The second week of the Championship Gaming Series Training Camp has just come to a close and I decided that I'd look back on this past week and discuss my thoughts on each of our divisions performances throughout the week. We had an excellent week chalking up a 26-15 win for the franchise while winning in every game along the way.

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Dead or Alive:Male

When the draft concluded a few months ago I knew that there would be no "free rides" when it came to DoA, much less any of the other games. The DoA Male division is by far and away the most competitive division within the league and whenever I watch matches between some of these great players in the league, I truly get the "Any Given Sunday" vibe where the talent and skill level is so close that I wouldn't be surprised to see player "X" beat player "Y" who just beat "Z" and everything in between.

Coming into this match I knew this would be a tough match-up for Chepelle as BlackMamba is one of the best DoA players in the World. Chepelle was coming off a tough 5-1 loss to PerfectLegend of Complexity last week and really needed to set the tone for the rest of the Training Camp with a solid match against BlackMamba, which he did and more. Chepelle came out with a strong 3-0 lead and managed to close out the match 5-3. He looked calm, cool and composed ( although he told me after the fact that he was nervous as hell ) and his game benefited from what appeared to be "Ice in his veins".

I was particularly proud of Chepelle this week because I really felt like he bounced back from an extremely tough loss to PerfectLegend to play an incredible match this week. The situation reminded me of a DoA tournament I saw Chepelle play in earlier this year where he lost in the first round to Rikuto ( took 2nd in the tournament ) and was extremely down afterwards. We talked for a bit about what he needed to do to turn his performance around for the rest of the tournament and he immediately pulled a 180 and powered out of the Losers Bracket to lose to NinjaCW in 6 matches.

Dead or Alive:Female

I don't think there's too many instances where I watch a match and after the fact I find myself scratching my head thinking "Huh?", but it managed to happen this week as Coolsvilla took on Kasumi Chan. Typically, I wouldn't have thought anything of this match, but I had just watched Chepelle beat BlackMamba in an incredibly intense exchange which spanned almost the entire 9 available rounds and this match simply seemed to be the polar opposite.

The match started and I watched Coolsvilla cruise to to an easy 5-1 victory over Kasumi Chan who was using Hayabusa of all characters. I've seen Kasumi Chan play many different times over the past 2 years and can with certainty say I've never seen her use a character besides Kasumi. I'm not sure if she's trying to branch out and explore the other characters within DoA or if she's just trying to mask her game play with Kasumi. The match just seemed extremely uneventful to me, but you can't have nail biters every match.

FIFA 08

This week marked the triumphant debut of 3D.NY's Franchise player Matt "Wizakor" Wood. Matt earns the Ironman award for this week as he not only managed to play while suffering from a bad bout with the flu, but also play well and win 1-0 against the Chicago Chimera's FIFA 08 taxi player Michs09.

Matt scored early in the first half and opted to play a more defensive style of play while he coasted throughout the rest of the match. When I asked him how he felt during the match he said: "I just felt like sh*t". Lets hope he's feeling better for next weeks match with Barmoa of the Dallas Venom.

Counter-Strike:Source

I was happy to see the Counter-Strike team get a win this week against the Chicago Chimera after suffering through a tough loss to Complexity. I know the Counter-Strike team hadn't really had a lot of practice on tuscan coming into this match so I really wasn't sure what to expect.

The match got off to a rocky start as the Chimera managed to open up with a few quick round wins and eventually ride the momentum to a 6-3 lead at halftime. It was at this point where i started thinking to myself "Okay, this would be really bad if we managed to blow our 7 point franchise lead" but I was thoroughly impressed with the comeback that the guys managed to put together.

Ksharp & Friends managed to take a 7-3 lead for the Chimera and turn it around winning the next 6 of 8 rounds. It was in overtime that we got to see the 3D.NY Counter-Strike team win the match and show what it takes to truly be a winning team.

Forza 2

I knew going into this match that we had the franchise match locked up, but i still wanted to see how our newly formed racing team would match up against the North American MVPs. It was shortly before the match that we were talking about the collisions in Forza 2 on Ventrilo and I said something to the effect of "You guys are going to have to Bump N' Grind your way to victory". In the next 2 minutes Dan & I decided that R.Kelly - Bump N' Grind was the new unofficial theme song of the 3D.NY Forza 2 team and he felt it was necessary to play the song over ventrilo during the race. They managed to bring home a 5-2 win so i'm not sure what to make of it.

I'm happy to see our Forza 2 guys racing so well , hopefully they can keep this up throughout the season.