Competitive Play

Competitive play occurs when two parties engage in a match with the victor being awarded a commonly desired good. Unlike the case with professional competitive sports, in JKA those goods rarely if ever include set material rewards like money prizes and are mostly centered around social goods like status, prestige and respect. The primary goal of competitive play in JKA is therefore the testing of one's merit and skills as a player or team against those of other competitors. The competitive event can take on various forms in various gametypes and although competition in CTF has a very strong tradition in JKA, it most often happens in the context of two parties engaging in some form of saber combat. In all cases, competitive play flourishes the most when situated within a larger organizational structure, like a formal league or reliable ranking system.

Competitive sabering has had the most powerful legacy within the game. It is almost exclusively played without pickups and without force powers, and is governed by a codified set of rules agreed upon by all the players.

Rulesets can vary widely across events, but the two most common for duels are: The American standard of playing a match where the victor is determined by the player that first scores 10 points, with each point being awarded for a successful kill, and the health of both players resetting after each point. The European ESL standard where the victor of a given duel is determined by the player who either first scores 10 points or who ends up with the most points after a 10 minutes timelimit, and where the player scoring a point continues on with the amount of health and shields that he had left over from the fight.

Team Free For All matches are most often held across two rounds with either a specified fraglimit, timelimit or both, and the winner is almost always determined by counting up the scores of both rounds together and awarding the team with the highest score. The most prestigious form of TFFA competition is the 3on3 or 4on4 format, but 2on2 matches were not only widely popular, but also quite acclaimed as well.

Although serious competition is possible on heavily modded servers, it most often takes place on basejka or on mods that strictly preserve the original sabering environment as much as possible. The reasoning for this insistence on unmodded servers is that the point of competitive play is to determine the better player simpliciter, that is without any qualification, whereas playing on mods like JA+ that significantly change the sabering system just adds such a qualification. Nevertheless, the main reasons as to why competitive play never took off within communities favouring modded servers were on the one hand the lack of a central organizational structure, like a proper league, and on the other hand the lack of interest towards competitive play in general by players that frequent modded servers.

History

The history of competitive play is a cross between the history of formal competitive venues in general and the history of great clans and players in particular. For a variety of reasons, the early history of competitive play in JKA features little interaction between the American and European communities. This is primarily due to two factors: First, the fact that both sides had their own specialized competitive organzations, providing them with ample opportunity for formal means of competitive play, and secondly, the way internet latency heavily affects gameplay in JKA was a demotivating factor for both sides.

The Big Four Hypothesis

The history of competitive sabering has shown that the amount of clans that truly deserve to be called great can be reduced to four. There has been a number of successful but short-lived clans, and sometimes the success of other clans was due to refusing to play the bigger fish on the ladder. Therefore, what determines the greatness of a given clan is due to its consistent and long lasting success against every clan in the world, including the ones with the highest level of skill. This kind of consistency has only been seen in four clans: starAiming, no.Limits, Ozone and aXiom.

The striking difference between those clans and other top teams in the world can be made apparently by taking a closer look at how they did playing against the Big Four. For example, clan TuA is widely considered to be one of the best competitive clans ever conceived, harboring many excellent players like Hell Raiser, and TuA has not shunned away from challenging the Big Four many times over a timespan of roughly four years. They played *aiming 6 times - lost all of the games. They played aXiom 5 times and have yet to win a single match, and they played nL 6 times, losing 5 out of 6 games. And yet again, it doesn't look any better for other top clans: 333's record against Ozone is one loss, zero wins; against *aiming it's one loss, zero wins too, and against no.Limits it's 4 losses and 3 wins. The top German clan corona has a record against no.Limits of 5 losses and 1 win, against Ozone it's 2 losses and no wins, against *aiming it's 9 losses and 7 wins and they drew against aXiom with 2 losses and 2 wins.

Ontop of that, the Big Four were tightly knit invite-only clans that rarely accepted new members and rarely had anyone leave their clans for other team - unlike the case with many other top teams like corona or TuA. So the Big Four was an elite group, harboring not only the very best JKA players in existence, but also staying far above the rest of the competitive world in terms of sheer skill. Everyone knew that when a clan of the Big Four played another Big Four member, the resulting games would be stuff of legend. But how well did the four clans do against one another?

