At The Brooklyn Beatdown, a Street Fighter V tournament taking place during ESL One in New York, top players are battling it out over a massive $75,000 prize pool.
Tucked away in a small gymnasium under the massive Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament above in the Barclays Center, the relatively small 256-player tournament has attracted some of the best players in the world. With such a small competitor count, every pool is stacked with a few top players, making this one of the most top-heavy Street Fighter tournaments to date.
Due to the massive prize pool and abundance of top talent, ESL One has become a mini-Evolution Championship Series, i.e., the year's largest and most prestigious fighting game tournament. "All the top talent is here, so I'm pretty excited to see how it turns out," said Team Liquid's Du "NuckleDu" Dang. Much of Asia's top talent has flown out as well, including Evolution 2016 Champion Lee "RZR Infiltration" Seon-Woo and Red Bull's Daigo "The Beast" Umehara.
"The pools are so stacked," said Flipside Tactics' Antoine "F3 Alucard" Ortiz. "It's just like, 'Man, like we could have accepted more players so the pools wouldn't have to be this dreadful.'" Considering how small the gymnasium-turned-venue is, NuckleDu said, "I think it got capped because it was probably a fire hazard."
While Street Fighter is completely new to ESL One, it's still odd that such an elite tournament is taking place in such a small space. But legendary fighting game player Justin "JWong" Wong from Evil Geniuses is not deterred. "If you think about it, we have to earn our right to be on the stage," said Wong. "We can't be entitled to play in the arena if we can't prove we deserve to be in the arena."
That doesn't mean that the Street Fighter tournament will stay in its cozy digs for the whole event, as the Grand Finals will take place on the main stage Sunday after the CS:GO semi-finals.
As for the tournament itself, Americans are worried most about their Asian competition. Because chances to battle Asian players are limited for Americans, it can be hard to adapt mid-tournament. "American plays a bit too offensive, [while] Japan is more footsie-based," said F3 Alucard. "They make much better decisions in clutch [situations] ... and they like to play with minimal mistakes.
But the biggest topic of discussion by far has been the tournament schedule. At most fighting game tournaments, Saturday goes through the top 16 and top eight is reserved for Sunday. That is not the case for ESL One. On Saturday, Street Fighter played all the way through semifinals, reserving grand finals for Sunday on the main stage. With all the top players having suffered through an intense travel schedule to attend, running through essentially an entire tournament in one day is tiring. "Since I have to place today, I have to bring out the last ounce of strength I have to make sure I do really well," said Jwong.
With a packed tournament schedule and so much on the line, The Brooklyn Beatdown is attracting intense scrutiny in the Street Fighter community as December's Capcom Cup championship looms.