30/10/2014 - EVO Tournament (follow up from E-sports article a few days ago)

• The other day I was rambling on about tournaments I really care about in videogames but there is one big annual tournament that actually relates to our game that ours could see play in, EVO the biggest fighting game tournament.
• The Evolution Championship Series is an annual esports event that focuses exclusively on fighting games. In fighting game communities it is commonly referred to as "EVO" or just "Evo". The tournament uses the double elimination format.As with Super Battle Opera, the Evolution tournaments are well known and typically contestants will travel from all over the world to participate, most notably from Japan.
• Evo was founded by Tom Cannon, also known for his work on Shoryuken.com, a fighting game website. The tournament started as "Battle by the Bay", a 40-man Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter Alpha 2 tournament in 1996 in Sunnyvale, California, eventually moving to its recurring venue in Las Vegas. The event changed its name to Evo in 2002. Over time, the tournament grew, recording over one thousand participants in 2009.
• Originally the tournament used arcade cabinets, but in 2004 the decision was made to move all games over to their console versions, to no small amount of controversy. During the transition to games on the seventh generation consoles, most games were played on a PlayStation 3,though Evo 2014 ran most games on the Xbox 360. Aside from the official tournaments, there is also a "BYOC" (bring your own console) area in which many different games are played and side tournaments are held.

• Evo 2004 was also the birthplace of "Evo Moment #37", in which Daigo Umehara (playing as Ken), while facing Justin Wong (using Chun-Li), was successfully able to parry one of Chun-Li’s super moves while having very little health left and then counter with his own, winning the round and eventually the match as a result.