Category Archives: eSports
eSports Weekend Calendar: August 15 – 17, 2014
This weekend’s eSports calendar is all about Gamescom. Europe’s biggest gaming convention has events for Battlefield 4, Call of Duty, Guild Wars 2, Halo and more. The centrepiece of festivities is the ESL Tournament for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The second in the ESL One line of tournament, ESL One: Cologne features a $250,000 CSGO tournament. ESL also just announced a Dota 2 ESL One tournament for Madison Square Garden later this year. I think that ESL One might quickly become a bigger deal than ESL’s IEM series.
Elsewhere, the EU LCS summer split comes to an end with the final four doing battle at Gamescom. OGN also wraps up its summer season this weekend. There’s also some SC2 and Dota 2 on the calendar this weekend.
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The Qualifiers and Invitees for IEM Toronto Are Set
The eight qualifier and four wildcard spots for the upcoming Intel Extreme Masters Season IX event at Fan Expo in Toronto have been set. Over 200 StarCraft II players tried to enter the biggest SC2 tournament in Canada this year but only eight qualified straight through to the group stages.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: August 8 – 10, 2014
If you’re a MOBA fan, it’s a quiet weekend. The Dota 2 scene might have the joinDOTA League ongoing but it’s hard to get a clear and easy to read schedule for that so keep your eyes peeled for that if that’s you preferred MOBA. League has LPL’s round robin continuing and a bit of EU LCS playoff action but it’s a quiet week otherwise.
StarCraft, on the other hand, is having a big weekend. Proleague is wrapping its 2014 season this weekend with a battle between KT Rolster and SK Telecom. I sometimes wonder if a foreign team leagues would catch on if they weren’t built on the all-kill format (like TeamStory Cup). It’s cool to see all-kills and reverse all-kills but I’d like to see how a big league foreign Proleague effort would play out. Maybe something like teams of four in a best-of-five with an ace match format so you don’t have to have a six-plus man roster to do best-of -sevens.
If SC2 team competitions aren’t your taste, Red Bull is having an six-man qualifier triple-elimination tournament for a spot in the 2014 Red Bull Battle Grounds Grand Final. Taiwan’s best do battle with some of Korea’s best in the Taiwan Open. And the best in the world take on the best on the North American ladder’s best in Destiny I.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: August 1 – 3, 2014
If you’re a League of Legends fan, you’ve probably been doing a lot of stream watching this week. It’s LCS Europe super week and this weekend’s eSports calendar also includes the North American LCS super week. And if you’re a StarCraft fan, we have WCS EU Challenger League and the American qualifier for IEM Toronto. It’s not the busiest weekend ever but there’s still something to watch.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: July 25 – 27, 2014
Now that the two weeks that the eSports world has dedicated to Dota 2 ended with the $5 million Grand Final of The International, what else is there to watch? Okay, we have the eSports calendar to help answer that question but doesn’t it feel, ever so slightly, like a bit of a let down. We go from the biggest tournament in eSports history to a couple of random tournaments and leagues. It’s just not quite as hype.
Anyway, if you’re a StarCraft fan, there’s plenty for you to watch this weekend. GSL Code A is wrapping up for the final time this season. If you’re looking for top-flight Korean action, Jin Air Green Wings and KT Rolster do battle in a Proleague semi-final. Who isn’t excited about the possibility of sOs vs. Zest in a battle of two of the best in the world?
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Newbee Wins The International 2014
A whole year of competition, two weeks in Seattle and one tournament featuring the top Dota 2 teams led to one final Best of Five series for the biggest prize in the history of eSports. But in the battle of #1 seed Vici Gaming and plucky underdog Newbee, there could be only one champion. After a long and odd season, it was Newbee who raised the Aegis of Champions and took home $5 million as The International 2014 champion.
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Newbee and Vici Gaming Facing Off in The International 2014 Grand Final
After two weeks of games, the nineteen teams that started in Seattle have been narrowed down to just two. Having topped the Phase Two round robin, Vici Gaming went the long way through the Main Event playoffs to make the final. They’ll do battle with a team that went through a 10th place qualifier to get out of the round robin, stormed through Phase Three and powered to the Grand Final through the Winner’s Bracket, Newbee.
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The International Will Be Shown on ESPN Channels
The International 2014 was going to be a milestone event in the future of eSports just based on the $10 million prize pool but I don’t think that we expected it to get so much attention. The eight-team playoff bracket, also known as The Main Event, will be broadcast on ESPN 3 with a preview of the Grand Finals on ESPN 2.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: July 18 – 21, 2014
There’s all sorts of eSports action again this weekend. The eight-team playoffs for The International starts on Friday with the grand final on Monday for the near $5 million winner’s prize. The runner-up will end up with just shy of $1.5 million. That’s not a bad payday but it’ll be heartbreaking to come so far and land just short of becoming a millionaire.
StarCraft 2 also has two major events at the same time this weekend. In Europe, Dreamhack holds their third event of 2014 in Valencia as the stars of SC2 do battle in a 96-player, two-day competition for $25,000 and 4,000 WCS points. Over in China, ESL holds the first event of IEM Season 9 in Shenzhen, China, headlined by their 28-player SC2 competition.
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The International 2014 is Down to the Final Eight
After seven days of competition, the field has been cut in half. The International 2014 started with sixteen of the best Dota 2 teams in the world. After the first three phases of The International’s playoffs, the field has been whittled down to eight teams all vying for a near $5 million championship prize.
et geekera 