After one week break because of the IEM4 World Finals, we are bringing new information about the QQC QLTDM NC2010. Five rounds of the group stage are almost finished. The last match, which will be played on this Sunday 14th of March will decide the second advancing team in Group A. Team Sweden will face team Netherlands tonight at 15:00 CDT. Match will be streamed on lvlup and right after the game we will announce the playoff. So don't miss the broadcast.

Two matches have been played last week which decided more advancing teams. On Tuesday UK won their match against Russia 2-1. This victory secured UK their spot in playoff from 1st place. Because of the loss Russia ended on 3rd place with 7 points, but unfortunately only the top2 teams go to playoff.

Another important match between Italy and Hungary was played on Wednesday. The advancing team wasn't decided by points gained from the match, but the match itself decided who advance. Italy won their map which was qzdm6 which was first step towards the playoff. Second map was qzdm20 and Hungary managed to get a victory there so the match moved to a deciding map. Hungary managed to win again and with the victory they secured a slot in playoff.

Playoff officially starts on Sunday at midnight and I remind you that live broadcast will be on stream lvlup right after SWE vs NED. There is only one way for Sweden to advance to play-off and that's 2-0 win against Netherlands. If they will win 2-1, Finland will take 2nd place because of the game between these two teams.

Link: Group Stage

Scheduled: 08:00 CDT, 14 March 2010 to 13:50 CDT, 14 March 2010
Schedule: Passed

Known for its QuakeLive Cups ZOTACs next Starcraft 2 Beta Cup takes places next Sunday, 08:00 CDT, 14 March 2010. There's 100 € pricemoney up for grabs and since cup #2 had 331 signups and the full 256 slots after check-ins covered they decided to make it bigger this time (1024 slots for signups, 512 for check-ins).

Final:
RoX.KIS.DIMAGA 3-1 MYM]DeMusliM


Stream: ZOTAC|koik & AZRAELeva & Millenium WebTV
Links: Brackets, Info, Playerlist, Sign-up, #zotac.sc2

Scheduled: 08:00 CDT, 14 March 2010 to 13:00 CDT, 14 March 2010
Schedule: Passed

Once again the cup format will consist of SE brackets using bo1 matches until the quarter finals. Then the games will be played as bo3 with the grand final being played bo5. The prize is 100€ for 1st place!


Update: ZOTAC #23 started with strenx, cypher, burnedd, GaRpY, madix and many more.

Final standings:

1. srs\cypher - 100€
2. fnatic\strenx
3./4. k1llsen / godch1ld

Links: Brackets, Tourney page, Hall of Fame, #zotac.qlive

Scheduled: 07:00 CST, 13 March 2010 to 11:30 CST, 13 March 2010
Schedule: Passed

Once again the cup format will consist of SE brackets using bo1 matches until the quarter finals. Then the games will be played as bo3 with the grand final being played bo5. The prize consists of 100€ for the first place as well as AGP ranking points for the top8 players.


Final standings:

1. fnatic\strenx - 100€
2. srs\burnedd
3-4. x1t, BVG|guard

VODS: VODs from derQuaker Stream with Mick05 on own3D.tv!

Links: Brackets, Tournament page, Hall of Fame, #gdata.qlive

The Crossfire Intel Challenge 7 was held on 5.-7. march in Enschede-Netherlands, the biggest Crossfire event so far.

Video on Demand for the tournaments CoD4, Enemy Territory and Quake Live are available on QuadV now. You need to be registered on QuadV to watch the shoutcastings. Some alternative Youtube links are available too.

Grand Final matches were
Call of Duty 4 - Reason Gaming vs Fnatic
Enemy Territoy - Dignitas vs Rockit
Quake Live - Butchji vs FeRuS

Past coverage on TosspoT´s crossfire.nu
CIC7 is complete (winners)
CIC7 final day

The CyAC QuakeLive Duel Cup #1 signups have closed. Many top asian stars have signed up for the tournament. Some of the players to keep an eye out for that have performed well in previous QuakeLive Duel Cups are:

SERVAL
Fumio
MUSTAINE
Bsan
Fenda

Some other noticeable signups who could cause an upset are:

blackbear_kr
fakeQQQ

The entire cup will be broadcasted with play-by-play commentary provided by hanatyan of Himitsukichi Games and BRZRK of Ukeru.jp. They will be joined by guest casters in the names of uNleashed and toriyama.



The stream continues Sunday 14th March 06:00 CDT

After last month's inaugural TEK-9.org Quake Live Top 10 Rankings list, which was extremely well received by the community, the March version has just been released. The rankings are based off of five journalist and broadcaster perspectives, with professional player votes being added next month.