Team no.Limits joined the ESL ladder in mid 2005 and left it in late 2007. After a year long break from competitive play, they rejoined the ladder in late 2008 and stayed for another year till August 2009, when they finally retired. In that time, no.Limits played *aiming on many occasions, starting as early as August 2005, where they won both rounds with scores of 58-41 and 62-59. Although no.Limits would go on to win their next encounter as well, their win-loss ratio evened out in 2006, where victories would alternate between the two teams. Their final match would take place in January 2007 in the finals of the ESL New Year's Cup and would see no.Limits lose the first round 27-35 and a win the second one 53-41, winning the entire match with a score of 80-76.

Clan *aiming would turn out to be the team with the greatest consistency and staying power. They were one of earliest

Chronological Order of Matches

18-02-04	aXiom	*aiming	2v2	62 - 44
13-04-04	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	44 - 32
14-11-04	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	32 - 10
14-06-05	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	129 - 128
23-06-05	aXiom	no.Limits	TDM	166 - 134
29-06-05	Ozone	*aiming	2v2	23 - 27
03-08-05	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	120 - 100
11-09-05	Ozone	aXiom	2v2	27 - 23
11-09-05	Ozone	*aiming	2v2	40 - 16
12-09-05	Ozone	*aiming	TDM	130 - 111
18-09-05	Ozone	no.Limits	TDM	72 - 64
19-10-05	Ozone	aXiom	2v2	7 - 10
26-10-05	Ozone	aXiom	TDM	126 - 94
05-03-06	Ozone	no.Limits	TDM	92 - 94
28-03-06	Ozone	no.Limits	2v2	28 - 27
07-04-06	Ozone	no.Limits	TDM	109 - 101
14-05-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	116 - 110
18-06-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	77 - 96
10-09-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	105 - 93
16-11-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	69 - 76
20-01-07	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	80 - 76
25-03-07	Zedi (o3)	*aiming	TDM	103 - 85
05-08-07	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	59 - 72
14-10-07	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	78 - 69
14-08-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	90 - 65
24-08-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	59 - 56
28-10-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	68 - 64
14-12-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	50 - 57

teams to sign up for the ESL, namely on 21.10.2003, shortly after the ESL made available ladders dedicated to JKA, and would stay on the ladder, playing at various levels of activity, until March 2009. Unlike the other teams of the Big Four, *aiming never reformed their main team or abstained from playing on the ladder for longer periods of time. Their 2v2 team, consisting of *aiming.dev and *aiming.syLezz, was one of the most successful teams in the history of JKA and they were the first ones to beat Ozone's famous players Osiris and inSane in an official ESL match on 29.06.2005. Ozone would take its revenge a few months later, beating *aiming both in 2v2 as well as TDM before they took their sights on team no.Limits. Ozone's core players Dark and Ven would later on, teaming up with JS' Grizzli under the guise of zedi, take on *aiming one more time in March 2007 and winning with a score of 41-31 and 62-54.

Ozone was peculiar in many ways. They had shortest longevity of any of the Big Four, staying only from 25.08.2005 to 27.10.2006 on the ladder and partially reforming as zedi in 2007 - the vast majority of zedi games in 2007 were played by Ozone's previous core players Dark, Ven, Osiris and either one of the previous Jedi Sentinel players Minneyar and Grizzli. So even if drawing a continuity from Ozone to Zedi were permitted, the clan only remained actively participating in the ESL for roughly two years - compared to *aiming's six years. In that time, however, Ozone achieved more than any other clan in the history of JKA.

As previously mentioned, Ozone set their sight on no.Limits after their 2v2 and TDM victories against *aiming, and they successfully beat the top team in an incredibly tense match with the scores 36-36 and 36-28. They would go on to lose to no.Limits twice in early 2006, but win a victory shortly after in one of Ozone's final matches with a score of 52-50 and 57-51. Most notably, however, would be the fact that Ozone effectively dethroned aXiom as the world's best team in both 2v2 as well as TDM, tying with aXiom's 2v2 team 1-1 in matches and defeating them in one of the most famous TDM matches in JKA history with a score of 57-36 and 69-55.

Before that famous loss against Ozone encouraged aXiom to take a break, they had already defeated no.Limits with a score of 75-61 and 91-73 in the only match that would ever take place between the two clans. They had also defeated *aiming three times in TDM and once in 2v2 by that point. After aXiom returned from their break in July 2007 and rejoined the ladders, they lost their first match against *aiming in August, but went on to play the team five more times, losing only once at the very end of their career in December 2008.

