Over the past few years, Virgin Gaming and NBA 2K have powered some of the most exciting tournaments in the history of gaming. It all started way back when with the first ever tournament that we did together at the Hardwood Suite in the Palms Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. If you’ve never heard of the suite, head over to Google and do an image search for this hotel room. It has two stories and is equipped with a half-court basketball court right smack in the room itself.
I’ll never forget the look on the faces of the final eight contestants when they walked into the room and saw the giant 80′ screen TV’s that they were playing on, and a basketball court directly behind them. The tournament started a full hour later than scheduled because the finalists were too busy enjoying all the amazing amenities that the Hardwood Suite had to offer.
That was our beginning of an amazing relationship with the greatest NBA game ever made (sorry Jordan vs. Bird).
From there we continued growing the competitive NBA 2K tournament scene and informing the community that a service such as Virgin Gaming exists and gamers from all over the world can come and compete against other like-minded gamers.
This year’s event is called King of the Court, exclusively offered on PS3 with the final match taking place live at MLG Studios in NYC. The finalists had to battle out thousands of other competitors during a four-week leaderboard competition in which the top players from each weekly leaderboard were placed into a single elimination bracketed tournament. The top 16 players were randomly matched up and the bracket started on April 9th.
We had our two finalists by end of day on April 10th. Those two finalists are Tommy Zak from Wisconsin and Semaj Riddick from Virginia — one of the gamers was actually a finalist at last year’s All Star Event in Houston, where the championship match was played on the jumbotron in the Toyota Center. So let’s see if Semaj’s experience comes in handy this time around.
Just like most events in gaming, there’s a twist to the finals and how the competitors will compete for the grand prize. The final test will see both users live in studio playing a best of three championship round on PS4, all while being livestreamed for the world to watch. Will they be able to handle the pressure? Will I streak live on camera? You’ll simply have to watch the stream live on Saturday, April 19th at 3:00 PM Pacific on www.mlg.tv/kingofthecourt to find out, especially if you’re upset that your favorite NBA team didn’t make the playoffs.
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