With the Intel Extreme Masters Season 4 Championships now over, the rankings list looks quite similar to the final standings of the event, with some small differences. Everyone agrees on one point though, that Shane "rapha" Hendrixson is currently the best Quake player in the world.


"The Russian continues to play sexy Quake, aggressive, compulsive and dynamic, whilst rapha is more calculated, precise, complex, fast thinking and much more the strategist than his rival" commented ReDeYe on the finals. djWHEAT was disappointed by the bottom half of the competition stating "I was so underwhelmed with the 7-12th place play, that I've actually given the 10th spot to Quake 3's infamous UnnamedPlayer. Hopefully that will incite some change in those who are currently just below that coveted 10th ranking spot. "

See the rankings and read up on the panel's views on TEK-9.org.

During the IEM IV World Finals, the ESL published the list of the Quakelive TDM teams which will take part in the qualification process of the ASUS ENC 2010. The Qualification Round 1, which will consist of 3 matches and 3 w/o, should start next week.

The winners of QR1 will play against the teams in QR2. Then the winners of QR2 will meet the teams of QR3. Finally, the winners of QR3 will be qualified for the regular season. 6 nations are getting a direct invitation and won't need to get into the qualification process.


Source: ESL

The sign-up is now closed.

There are 86 clans in total signed up ready to compete each other! We wish them good luck to reach the top!

I will also remind you about when the first match week is:

First match week: Monday, March 29th – Sunday, April 4th.

Note: Please make sure your team plays as many matches as possible (preferably all of them) for everyone's enjoyment.

BiBS Cup Site :: Sign-ups
#BiBS @ QuakeNet & GameSurge

The ESL's Benelux section has announced the second game for its fourth ESL Pro Series season. At long last, Call of Duty 4 is lucky enough to be included, as it appears. Efforts by the game's Benelux community seems to pay off now, as this supreme competition platform has been opened for them as well now.

.

SyncError wrote:

Today marks the conclusion of our Year One Event, I hope everyone has enjoyed the first year of Beta and was able to earn their Year One award.

I know twelve players who certainly earned their awards this week as the world's best faced off at the ESL Intel Extreme Masters Seasons IV World Championships in Hannover, Germany. Earning the first IEM World Champion title was Shane "rapha" Hendrixson of the United States who defeated Anton "Cooller" Singov of Russia. Maciej "srsav3krazer" Krzykowski of Poland seized third place after his victory in the relegation match verses Alexey "Cypher" Yanushevsky. Congratulations to all of the ESL IEM4 participants and best of luck in future competitions. We have added four new awards to recognize these twelve professionals, shiny flair for their profiles.

In other recent news, the venue and dates for QuakeCon 2010 have been announced. This August 12th-15th, the event returns to the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas and is FREE to all attendees. We hope to see you there.

Also included in today's update are some additional improvements to the Duel Spectator function, extensions upon the existing AutoAction record features, and some improvements made to diagnose and improve PunkBuster interactions. Check out our Devblog for a full list of changes.

We were waiting for two years, and now the time has come. The biggest Defrag tournament continues its history with the 2010 edition. As you may already know, the most recent DeFrag World Cups were organized by <Nemesis> and TiTAN from Breakdown-HQ, the most popular Defrag site online. However, since these two guys don't have much time for the game they love so much, we welcome a new organizer, the great mapper and Defrag player, GT-Agressor. As the breakdown scripts need to be modified and there's no one to do that, [cJs]ScOuT made a new engine for the cup.

Most of the rules weren't changed, and the descriptions of all the stuff you aren't allowed to do will be added soon. You can enlist for the cup until Sunday, March 28th. One player can participate in both solo VQ3 and solo CPM. Also, it is possible to play in one team as a VQ3 or a CPM player.

Winners of previous cups:

Links: Registration, Rules and infos

Russia's Quake maestro Anton "Cooller" Singov talks in a video interview following his semi-final victory at the IEM IV World Championship. In that series Cooller managed to defeat Maciej "av3k" Krzykowski for the first time in a playoff series, with the Pole being a player who has been the thorn in his side eliminating him at each of the last two major events.

Cooller talks about his dodging as well as addresses the recent controversy over restarts in his IEM IV European Final match-up with av3k which prompted the younger player to speak out in a recent interview. This time though Cooller is of the conclusion that he was the lucky one in coming through the semi-finals.

The interview can be watched on SK Gaming.

After defeating Anton "Cooller" Singov in the IEM IV World Championship final Shane "rapha" Hendrixson gave a video interview talking about the thrilling four map series.

rapha goes over the close and crucial moments which saw both he and Cooller in positions to win all of the maps played. He also discusses his elation and satisfaction with winning a major title in such a storybook fashion: from two maps down against cypher to beating a Quake 3 legend in the final.

The interview can be viewed on SK Gaming.