As we get prepared for our second monthly FIFA Masters Series (FMS) Online Tournament this Wednesday, we bring you a thorough review of the first FMS Online Tournament held on Wednesday 5th June, where Tom Stokes was crowned our inaugural FMS Online Tournament Champion.
FIFA Masters Series (FMS)
The Online Tournaments run each month in the build up to the Grand Final at the end of August at insomnia49. At the end of the insomnia49 FIFA 13 tournament, points earned from insomnia48, EGL9, insomnia49 and the Online Tournaments will provide us our Top 8 players in the FMS League. These 8 will play off at insomnia49 in the FMS Grand Final for the title of FMS Champion 2013!
The Players
Wednesday 5th June was a milestone date for everyone here at Sweetpatch TV, as much preparation had gone in to the development of the FMS, and this was the first of our online tournaments after offline tournaments at insomnia48 and EGL9.
We had a great entry list as 69 of Europe’s and the US’s top FIFA players entered including Belgium‘s Bryan Moeyaert; Denmark‘s August Rosenmeier; Finland‘s Juho Järvelä and Freddy Ackrén; France‘s Johann Simon, Adrien Viaud, Alexis Vilment, Patrick Abiven, Rymane Yougo, Thibaut Merkel and Thomas Chamberland; Germany‘s Daniel Tissarek, Poland‘s Robert Liszka, Spain‘s David Carreras Jimenez; USA‘s Michael LaBelle, Giuseppe Guastella and Graham Ellix; plus UK‘s top players including Tom Stokes, Gavin Wong, Olly Shaw, Dave Bytheway, James Barrett, Matt Prince, Sean Allen, Wesley Winter, et al; and it was great to see the return of previous UK FIFA Champion Luke “Motown/Classic” Stovell to the FIFA scene.
A number of the above players having played recently in the televised FIFA Interactive World Cup Grand Final in Madrid and Virgin Gaming Challenge Series out in Las Vegas. It was a great set of players for our first online tournament and we were absolutely delighted.
Tournament Coverage
For the first time we decided also to run a Live Show during the tournament to provide a different aspect for the players and viewers. We streamed the whole tournament live on Twitch TV with live games streamed plus player interviews and plenty of banter from the Show Team including Daniel “WelshDragonDsG” Griffiths, Matt K Prince, Michael “Dirty Mike” LaBelle and my good self, with the Tournament Admins of the Morrison Brothers, Nidge and Aubs playing a massive part in the background ensuring the tournament ran smoothly.
You can catch up with all the coverage from kick off to final presentations here with us:
httpvhp://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE3VdZ12EXhiiI6DoP8ghm4DdVb7an8h-
Tournament Prizes
We were delighted to have on offer the FMS Points to the Top 32 players plus the Winner would earn themselves a TUP ticket to insomnia49 courtesy of Multiplay (worth £55) and a Tritton 720+ 7.1 Surround Headset courtesy of a Mad Catz (worth £130).
Tournament Kick Off
You can check out the full Tournament Bracket for all the matches and results.
1st Round (Preliminary Round) and 2nd Round
The majority of the players turned up for the kick off of the tournament and during the 1st prelim and 2nd round there were a couple of surprises as some of our Pre-Tournament Favourites were knocked out, including August Rosenmeier, Daniel Tissarek, David Coolledge, Dominic Stephens, Mike Childs, Sean Bradley, insomnia49 champion Tassal Rushan and Thomas Chamberland.
Impressive early form was been shown by Bryan Moeyaert, Johann Simon, Juho Järvelä , Giuseppe Guastella, David Carreras Jimenez, James Barrett, Tom Stokes and Dave Bytheway as they all progressed comfortably in to the 3rd Round.
3rd Round
There were some big match ups in the 3rd round as we again lost some top FIFA players as Matthew Cross, ESWC 2011 Champion Adrien “Aquino” Viaud, Michael “Dirty Mike” LaBelle, Luke and Jack Stovell and Jack Bayley had to watch the rest of the tournament.
Big winners included Alexis Vilment (5v2), Johann Simon (4v0), Gavin Wong (4v0), James Barrett (7v0), Tom Stokes (3v1) and Dave Bytheway (3v0).
