ESL Major Series starts today
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19 Mar 2008, 18:35
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News
After the signups for Enemy Territory's ESL Major Series closed on Monday evening, we are happy to present you today all qualifiers, seedings and the schedule for Qualification Round #1. It's time to start the €1000 competition!At the end 90 teams decided to give it a try and joined the ESL Major Series Qualifiers. Based on their countries of origin, all teams can be divided into three national and one international qualifier.
Germany was once again the biggest country and will see 20 teams fighting in their own qualifier. The other two countries are neighbouring countries of Germany, namely 
Poland and the 
Czech Republic. All of them will get their own qualifier, while teams from all other countries will join the European Qualifier:• Qualifier -
Europe• Qualifier -
Germany• Qualifier -
Poland • Qualifier -
Czech RepublicAll qualifiers will start on Thursday, 20th of March. But before this, we will see some pre-qualifier matches. As Poland and the Czech Republic both have seen some late signups and reached the number of 17 teams, one prematch for each country will take place:
Rebellion vs. Enemy• ESL Matchlink
• ETTV
• HeadShot.pl Shoutcast
SSX vs. AHK clan• ESL Matchlink
• ETTV
• Teamplay.cz Shoutcast
As mentioned already, the first one will be played this Thursday. After a short break at Easter the next round starts next Thursday, followed by Sunday. The complete schedule looks as follows:
Round #1: Thursday, 20.03. - 20:30 CET
Round #2: Thursday, 27.03. - 20:30 CET
Round #3: Sunday, 30.03. - 20:30 CET
Matches between the loser of the winner bracket and the winner of the lower bracket match will always be on Thursday, the winner's will fight on Sunday. You can move your match at the forced day to 20.30 CET and 22.00 CET. If you can not show up on a given date you can reschedule your match placing a portest atleast 72 hours before the match comes up. If you can't make it earlier you will have two wildcards to reschedule your match to a time before the next round starts.
Now the maybe most important question:
Who will gain into the EMS Groupstage?
You can find details of the tournament structure here.
The number of sign ups for the respective qualifiers leads to the following distribution:
/ / National Qualifiers:1st and 2nd placed teams: direct invite for the ESL Major Series Groupstage which consists of 16 teams.
3rd, 4th and 5th placed teams: Chance to fight for a groupstage slot in the ESL Major Series Relegation which also consists of 16 teams.
International Qualifier:1st-6th placed teams: direct invite for the ESL Major Series Groupstage.
7th-13th placed teams: Chance to fight for a groupstage slot in the ESL Major Series Relegation
The 4 best teams of the ESL Major Series Relegation will also gain into the Groupstage.
So we will find the best 16 teams for the Groupstage!
Coverage:
The ESL Major Series will be a big competition and a big competition needs a great coverage. We will do our very best to let you really feel what a tournament like the ESL Major Series means - by reading, watching and listening to the matches and everything what's going with the players and teams during all stages.
We will provide shoutcasts in many different languages, enough ETTV servers for all matches and high-qualitiy videostreams for chosen matches. This are some of our partners who help us to show you the best of Enemy Territory in Europe:
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QuadV•
GamesTV.org•
ESL TV•
HeadShot Radio•
TeamPlay RadioWe also talked to TosspoT and this is what he said:
Good luck and much fun to all teams!
ESL Newspost
ESL Newspost: Pre-Qualifiers
Qualifier - Europe
Qualifier - Germany
Qualifier - Poland
Qualifier - Czech Republic
#ESL.ET
my esl news > your xfire journal :P
great move from the ESL!
1. rG
2. EDiT
3. n1ce
4. vae
5. Impact
also only 1 map per round? really nice to solve games with only 1x braun or adlernest!
(19:15) <pstarZ|twinzzy> and thats radar
(19:15) <ESL|Sn4kE> no
(19:16) <pstarZ|twinzzy> whats it then :o
(19:16) <ESL|Sn4kE> the rest of maps are loser`s choice
is not working in my lovely IE6, jsut white empty space
tho others cz/pl/de pages are working
EDIT: To view it, go to the view menu in IE, select 'Source'. Save the huge source html file as "rankings.htm" somewhere on your local drive. Then delete everything before this bit:
<div style="margin-left:10px;margin-right:10px;margin-top:10px;" align="center">
<div class="TitleB">Enemy Territory 6on6 EU EMS Qualifier</div>
<div class="TitleM">Tournament tree</div>
And everything from this bit onwards:
<b>Play!</b><br><a href="/eu/et/6on6/eu_ems/play/">Play!</a><br><a href="/eu/gather/">Gather</a><br><a href="/eu/et/6on6/eu_ems/matches/">Matches</a><br><a href="/eu/et/6on6/eu_ems/rankings/">Rankings</a><br><a href="/eu/et/6on6/eu_ems/premium/">Premium</a><br><a href="/eu/et/6on6/eu_ems/playercard/">ESL Player Card</a>
Then save, open it up in IE and it works (for the team links to work you'll need to do a replace all on /eu/et/ to be http ://www.esl.eu/eu/et/ (without the space)) :D
not sure if you were sarcastic or not tho!
accccccccch
So those four direct spots are realistically between: UnKind, HARD, TAG and Cortana (tbh TAG or Cortana); impact, muse, VAE (impact should walk it); n1ce, 141, fatgames (pretty even here imo, but should be fatgames); Inc, EDiT, o6 (EDiT or Inc, depending on whether Lio can play).
The last couple of rounds of LB games will be very interesting though. That's LB rounds 6 and 7 by the ESL brackets - the winners of LB round 7 are the final 2 direct invites, losers of rounds 6 and 7 are six of the seven qualifiers for the relegation bracket. To give you a hint of how good those games will be, my prediction is for the LB round 6 games to be:
TAG vs EDiT, muse vs n1ce, one4one vs VAE, ephix vs UnKind, with the winners playing each other (eg TAG vs muse and VAE vs UnKind). That's assuming they're using a correct double elim bracket system which, given ESL's slightly weird brackets in the past, I wouldn't bet on...
I'm in the process of constructing the relegation qualifier bracket atm from my predictions from the other qualifier brackets!
EDIT: Also - no disrespect to the czech teams, but the two qualifying czech teams are going to be at a far lower level than the other 14 teams. By my reckoning, the list will end up something like impact, fatgames, mPg, authentic, incomplete, cortana, muse, vae, EDiT, HB, one4one, savak, n1ce, TAG plus the two czech qualifiers (say NR and iR). With that list of teams, I think the czech qualifiers will have trouble getting a single round win.
As a note, if I were setting up a tournament with no restrictions on format I'd probably not use either the EMS or CB systems. I'd prefer to have qualifiers take the form of 3 team groups with either the top team or the top 2 teams progressing, perhaps to multiple rounds of such groups, before going into a large double elimination bracket.
We lost our legends, but we are not dead scene at all so I am doing my best to attract more teams and players and grow up new czech W:ET generation. So even if it happends as you forecast I will be still proud for that teams and their matches.