We can well and truly say that the best was saved for last. Day 4 was incredibly busy, we streamed non-stop for 6 hours. Of the 30 matches that were supposed to be played, two thirds of the competitors showed up and the quality was amazing! A lot of changes in the top 10 occurred. Let’s start from the beginning which was also immediately the highlight of the whole day. Fruk!

I found myself screaming at the screen during fruk’s first attempt. It was clear from the start that 150 kills was in the books, but around the six minute mark he had a rough spot. It ended up in a crushing score of 157 kills, blowing duhfysa and brejnless from the #1 spot with their joint 138 kills. Something I noticed in fruk’s way of playing was that he didn’t shoot as fast as he could like many others have done in the last 4 days. He was extremely accurate and patient not even attempting the near to impossible skeets, but sometimes even waiting 5 seconds for the next good opportunity to arise. His second attempt wasn’t as good but the pressure was off, he thoroughly deserves his spot in the finals.

Something I noticed during day 4 was that a lot of people had their highest score in their first attempt. During the first three days the vast majority scored better in their second attempt. This makes sense to me as you’re warmed up and a bit more used to the setting (being streamed etc). Share your insight into this in the comments if you wish.

Towards the end of the evening we had to decide who to stream, either peachy or dogbert. They were playing at the same time and we chose peachy, as we had never heard of dogbert before. Dogbert is from Chile and boy what a shame we couldn’t stream both. He ended up as #2, but we’ll see him in the finals! Anyway, back to peachy, she attracted quite a crowd in the stream for a Saturday evening. If there was a competition for the biggest fan base she would win hands down. With a lot of nerves she managed to qualify for the finals ending up as #5 with 137 kills.

The last person we streamed was ti6Htn4z, after some “connecting issues”, I don’t know if he was stoned or what but he didn’t understand what to do with an IP and password, he finally got in. His first attempt was just one kill away from the joint #9 spot and thus qualification for the finals on Sunday. During his second attempt the stress completely got to him and he gave up halfway. Yes ladies and gentlemen, skeet shooting is hard, but coping with the stress is a lot harder as many competitors will tell you. He wasn’t the first nor will he be the last with nerves influencing performance. His parting word was “WEED!” so I’m sure he had a great evening anyway, hard luck, better luck next time!

It’s time to look at the final scores and when you do that there’s something that cannot escape your notice. Even with the absence of cXo, the reigning two times champion from Poland, the Polish community has really stepped up its game. Overall the nationalities are very diverse there isn’t one country represented more than once in the whole top 20! Except for Poland of course, they have eight! But now for the most important spots of course, the top 10, who have qualified for the finals. Five polish people have placed themselves, granted the top 10 is actually top 12, which I’ll explain in a moment. But still, either there’s something in the water in Poland or cXo’s consecutive wins the last two years have really been a shining example to the Polish community and motivated a lot of players.

Now why we have a top 12 instead of top 10, three people made 123 kills and are thus joint number 10. It’s great to see that we also have two players from “over-seas” in other words non-European countries. I mentioned before dogbert being from Chile, amp_ also qualified. This has changed the planning for the finals a bit. Usually we would have the finals during the afternoon, but we’ve moved it to the early evening. Each finalist gets one chance at getting the best score and then we’ll be handing out the awards. We hope you’ll all be watching live on www.twich.tv/urbanzone we’ll be starting the stream around 19:00 CEST.

If you want to watch the last day of qualifying it’s available below.