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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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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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Intel Extreme Masters is Coming to Fan Expo
It was just speculation when IEM Canada first announced but the folks behind Fan Expo have made it official. This August’s stop on ESL’s Intel Extreme Masters tour will be coming to Toronto as part of Fan Expo Canada.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: July 10 – 13, 2014
While this weekend’s eSports calendar has the upcoming action in StarCraft and League of Legends, the next two weeks are all about Dota 2 and the rest of eSports is just fighting for what little viewership is left. Yesterday marked the start of The International 2014 for a prize pool of over $10 million. Yesterday was the Phase One qualifier for the 16th spot in the tournament. Through Saturday, it’s the 16-team round robin followed by two days of the Phase Three playoff to get us to the eight-team elimination bracket.
Well, I suppose that’s unless you’re a fighting game fan. This weekend is EVO 2014. The big fighting game convention / tournament starts on Friday in Las Vegas and runs through Sunday.
Elsewhere, SC2 has the semi-finals of the Acer TeamStory Cup and Red Bull Battlegrounds in Atlanta. And League of Legends continues the regular seasons of their top-flight professional leagues.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: July 4 – 6, 2014
If you’re a StarCraft fan, this is a big weekend for you. Both WCS Europe and WCS America are wrapping up 2014 Season Two this weekend which brings us one step closer to BlizzCon and the StarCraft World Championship.
If SC2 isn’t your speed, there’s plenty of action elsewhere. The League Championship Series is holding another super week this week so if you’re looking for more League of Legends action, this is the week for you. There’s even some Dota and Hearthstone action for you this weekend. It’s a busy weekend in the world of eSports. This is why I do this calendar every week.
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ESL’s Intel Extreme Masters Announces StarCraft II Tournament in Canada
After the massive success of the 2013 StarCraft II World Championship Series Season 3 World Finals in Toronto, it was only a matter of time before the highest level of competitive SC2 returned to Canada. It won’t ESL bringing WCS Americas to Canada but ESL’s premiere competition series, Intel Extreme Masters, that will be coming to Canada for a stop in August.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: June 27 – 29, 2014
Just as I start the eSports Weekend Calendar feature, I figure out that it’s a lot harder than I originally envisioned. Every community has their own calendars of varying size but now that ESGN’s website seems to have been shut down, there isn’t one calendar that covers most major eSports. As such, our eSports Calendar won’t have much outside the biggest events for now.
Anyway, this weekend’s eSports calendar has a couple of big events. The 2014 GSL Season 2 final is on Saturday as will see soO and Classic duel in a Best of 7 series for the championship. Dota 2 also gets a massive showcase before this year’s edition of The International. It’s ESL One: Frankfurt from Commerzbank Arena, a football stadium in Frankfurt that hosted five matches of the 2006 World Cup and four matches, including the final, of the 2011 Women’s World Cup. That should be a pretty amazing spectacle.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: June 20 – 22, 2014
I don’t know about the rest of you but I like tuning into a few eSports events over the course of the weekend. The problem is that I often just stumble into most tournaments thanks to notices on Twitter rather than having one go-to list of what’s on during the weekend.
Today, I try to launch a new weekly feature on et geekera. It’s a schedule of some of the bigger eSports events of the weekend including links to where you’re likely to find them.
et geekera 