This year, the game took about two hours. Last year, it took four. People were getting eliminated kind of quick in the early rounds. After it got to the fourth round, things really got interesting. You’d hear the crowd like “ooooohhh” whenever they would announce the next match-ups like Jamie Thomas vs. Eric Koston, PJ Ladd vs. Kenny Anderson, and other crazy match-ups like that.

AJ Burnett, winner of the game in Tampa, first won the am game earlier in the morning. He beat out 13 other people that were all winners from games held all over the country over the last few months. He also earned himself a spot in the pro game and did pretty good. He first eliminated Jeremy Holmes. Then he took out Stefan Janoski. The karate kid looking score board thing shows that Rodrigo Tx took out AJ, but I’m pretty sure it was Chris Haslam that took him out where he got his last letter on a pop shuv late shuv.

The last few skaters left were Chris Haslam who beat AJ Burnett, PJ Ladd who eliminated Bastian Salabanzi, and Eric Koston who took out Jamie Thomas. Chris Haslam was serving up letters with crazy tricks like 360 flip late flips. In the second to final round against Koston, Chris started out with a nollie laser flip that gave Koston an “S.”

In the final round, it was PJ Ladd against Eric Koston. Right before it started, I bet Ryan Clements $20 that it would be Koston who would win because his bag of tricks spans two decades. I should have known PJ could do any old school trick he wanted like ollie impossibles and tricky stuff like nollie half flip kick back gimmicks.

PJ Ladd did a switch big heel to open up, which Koston made. Koston doesn’t like hard flips. PJ Ladd threw one out that Koston matched. Then he gave Koston his first letter with a switch frontside heelflip 360. Koston did something else to give PJ an S, but I can’t remember what it was. After that, PJ gave Koston a “K” with a half cab double flip. Koston then missed a big flip to get an “A.” After that, he bailed a nollie half cab heel to get a “T” and finally got his last letter on a nollie half cab flip. So PJ Ladd wins $10,000 and Ryan Clements wins $20, and that’s what went down at the eS Game of SKATE today.

Rob