4th Round
There were some top matches in the 4th round as we got down to the final 16 players, including:
- Bryan Moeyaert 2 v 0 Alexis Vilment
- Wesley Winter 1 v 4 Johann Simon
- Juho Järvelä 3 v 1 Matt K Prince
- Justin Burt 1 v 2 Giuseppe Guastella
- David Carreras Jimenez 2 v 1 Sean Allen
- Olly Shaw 5 v 0 Killer Proctor
- Gavin Wong 2 v 0 James Barrett
- Tom Stokes 1 v 0 Dave Bytheway
We streamed the Juho v Matt and Gavin v James matches live and you can catch up with it above in our live coverage. There were no real surprises in this round as the final 8 players progressed in to the Quarter Finals.
Quarter Finals
There were some great match-ups in the Quarter Finals including:
- Bryan Moeyaert 0 v 2 Johann Simon
- Juho Järvelä 1 v 0 Giuseppe Guastella
- David Carreras Jimenez 1 v 0 Olly Shaw
- Gavin Wong 0 v 1 Tom Stokes
We streamed the David v Olly match live and you can catch up with it above in our live coverage. It was a marathon match and went to the 3rd match to get ourselves a winner as David progressed to the semi finals and Olly was unlucky to see himself miss out. Gavin v Tom was also an epic as it again went to multiple matches to get Tom his victory.
Semi Finals
In the Semi Finals we had one very tight match, which was unfortunately disrupted by terrible Internet connection problems and the other was a whitewash:
- Johann Simon 0 v 1 Juho Järvelä
- David Carreras Jimenez 0 v 5 Tom Stokes
Unfortunately as none of the players had streaming capabilities, the Live Show team provided plenty of banter and regular score updates to keep the audience entertained.
Bronze Match
After having a stressful semi final and needing to get up early in the morning, France’s Johann Simon was unable to reproduce his earlier form as he was beaten by Spain’s David Carreras Jimenez 0 v 3 as David captured his 16 FMS Points and Johann deservedly walked away with his 13 FMS points.
Grand Final
So we had ourselves a Finland v UK Grand Final as Juho Järvelä matched up against UK FIFA star and Team eNigman player Tom Stokes. Tom had been my pre-tournament favourite as once again he had played steady FIFA all night and deservedly progressed to the Grand Final. Juho was more of an unknown quantity to us but had had some impressive victories throughout the night and is known as @FifaKoppinen and he is a competitive FIFA Player, currently playing for Team Established.
We were unable to stream the Grand Final but kept a close eye as the match progressed with Tom kindly keeping everyone updated in the stream chat room. It was a rather one sided affair as Tom cruised to victory beating Juho 4v1 in our inaugural FIFA Master Series Online Tournament.
Tom claimed his 26 FMS Points plus ticket to insomnia49 and awesome Tritton headset (valued together at £185) whilst Juho went home happy with his nights work and 19 FMS points.
Tom commented after his victory:
It was a great tournament to win because of the amount of good players that entered, not just from the UK but around the world and it was good to come out on top.
In Summary
Massive congratulations to Tom for his deserved victory and thanks to all the players for taking part and making our FMS drean a reality. Thank you also to our Live Show Team of Daniel “WelshDragonDsG” Griffiths, Matt K Prince, Michael “Dirty Mike” LaBelle plus our Tournament Admins of the Morrison Brothers, Nidge and Aubs for making the night run so smoothly. Finally, a massive thank you to our tournament sponsors Multiplay and Mad Catz.
We learnt a lot which we will incorporate in future tournaments to make the FMS the best possible experience for FIFA players.
Get yourselves involved in the FMS, Tom recommends:
I think the FMS is a great incentive for people to compete and regularly join LANs and online tournaments and the tournament was run very well by the team.
FMS League Table
Every FIFA Masters Series qualifying tournament provides points towards the FIFA Masters Series League based on the players finishing position (based on the Formula 1 Grand Prix points system with points doubled for offline events).
Check out the Points earned at this tournament and the latest FIFA Masters Series League Table.
Next Online Tournament
Please get involved with our next Online Tournament this Wednesday 26th June and help build the FIFA Masters Series to be a massive success for the benefit of the competitive FIFA community.
