"Day 0" is Underway

It is now evening on "Day 0" in Denver—the Live Wildcard Qualifier round.

Here's a quick rundown on events so far:

• Wildcard action has proceeded throughout the day. So far, there are at least 15 entrants with 11 submitted scores. Jeremy Young leads with 571,000. The top 10 from today will join the 10 online pre-qualifiers tomorrow, where they will converge with the Top 12 into the final 32-player Kong Off 3 field.
• Mitchell Elliott and Hank Chien had their second-annual "Burrito Off" (which was filmed for Vibe Magazine). Hank is your new reigning Burrito Off champion! More on Vibe's coverage (which is still a work-in-progress) will come later.
• Billy Mitchell, Steve Wiebe, and Dean Saglio did not arrive in time for machine selection at 5:00 and have forfeited their picks. Dean arrived recently, and the remainder of the Top 12 has been on hand throughout the day. No word on when Billy and Steve will show.
• The 1up has been swarming with media. There are, or have been, crews here from Vibe Magazine, The Verge, the Denver Post, other local papers, and indie publications and filmmakers. Not bad for the day before the real action begins!
• Daniel Desjardins, Corey Chambers, and Robbie Lakeman have already put up monster scores. Dan took down his first kill screen with 905,000, Chambers upped his personal best to 1,018,000 and Lakeman managed an astonishing 1,070,400... which almost beats Dean Saglio's second place Kong Off 2 score last year. And the event hasn't even started yet! The feeling around the 1up is that the world record will go down this weekend. I am inclined to agree. Dean, Ross, Jeff, Vincent and the champ himself all have a great shot at it.

I myself have been having a smashing time. Very little gameplay yet, as I want to be fresh for the battle tomorrow.

A special thanks to our awesome tech crew, including Jeff Harrist, Ken House and others, who are bringing the streams to you live on Twitch TV at: twitch.tv/kongoff
twitch.tv/kongoff1
twitch.tv/kongoff2
twitch.tv/kongoff3.

Thanks as well to Richie Knucklez and Jourdan Adler, the guys who made it all happen.