From a chronological point of view, certain areas of dominance become apparent: Team aXiom was incredibly successful early on from around 2004 to 2005 and then once more in 2007 and 2008. They were unfortunately almost entirely absent in the critical time period of late 2005 to early 2006 when Ozone was at its best. Whereas no.Limits and *aiming remained powerful throughout, both clans became the dominant force in JKA after Ozone had become inactive in mid 2006.

In terms of the overall amount of matches won against members of the Big Four, aXiom is the clear winner with an overall score of 10-4. However, they owe 8 out of their 10 wins to *aiming, against whom they maintain an 8-2 record. Considering how often aXiom played against *aiming, one therefore has to take the overall scores with a grain of salt: If it were not for *aiming, aXiom's record against the Big Four would be at a meager 2-2. Ozone takes the second spot in

Total Score in Matches

aXiom	8 - 2	*aiming
Ozone	2 - 2	no.Limits
Ozone	3 - 1	*aiming
no.Limits	0 - 1	aXiom
*aiming	2 - 4	no.Limits
Ozone	2 - 1	aXiom

terms of win ratios: They draw against no.Limits with a score of 2-2, beat aXiom 2-1 and *aiming 3-1 for an overall record of 7-4. Team no.Limits comes in third with an overall record of 6 wins and 5 losses against the Big Four. However, if one were to remove *aiming from the equation, the rankings would look rather different: Ozone would secure first place with a score of 4-3, aXiom would be tied 2-2 and no.Limits would remain third with a score of 3-4.

As for the total amount of wins on the ladder: aXiom once again takes the lead with a record of 114 wins and 13 losses over a time period of 37 months. It is interesting to point out that no.Limits played almost exactly the same amount of matches as aXiom did, with a record of 104 wins and 19 losses, but they only stayed in the ladder for 26 months in total - almost a year less than aXiom did. They were thus generally more active than aXiom, but still far below the peak activity of Ozone, which managed to score 64 wins to 6 losses over a period of just 18 months.

Although *aiming seems to be an outlier in every regard, it is important to note that this clan more than any of the other Big Four aspired to play almost exclusively good teams and oftentimes ignored challenges of lesser ones. *aiming is the team with by far the most overall games played against the Big Four, namely 20 in comparison to aXiom's 14, Ozone's and no.Limit's 11. It is also the team that played the most clans that were ranked top 10 or higher on the ESL ladder, with 89 of their 103 matches being against the top10 of the ladder (86%), while the next Big Four on the list would be no.Limits with only 76 out of their 123 played against the top10 (75%). Coupled with the fact that *aiming never retired their team, it is safe to say that they have the longest tradition of exceptional play and great achievements.

	Games	Big Four	Ladder	vs Top 10	Months in Ladder
aXiom	127	10 - 4 (71%)	114 – 13 (90%)	87 (69%)	37
Ozone	70	7 - 4 (64%)	64 - 6 (91%)	35 (50%)	18
no.Limits	123	6 - 5 (55%)	104 – 19 (85%)	76 (75%)	26
*aiming	103	5 - 15 (25%)	69 - 34 (67%)	89 (86%)	65

A Big Five?

But are there really no other candidates for the best and most successful clans in the history of JKA outside of the Big Four? Considering that part of the competitive community widely acknowledges zedi to have had the strongest and most successful lineup of all time, it seems curious as to why zedi would not count as a member of the Big Four, making it a Big Five.

There are multiple good reasons for this: For one, zedi did not have the staying power of the other dominant clans in JKA. They were founded in January 2004 by Hybrid and Sleepy and disbanded officially in October the same year, although they did go on to play a few additional games until January 2005 - but even if we count the 3 months after the dissolution of the clan, it is still just merely a year. But that is not the main issue plaguing zedi.

Although nobody disputes their victories over top clans RNX and BBQ in early 2004, there is a controversy surround zedi's overall achievements. Back in October 2004, their results page distinguished their official, wireplay and clanbase ladder matches from 'friendly' matches, with the vast majority of them being termed 'friendly'. Even back then a lot of teams complained that zedi were publishing results of unofficial scrims or practice matches on their page. The allegations reached their highpoint when zedi shut down its website in early 2005 and replaced it with a score table that did not discriminate between 'friendly' and official matches anymore. In fact, zedi was called out on the ESL forums about those matters, but did not comment.

