Tournament:EVO 2014

Evolution 2014, or simply EVO 2014, was the 13th edition of the Evolution Championship Series, a fighting game tournament held in Las Vegas, Nevada, from July 11th to 13th, 2014 at the. The tournament featured Super Smash Bros. Melee on its official game lineup, but also hosted a side event for Project M on its "Bring Your Own Console" (BYOC) area. It was the 4th time EVO featured a Smash game and broke the record for the largest Smash tournament at the time, with 970 entrants for Melee.

EVO 2014 notably featured Nintendo, the publisher for the  series, as a sponsor, with a speech given by Reggie Fils-Aimé, President of Nintendo of America; this was in stark contrast to Nintendo's attempt to shut down Melee at EVO 2013 a year earlier. In addition, was presented the Cannon Award in his honor for his service to the Smash community.

Before Top 8 for Melee began at EVO, Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aimé wished the remaining professional smashers good luck in a YouTube video, thanking them (as well as all other Melee participants) for their dedication to the Super Smash Bros. series and their participation in the Super Smash Bros. Invitational.

Official Game Lineup
The official game lineup for EVO 2014 was announced on Frebuary 6th, by Joey Cuellar, EVO's tournament director, during iPlayWinner's live podcast, "The Fray!". Although Melee was intended to be included from the start, it wasn't officially confirmed on the lineup until March, due to a pending agreement with Nintendo regarding the approval for use of the IP at the event. After an agreement was reached with EVO, Nintendo was listed as one of the event's sponsors, but no cash bonus was added to the pot, awarding the top 8 winners only with the base pot, accumulated from a $10 entrance fee for the game.

Ruleset

 * Items are set to off and none. Pause disabled
 * 4 stocks and 8 minute time limit.
 * 2/3 games; 3/5 for Winner's, Loser's, and Grand Finals
 * Wobbling is allowed. The freeze glitch and infinite stalling are banned however.
 * First stage is decided by banning from the Starter Stages in P1-P2-P2-P1 order.
 * Winning player is not locked into the same character for the next match, but has to pick before loser selects character.
 * In a Best of 3 match, a player can ban 1 stage upon winning a game. In a Best of 5 match however, there are no stage bans.
 * Maximum allowed time between games is 60 seconds. Any player violating this rule will be issued a loss.
 * Dave's Stupid Rule: A player cannot counterpick the last stage they won on unless mutually agreed to by both players.

Super Smash Bros. Melee singles
(970 entrants) Full bracket Grand Finals

Super Smash Bros. Melee doubles
(72 teams) Bracket Grand Finals (part 1) Grand Finals (part 2)

Project M singles
(62 entrants) Bracket Grand Finals

Notable matches
EVO 2014 included some of the strongest performances for and  in a national tournament. They faced off in losers' top 8, splitting the first two matches with two-stock wins. In the final match, Axe counterpicked Fountain of Dreams, where he four-stocked Silent Wolf in 56 seconds, proceeding to losers' quarters.

Trivia

 * This is one of only 2 tournaments where the places 1st to 5th were all taken by the Five Gods (outside of, who also placed 5th), the other being.
 * also had the Five Gods place Top 6, although placed 2nd.
 * This was the last EVO tournament Armada attended in which he didn't make it to Grand Finals.