Cal Poly Pomona’s Esports Club hosted an in-house Valorant tournament on Saturday, Sept. 12 and was live streamed on Twitch for the public to view.
Chris Truong, a third-year international business student and lead coordinator of the tournament, created the event because Valorant is currently one of the most popular games in the world and wanted students who enjoyed the game to compete in a fun environment.
“The tournament went smooth and glad to have it happen,” Truong said. “Valorant is the biggest first-person game right now, so many people have been playing this game. We had many people of different skills and ranks come join us.”
The tournament hosted six teams; each team did not have a team name, and instead were numbered one through six.
Each team played in a best-of-one series to determine who would advance to the next round. The final teams played in best-of-three series to determine the winners. Teams played 25 total rounds and the first team to win 13 rounds won the tournament. After 12 rounds, both teams switched from playing offense to defense.
Team 3 played against Team 1 in the final rounds, winning 2-0. In game one, Team 1 won by a comfortable margin winning 13-3 but in game two it was closer at 13-7. The players of the winning team were each given a HyperX Pulsefire FPS Pro gaming mouse.
The winners of the tournament were made up of Bill Yen, a second-year business marketing student, Toni Ngyuen, a second-year accounting student, Angelo Paguio, a second-year civil engineering student, Matthew Go, a second-year electrical engineering student and Jeremy Nacu, a third-year kinesiology student.
Players say experience is a key factor in becoming a better player and can become the difference toward the outcome. Participating in tournaments helps players gain knowledge as they continue to progress and get better.
“I have been doing tournaments prior to this one,” Yen said. “I am just doing it for fun and to gain more experience. At the same time, it was not easy as I thought, there was a lot of good competition. I was able to get some great experience from it.”
This team won not only because of their pure skill, but they also had a fierce mentality.
“I was not nervous at all,” Paguio said. “I was 100% confident throughout the entire tournament.”
Valorant is a five versus five tactical first-person shooter that launched last June. Before the official release, the game was estimated to have over 3 million players log in during beta phase. The game is owned by Riot Games, the developer behind League of Legends, the most popular esport globally.