Here’s an interesting bit of news coming from the GearsCON group.  They announced a partnership with GameDunzo that will essentially establish a more organized, “competitive” atmosphere to GCON community.  They have plans to start running daily tournaments starting August 6th as well as other LAN-based events in the future.  The August 6th date will also feature a premiere 8 team tournament with some of the Professional Gears of War teams.  The event will be livestreamed on http://www.gearscon.com/watchlive at 6PM EST — I am not aware of the teams participating in the event.

It’s obvious that the GCON community is doing everything they can to prepare for upcoming Gears of War 3 title.  The game is creating all types of hype and hysteria and I’m looking forward to what @GEARSCON has in store!  Check out the full press release after the jump.

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I’m a big fan of statistics. During some of our early tournaments I was known as the guy who brought a clipboard and notebook with him to events and would take down the stats after each map we played. I felt that we could use these stats – which I had broken down by map and player – to improve our chances of winning. The metrics I tracked were the same which the game presents during a match:

After an event I’d spend the couple hours waiting for my flight back home compiling the numbers to see how we did individually and which maps gave us the most issues. I did this a couple major events before I came to a conclusion: You can’t really determine anything from looking at these stats in Gears of War.

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As promised, Razer is coming through in a major way and has provided two Chimaera Headsets to giveaway!  The first Chimaera giveaway will run from now until Tuesday, August 2nd at 11:59pm.  This giveaway is for the standard Razer Chimaera Wireless headset. Each person will be granted two “entries” into the giveaway drawing by completing the following tasks:

1.  Like the Razer Facebook Page and Leave the Comment “arCtiC Sent Me”

2. Leave a comment on the YouTube video above with your Major League Gaming Anaheim Predictions for

I’ve been waiting on more news from Kanye West and Jay-Z’s, Watch the Throne LP.  The official release of the album, according to a Press Release, has changed to August 8th for digital download on iTunes while the actual album will hit store shelves August 8th – 12th.  The Throne (what they’re calling themselves) has also announced tour dates for the fall to enhance the magnitude of the album’s release.  I’m expecting this to be an insanely popular tour and I’ll probably get to one of the ones here in Texas — either Dallas or Houston.

Tickets go on sale August 8th, however pre-sale tickets will be available on Thursday here: Promoter Live Nation.  Purchasing one of the pre-sale tickets will also grant you a free copy of the digital album.  Tour dates and a 10-minute documentary on the duo’s project are listed below:

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To be clear I do not believe anyone is being “victimized” here — it’s a game folks.  I’ve seen some very disturbing responses directed towards Epic around the net in regards to a change that hasn’t been properly tested.  I know, I know everyone hates change. Facebook changes – people yell and scream.   Twitter changes – people yell…you get the picture.  With this article, I am simply presenting information and my opinions on how this rule will affect gameplay.  I am approaching this new rule with an open mind and hope that everyone else does the  same — give it an opportunity.

There has been quite a bit of speculation the last week or so as to how the new stalemate rule will affect the outcome of the Execution and Warzone gametypes on Gears of War 3.   This past weekend @skyzyn and I discussed some of pros and cons of the new stalemate rule going into effect on Gears of War 3.  For those unfamiliar with the “Man Up” rule:

The team with more remaining players on the team, at the end of a round, is declared the winner.

Example:

In both Part 1 and Part 2 of our dual commentary, we provide our thoughts on how it would affect Public/Ranked and Private match players.  Part 1 (featured video above) focuses a bit more on some of the factors that play into competitive play while Part 2 is more for the Public/Ranked players.

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Hooray! YouTube has launched an experimental new layout experience named Cosmic Panda. Cosmic Panda employs several redesigns that alters what we’ve accustomed ourselves to with the traditional YouTube layout. The newest iteration has much to offer, so I want to lightly touch on some of the changes in this Cosmic Panda preview.

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From my understanding, the highly anticipated Dark Knight Rises movie “trailer” (if you want to call it that) is being shown in the new Harry Potter previews.  The video above seems to confirm that notion — I wouldn’t know because I despise Harry Potter.  Nonetheless this trailer seems to align with the poster artwork that was recently released.  Summer 2012 can’t come soon enough!