Let’s have a small recap of what the Intel Friday Night Games represents:

* A cooperation of WSquared Media with INTEL, HP and Makro
* 4 Events during the month of July! Matches on stage and no entrance fee!
* The top of professional Benelux teams and players competing for a € 4000 Prize pot!
* Outdoor stage with a big screen for the audience and Live shoutcasting!

Participants

Counter-Strike 1.6 (2000 euro)
LowLandLions
Antwerp Aces (tek9)
Team Sypher

Counter-Strike Source (750 euro)
4Kings
Amaizing

FIFA 2009 (1250 euro)
LowLandLions squad: Geenens Jeryb Bryan energy
Antwerp Aces (tek9) squad: AcKie Rollo Maxos nepstier

Week 1 – Deurne, Antwerp

The Setup
The first edition, the first big challenge!
Arriving in the early afternoon; some crew members of ESL Benelux and WSquared media had to build up the stage where they received the needed help for. After a while things started to get in their position and the first impression of what the final result should be started to get shape.

Stage preview	Wouter (WSquared) in action
The Setup

The crowd

18:00, Soccer Time with FIFA’09

Everything is ready, the stage is shining and the fifa players have arrived. It’s finally time for tonight’s first game: :fifa09: Fifa 2009.

Equal to the CS:Source match this game only features two teams, also an exception is that fifa features in the first three weeks but not on the finals day (July 24th)

Now as earlier said the FIFA Game brings us a show of Benelux’ finest players. A little side note on this game is the different prize distribution since it’s more a solo game. Each victorious match brings € 100 to the player and each defeat is good for € 40.

Now let’s go to what today’s game brought us, as in the end competition is always about winning and this spirit of fighting is something LowLandLions and Antwerp aces surely have!

:benelux: LowLandLions

The team surely the most in shape for tonight had to be the Lions. In this team we can Geenens which only a few months ago won € 1000 Cash at Frag-O-Matic 11. Having Geenens in their team; LowLandLions surely is some hard competition for the Antwerp Aces line-up.

:benelux: Antwerp Aces
After having recruited Ackie which is a former LLL Player, this team surely brought in a strong player who is still learning day by day in this competitive scene of Fifa. He ended third at Frag-O-Matic.

The results

FIFA: IFNG WEEK I
Antwerp Aces [01-02] LowLandLions
Rollo [1:3] Bryan Ackk1e [1:2] jeryb Ackk1e [3:2] Geeneens
Antwerp Aces	Ackk1e – Rollo
LowLandLions	Geeneens – Bryan – Jeryb

Here a little statement from Antwerp Aces Player Ackie about the event and his performance.

:be: Ackkie: Last friday my first Intel Friday Night game took place. I had a lot in mind about this event but when I arrived my excitement and idea about it were nothing compared to my expectations.
When we went preparing ourselves I came to the conclusion my gamepad didn’t function properly and I had to use Rollo’s Pad. Unfortunately I couldn’t get used to it very fast and it made me lose my first game vs :belgium: LLL`JeryB.

In the second game I managed to get into rythm but still the game-pad was the cause of some weird actions! But Luckily I managed to beat the top Belgian Fifa player :be: LLL`Geenens, and frankly said quite easily; I assume he had a bad day.

19:30 – Team power with CS 1.6

The FIFA matches took place and pretty much on schedule it was time for the highlight of tonight, the Benelux clash between the Flemish/Dutch :benelux: LowLandLions team and the Belgian/Walloon formation of :belgium: Team Sypher

The Teams

:be: Jules “nookbrid”Wydoodt
:nl: Dennis “seezung” Seesing
:nl: Tom “tommeh” Nijenhuis
:nl: Mike “trx” Degger
:be: Ivan “Apollo” Wuddhisukhum

After a recently announced line-up change featuring the unexpected departure of long standing member :nl: xire; the new addition of the LowLandLions is no other then :belgium: nookbrid. An experienced player who has the needed motivation, skill and history to make this team what it should be.

The Lions surely came out as favorites for this event since they’re the team dominating the Benelux scene for more then two years now. Not even a week earlier three LowLandLions players attended the ESL Pro Series Finals in Enschede, Netherlands where they took the title beating DOKGaming.

This recent attendance of an offline event should scare off Team Sypher which hasn’t played on a lan event since Last Frag-O-Matic. Of course we shouldn’t forget that having a new player in the team is a serious handicap and in a last day announcement tommeh couldn’t attend and got replaced by a retired known player: :be: David ‘Spacey‘ Mennes

:be: Matthieu “Fre3” Braquenier
:be: Renaud “NESK” Bronchart
:be: Grégoire “yokO” Debay
:be: Riccardo “hutCh” Natalizio
:be: Massimo “iDent” Cicerale

Team sypher is by some saying an outsider in this first edition of the Intel Friday Night Games. They’re also the only walloon formation and that’s always a delicate point when it comes to rivalry in Belgium. Team Sypher last’s Event attendance was the FOM 11.0 Lan where they took a second place after losing the final… yes, against LowLandLions! And here’s the challenge of tonight, again they met the team that defeated them for the last time on a Lan event and Team Sypher surely saw this as a opportunity to show they’re still as strong as a few months ago.

After the FOM Lan Team Sypher captain :belgium: hutCh: decided to take a break from his role and only 4 days before the first IFNG he announced to take up his role again. This means Team Sypher also faces a similar situation as LowLandLions and makes it exciting for both teams on what the event would bring.

The final score

COUNTER-STRIKE 1.6: IFNG WEEK I
Team Sypher [01-01] LowLandLions
de_dust2 [14:16] de_inferno [16:10]
DEMO: Here!
Team Sypher	hutCh – Fre3 – yokO – iD3Nt – nesk
LowLandLions	seezung – trx – spacey – nookbrid – apollo

Matthieu “Fre3” Braquenier (SR)	Ivan “Apollo” Wuddhisukhum (LLL)
The Counter-Strike 1.6 teams preparing for the game