Pan American Games 2023: Esport is ‘out of the ordinary’ experience – Persaud

In what was a first for the Pan American Games being hosted in Santiago, Chile this year, the discipline of Esport got underway on Thursday morning.
Guyana is being represented in the Esport arena by lone competitor Ronnie Persaud, who is accompanied at the Games by Manager/Coach Shoaib Juman-Yassin. In his first outing on Thursday, Persaud picked up an opening win in eFootball.
In a best-of-3 games format, Persaud defeated his Venezuelan opponent on account of penalties in their first game, after regulation time ended with the game being drawn 1-1. Persaud wrapped up the overall victory with a whopping 9-0 win in the second game.
Guyana was drawn in Group C of the competition with Venezuela, Panama and Puerto Rico. Following the victory against Venezuela, Persaud went down to Puerto Rico, winning one of the 3 games in the set.
Persaud has described the Pan American Games experience as a good one; up-and-coming gamers should aspire to have this experience, he opined.

“The experience here in Chile, the first Pan Am Games, it’s quite an amazing experience. It’s out of the ordinary, to be honest. You know, back home in Guyana, we would host tournaments, and it would be very small because the gaming community in Guyana is not as big, but this is an amazing experience and exposure for the young gamers that are coming up,” Persaud shared.
In a word to up-and-coming gamers, he added, “Hope you guys can see this as an opportunity, if you want to be like a professional gamer. You know, if you like video games in general and you’re competitive, this is definitely a route for Esports. And it’s not only eFootball, there’s other games such as Mortal Kombat, fighting games, and I think the list will grow,” he said.
“Most of our players in Guyana, we play FIFA. I’m a FIFA player, but, you know, I jumped into something new. It’s a new hobby, I try to play when I get time, but that’s the experience so far,” he disclosed.
Quizzed about his expectations for the tournament, the Guyanese underscored that it’s just about bringing exposure to the country.
“To be honest, to try and win as much as possible and bring exposure to Guyana, because Guyana is new to Esports. This is my second year, last year was Paraguay, the Asuncion Games, and this year it’s Chile. So, it’s very new to Guyana,” Persaud said about his expectation for the tournament.
The first-place finisher in each group of the competition will move on to the next round, while the second-place finishers will have another chance to play in order to stay alive in the competition.