In fact, zedi knew exactly about the ESL league and the prowess of some of their teams in late 2004, but decided not to participate or even back up their claims of greatness by challenging said teams outside of the ESL to official matches, even though they had perfectly good reasons to do so, especially in light of the controversy surrounding their achievements. Nobody would be in a position to dispute their skill if they had played other teams in official matches. However, zedi never took it upon itself to prove once and for all that they belong amongst the greats: In fact, zedi´Dimension would go on to lose an official ESL 1v1 against Dureal in December 2004 with a score of 8-6 and 8-2, and neither their unofficial 2v2 team nor their 1v1 players were doing very well on the ladders. In light of that, zedi does not qualify for the Big Four.

Team America

The Big Four consist solely of European teams, but what about the other side of the continent? Even though Wovian expanded very late into the European scene and officially challenged both Ozone and aXiom in early 2005, winning against the former and losing against the latter, they basically stopped existing in May 2005. But what about the most successful of the American teams: Number 2?

Although Number 2 did beat a variety of top teams for their time, their overall TDM ladder record is not very impressive: 21 wins and 17 losses over a period of 6 months. They also do not boast a very high win rate against the Big Four, losing 3-1 to Ozone, 4-1 to no.Limits and drawing *aiming 1-1, with no games played against aXiom. So they have neither the staying power nor the success required to be counted amongst the greats. However, what if we take the American JKA scene as a whole? Could a potential Team America, spanning the highpoints of Wovian, Number 2, Dynamite and Sin rival the greatness of any of the Big Four?

Team Dynamite had a ladder record of 21 wins and 6 losses over 17 months, drew no.Limits in September 2006 with a score of 51-34 and 26-39, and was tied with *aiming in matches with a score of 1-1. Sin was active for a period of 8 months, although they idled on the ladder for almost a year, and left the ladder with a record of 27 wins and 7 losses, losing to zedi (Ozone) once, overcoming *aiming 1-0 and loing to no.Limits 0-1.

In total, a potential Team America would be at a 33% win percentage against the Big Four with a score of 6-12. Their teams actively participated on the ladder for a total of 31 months with a final ladder score of 69 wins and 28 losses (71%), with 70 of their 97 games (72%) being played against teams ranked 10 or higher. If one compares that to the statistics of the Big Four, Team America does indeed better than *aiming. This is made especially pertinent by the fact that Team America even has a positive overall match score against *aiming: namely 3 wins and 2 losses.

So if one were to be so inclined as to take the achievements of all the best and most successful American teams and put them together to form one grand continental team to pitch against the Big Four, then such a potential Team America would indeed just barely exceed *aiming as a member of the Big Four - turning it into a Big Five.

Notable Games

Chronological Order of Matches

18-02-04	aXiom	*aiming	2v2	62 - 44
13-04-04	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	44 - 32
14-11-04	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	32 - 10
14-06-05	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	129 - 128
23-06-05	aXiom	no.Limits	TDM	166 - 134
29-06-05	Ozone	*aiming	2v2	23 - 27
03-08-05	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	120 - 100
11-09-05	Ozone	aXiom	2v2	27 - 23
11-09-05	Ozone	*aiming	2v2	40 - 16
12-09-05	Ozone	*aiming	TDM	130 - 111
18-09-05	Ozone	no.Limits	TDM	72 - 64
19-10-05	Ozone	aXiom	2v2	7 - 10
26-10-05	Ozone	aXiom	TDM	126 - 94
05-03-06	Ozone	no.Limits	TDM	92 - 94
28-03-06	Ozone	no.Limits	2v2	28 - 27 (ELO)
07-04-06	Ozone	no.Limits	TDM	109 - 101
14-05-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	116 - 110
18-06-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	77 - 96
10-09-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	105 - 93
16-11-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	69 - 76
20-01-07	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	80 - 76
05-08-07	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	59 - 72
14-10-07	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	78 - 69
14-08-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	90 - 65
24-08-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	59 - 56
28-10-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	68 - 64
14-12-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	50 - 57

Total Score in Matches

aXiom	8 - 2	*aiming
Ozone	2 - 2	no.Limits
Ozone	3 - 1	*aiming
no.Limits	0 - 1	aXiom
*aiming	2 - 4	no.Limits
Ozone	2 - 1	aXiom

	Games	Big Four	Ladder	Months in Ladder
aXiom	127	10 - 4 (71%)	114 – 13 (90%)	37
Ozone	70	7 - 4 (64%)	64 - 6 (64%)	14
no.Limits	123	6 - 5 (55%)	104 – 19 (85%)	26
*aiming	103	5 - 15 (25%)	69 - 34 (67%)	65