PALS Thailand 2012

Last weekend we were in Bangkok, Thailand for the first round of the PALS series. This was our third time to Thailand. We love going to Thailand -- the food, people and shopping are amazing, and the tournament is always excellent.

We arrived on Wednesday night and went out immediately to eat. We ate Tom Yum Goong everyday and it is now STK's official food of choice.

The tournament started rough, with us on Friday losing straight up 4-1 to both Datis and the newly revamped Demonz team. Ronin were playing strong and we lost in a close game to them as well. We started feeling more confident towards the end of Friday, but still had a hard road ahead with Infernal from Thailand (who have won PALS Thailand for the past two years) and Shockwave from Canada still to verse on Saturday.

Infernal destroyed us. It was hard to take this many losses. Sitting at the bottom of the bracket isn't really a position we were in at all in 2011. We managed to tie to Shockwave, and win our remaining games.

So we finished the preliminaries with 3.5 wins out of 8. We literally scraped into top 8. We were desperate, but hungry to make it work. We revised our game-plan endlessly until we had finally gotten a grasp of how the field was playing out.

We moved onto Sunday to play our quarter-finals game against Datis, last years WCA champs and series winners. It sounds weird and lame to say it now out of context, but in the huddle before the game we used a marathon runner's quote to sum up our experience at the tournament to this point:

At mile 20 - I thought I was dying. At mile 22 - I knew I was dying. At mile 25 - I thought I was dead. At mile 30, I'd become to tough to kill.

And with that mentality we went into the Datis game and beat them 4-0, securing our spot in the top 4.

Next up we had to play Shockwave from Canada in the semi-finals. We were finally playing good, but they were playing hot and their snake presence was too powerful, and we went down 4-2. They went onto win the tournament.

This left us to play against Demonz for 3rd and 4th. Again, I felt as though we were playing good, but penalties and some good plays by them saw the game slip away 4-2, leaving us with 4th.

It was a much harder road than Thailand last year, but we ultimately finished with the same result as 2011 for the season opener. Our new players Farran and Regan are both 17, but know how to play and party like champs!

Our new Dye gear is amazing; the DM12's shoot so great, and the C12 playing gear was so comfortable, light and cool in the hot conditions of Bangkok.

After the tournament we picked up our suits and analysed graphs and did some business.

Photos by Look Left Pictures.