcode Guides. If this team comes back at the Winter tournament it would be very interesting to see how they fare.

FM Toxic Winning

Congratulations on winning the tournament and taking home £3,700. As one of the flagship teams of the UK scene hopefully we will be able to see you compete in more EU LANs and online events.

The Map Pool

After being able to play Train on LAN we were very happy with the map pool not changing to Cobblestone and Overpass. I personally would like to see Cobblestone and Overpass join the map pool but not at the expense of another map. Can’t all maps live together in one large map pool?

Prize Pool

Obviously this wouldn’t be nearly as high if iiyama didn’t get involved with the tournament and I doubt we’d even get close to the main stage if iiyama didn’t help out, so from the UK CSGO community a big thanks to them. They managed to give a huge £7,530 total for the prize pool as well as Multiplay giving the Intermediate bracket the chance to win tickets to the next event.

Demos Being Auto Recorded

Something that needs to happen every event this is great. However, they do need to be uploaded as soon as the games have finished. Maybe the next day.

The Bad

The Amount of Games to Play

Now this can go either way, the little amount of games some teams played in the groups or the ridiculous amount of maps to play in the brackets. Some teams were up in the early hours of the morning still playing games, Rasta, who had to be up and ready for the final at 1.30pm, were still awake playing games at around 7am. Other teams had three people in their group and only got to play two games, some just one after one team didn’t turn up, A fun cup would have been nice for a tournament of this size, this would have at least given teams that were playing for fun or weren’t very good to come back to the event in the Winter/next Summer.

Scheduling

This brings us on to scheduling quite nicely, best of three games are incredibly hard to schedule for and this tournament had completely forgotten how long these actually take, estimating that these would take 2 hours including all breaks between maps and the next game this was absolutely absurd. A workaround for this would be all games are best of one until the quarter or semi finals where it would turn in to a best of three.

Rules Book

There needs to be a solid rule book that can enforce defaults and keep schedules on time, for example some teams waited two hours to start a game even with three players of the other team on the server. This will help solve many issues with both the scheduling and the drama around defaulting. Even if there aren’t many rules, don’t cheat, don’t be more than 20minutes late, be polite.

Games Not Being Streamed

Something which we might look in to doing for next LAN, hardly any of the games going on at LAN weren’t streamed.

People Forgetting Hardware

I honestly believe that if PCHire weren’t at LAN many people wouldn’t have had PCs to play on this LAN, there were multiple people who forgot PCs, headsets or had issues with their hardware. Not mentioning any names.

For Next Time

I personally believe that as a CSGO community we should allocate a section for us to sit in. Hall 3 and 4 look like a good place to take over if they are still available at the Winter LAN, if not, the EON Lounge is a lot nicer than the Jaguar hall. Like mentioned before, have BO1 until the quarter or semi finals, and have a strict rule book to stop ridiculous wait times. Hopefully we see vexstaR perform again and improve to be one of the top UK teams and then competing in online and LAN play around the EU. Another thing I think is almost an necessity is for the turn out to be as good, you’ve shown you can do it so grow the UK scene and help us post large prize pools by attending and competing, that’s all you have to do.

Overall I think this was a very good LAN for both the UK scene and Multiplay, lets make the Winter LAN just as successful.