While waiting for the third A1 Gaming Weekend cup to start, we decided to get in touch with the team that will help us organize the tournament and introduce their community to all of you following us. Just as the FBC, the PESExpert guys are constantly helping the players in our region with organizing a big number of tournaments and helping them in the development of their careers. I contacted Kule from PESExpert who was happy to answer my questions and make his community known to even more people.

Hello, Kule, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Could you introduce the PES Expert community to the broader public? How long have you been developing the PES scene in our region?

The PESExpert community exists for over 10 years now, since 2010 – Playstation 3. It was at that time that the founders saw that Croatia has a lot of players that play the best soccer simulation, PES. Since that moment, a lot has changed, we switched to PS4, there were good and bad editions of PES, but the number of members and followers kept increasing constantly. In 2019, PESExpert split into two groups, with the first (12.igrač) focusing on Full Manual, Master League, and the casual side of the player base. Our community (PESExpert) consists of 15 leagues and over 300 players, some of which are between one of the best in Europe, and we can say that we are more focused on developing the quality of the overall scene. Players from all nationalities are welcomed here and we can proudly say that we are successfully working with members from Serbia, BiH, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Macedonia.

What are some tournaments that you organized in the past? Tell us about the PES Expert 1v1 & 2v2 tournament that boasts a 10.000€ prize pool.

From the bigger tournaments, we have organized the “Lumici Centar” tournament in Varaždin, with 80 players playing 1v1, we organized the Reboot 1v1 & 2v2 tournament with 70 players and we worked with Caffe Boeing, where we managed to organize two cups with a total of 90 players.

Our biggest project to date is happening on the 12th of September in Velika Gorica, the sports center Panadić to be exact. The tournament will have 256 players for the 1v1 part, and 64 2v2 duos. Players are showing massive interest in the tournament, mainly because of its €10.000 prize pool, which is the minimal prize pool and is likely to go up. Except for the main tournament, there will be a theme park for kids and adults and a 3v3 bubble football.

How developed is the PES community in the Adriatic region? Do you see this A1 Gaming Weekend tournament as a chance to even further help the players in their competitive careers? Are you looking forward to a great turn out from the players?

The PES community in our region is really big, with over 20.000 active players, we have Serbia that has the biggest number of players and they are really investing into esports with prizes and also bringing the scene closer to the mainstream media with a lot of leagues. We see this tournament [A1 Gaming Weekend] as a chance to show the people just how many players there are in the region that play PES and that it is really worth it. We also hope that people will recognize our organizational abilities and this project will help the PESExpert staff with further projects.

Do you prefer the LAN competition to the online format we have now because of the worldwide pandemic? Are you looking back to going back to LAN?

Online and offline competitions have a lot of differences, for example, when playing tournaments online, not everyone has a connection of the same quality, and that with the delays from the different TV-s can often be a disadvantage for one of the players. Those problems are nullified in offline competitions and the only things that matter are the mechanical and mental quality and capability of the player and that is why playing on LAN is much more popular in showing the real skill of the player.