The third 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 a truly hard fought week as we fought toe to toe with the Dallas Venom to a 23-23 Franchise Tie.

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Dead or Alive:Male

The first match of the week always starts with a look at the intense match-ups that the Dead or Alive Male division has to offer and this week we got to see 3D.NY's own Cardell "Cheppelle" Thomas take on former 3D.NY Dead or Alive player Manny "Master" Rodriguez. I'll say it again and again but the competition in the DoA Male division is simply insane, every week I see matches that come down to the wire and I don't think there's one clear cut #1 in the league.

The match got underway and I was particularly worried as Master was simply on fire. He was on top of his game and playing with the aggression and precision that has seemed to be his forte over the past few years and has allowed him to stay on top of the DoA Community. The match was quickly halfway over as Master took a commanding 3-0 lead and I felt rather concerned. I was watching Cheppelle and during the first few rounds he didn't seem to be playing with the same conviction that he had the week earlier against BlackMamba and it looked as if he was letting master play his game and not play his own.

We headed into the next set of rounds and while there was an element of lag ( this is online gaming what do you expect? ), Cheppelle pulled his best Dr. Jekyl & Mr. Hyde impersonation and completely turned the match around. He started playing like the player I saw the week prior and started taking the close rounds away from Master. The rounds went back and forth and ultimately Cheppelle managed to end the set with a convincing 3-1 victory bringing the total score to 4-3 in favor of Master.

Cheppelle went on to take one more round but Master managed to close out the match and take the victory home for the Dallas Venom. It was another great comeback from Cheppelle and I was impressed with his composure, tenacity and ability to find a way to get back onto the scoreboard when the odds weres tacked against him. Hats off to Cheppelle.

Dead or Alive:Female

Last weeks match-up of Coolsvilla vs. Kasumi Chan was just anything but exciting and I was excited to see Coolsvilla take on the much hyped and talked about Phoenix. I knew coming into this match that Coolsvilla would be using Kasumi, which isn't her primary character but I know she's been putting in a good amount of time to learn her play style in an effort to diversify her game as much as possible.

The match got underway and it proved to be much more of what I was looking for, a tight and exciting match. Phoenix took a round, Coolsvilla answered and next thing I knew we had finished the set with a score of 3-2 in favor of Coolsvilla. The rounds were close but as you can see in the video below, it was really a cat & mouse game where both ladies managed to one up the other only to answer back with some amazing play of their own.

Coolsvilla ended up winning the match with a score of 5-4. I'm truly surprised that she managed to take down Phoenix who was using her main GenFu, while using one of her alternate characters. I'm happy to see that Coolsvilla's arsenal is expanding beyond her normal characters ( Christie & Lisa ) and that she can use it effectively against one of the more talented girls in the league.

FIFA 08

I didn't have an opportunity to watch Wizakor play against Barmoa this week but if you have been following the scores throughout the week you know that Wizakor lost to Barmoa 3-0. I listened on vent during the match and spoke with Wizakor afterwards and we came to the consensus that losses like that are going to happen because the ball can't go your way everytime.

My hat's off to Barmoa because he played an immaculate game from start to finish and managed to take down in my opinion the most talented FIFA player in the league.

I'm looking forward to heading to Los Angeles to start league play because FIFA 08 is one of my favorite games to watch and unfortunately it's the only game that has no spectating component. I don't think I should worry to much because i'm sure i'll get the opportunity to watch tons of FIFA in a few weeks :)

Counter-Strike:Source

This week the unexpected happened -- I won a coin toss. I spent my entire Counter-Strike career losing coin tosses and giving my teams the unfortunate disadvantage of starting on traditionally the weak side of most maps. Though our luck today had changed and I won, so we started out on the CT Side.

The next 9 rounds played out close to perfectly as we did what any team who starts off on the CT side of nuke should do, win 7 or 8 rounds and establish a serious amount of momentum heading into the second half. We started off the match doing exactly that and went into the second half with an 8-1 lead. Dallas showed how resilient they are though as they fought back and brought the match down to the wire with the last round deciding the match, ending with a 10-8 win for 3D.NY.

I think that right now, the Counter-Strike:Source teams within the league are all very close and being able to consistently bring home wins ( whether they might be 1,2,4 points ) is a big victory.

Forza 2

3D.NY's own dynamic Forza duo of ComebackDan & Dark Storm came into this match with an undefeated record of 2-0 after bumping n' grinding to a tough victory against the Chicago Chimera's superstar racers ChompR & JasonX. We knew coming into this match that to even stay in the Franchise Match we'd have to at least win the race.

I was confident that our Forza team could bring home a win, which they did. ComebackDan got out to an early lead and never lost it as Dark Storm, in his own words "Beasted" Chaos & Muffinman and managed to hold them off for the win.

The guys were upset after the win because they knew that if they had finished with 1st & 3rd place finishings that they would have brought home an overall franchise win. I think being 3-0 and winning against some of the best racers in North America is still an excellent accomplishment. Keep it up boys!