Yellowknife (Dec 24/04) - All the lunch hours Ryan Moss spent playing Counterstrike at Frostbyte Cafe over the past few months have paid off.

Ryan, 14, and his brother Trevor, 20, won the first Counterstrike tournament at the Cafe last Sunday.

The Moss brothers took home $200 for blowing away the other nine teams.

They usually play against each other, but for the tournament they decided to work together as a team.

"We had strategies for each map and level," said Ryan Moss.

Moss said he and Trevor were pretty far ahead of the other team in the last match.

Second prize went to the team of Corey Halliwell and Les Girroir. They won $50.

Both prize winning teams also received a few free hours of gaming time.

If there were a prize for the team that travelled the farthest, that would have to go to a couple of guys from Lutsel K'e who came in to town to play in the tournament.

Co-owner Marcel Charland said the pair lamented the sorry state of online gaming in the communities.

"They've only got 56k modems there," said Charland.

There were two people on each team and teams played 24 games each round. A team had to win at least 13 games to win a round.

Each team would play 12 games as counter terrorists and the other 12 as terrorists.

The tournament started at noon and wrapped up around 7 p.m. Charland said the Cafe was packed with gamers and their friends who came to watch.

In Counterstrike, the play rotates through a series of maps, including a desert compound, a manor house, an office building and aztec ruins.

On some levels, the goal for the counter terrorists is to prevent the terrorists from planting a bomb within a certain period of time, or if the bomb gets planted, to defuse it before it explodes. On other levels the counter terrorists have to find and rescue hostages being guarded by the terrorists.

A game ends when the objective is met, or when all the members of one team have been killed.

Ryan Moss said playing the aztec level as a counter terrorist, defending the site from terrorists trying to bomb it, is one of his favourites.

World of Warcraft, an online role playing game, is another popular choice right now at the Cafe. In World of Warcraft you design your own character and go on quests for one of two sides, the Alliance or the Horde.

The guys at Frostbyte Cafe are planning a second tournament for early in the new year.