Twenty thousand dollars. Thirty-six matches. Twelve players. Four days. That's what the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship will be in a nutshell.

The final event of the six-months-long season - you better have some spray left in you because in many ways the event will be better than anything we have produced this season. The venue for the event will be an enormous trade show hall with a grand stage and the faces of Cypher, DaHanG and Jibo on the walls. Never before has a Quake Live player played at such a grand stage.

There will be a prize pot with $20,000 and a very large and heavy trophy. There will be three streams to make sure you can watch the matches you want to. There will be four days of action with the final on Saturday. Most importantly, there will five players whose victory in the World Championship will not raise any eyebrows. We do not know who will win. Could we ask for more?

Naturally, we could, but considering a not infinite budget and the fact that Quake Live finds itself in the same space with a World of Warcraft and Counter-Strike 1.6 World Championship as well. Because of scheduling and the tournament structure, we will be playing all group play rounds concurrently, so five rounds of three matches at the same time.

This is why we have got three streams: the games that won't make it to the stage will be provided by the ESL TV B (no commentary) and ESL Radio streams. All the stage matches will be shown on ESL TV A stream, showing what should be ESL TV's best production ever (fingers crossed). The stage looks very sexy and having a camera crane will make it look even sexier.

You will still be able to watch any game you want to (bar three) but not every single game. (I hope we won't have difficulties in other games that will force schedule changes on us.) You can find the full match schedule on the Intel Extreme Masters website.

Take time off work, skip school and send your girlfriend away for four days... The event starts on Tuesday for WoW and CS and Wednesday for Quake Live with Group A. Group B follows on Thursday. The winners of each group will go directly into the semi final while the second and third places will be in the two quarterfinals. The two quarterfinals will be played on Friday.

Set your alarm clocks for 9:50 CET on Saturday. The first semi final is at 10:00 CET and Quake Live reigns on the Intel Extreme Masters stage until the final at 13:40 CET. This means no sex on Friday night.

Traditionally, closing off with questions:

1) Will all of the "big three" make out of Group A. ?
2) WIll we see any three-way-ties?
3) Is Cypher a guaranteed winner of Group B?
4) Who will produce the largest amounts of controversy?
5) Will ESReality die?
6) Who do you hope to win the event?
7) Who do you hope not to win the event?
8) Who do you honestly think will win it?
9) Whose eyes are those in the picture above?

The season for Quake Live started off in Dubai with a great event. We will do everything in our power to make the World Championship greater!


P.S. Please take a minute of your time and do some FaceBook / Twitter spamming. Tell your friends about the event, give them the URL where they can watch it. Intel loves Quake Live. Give them more reasons to support it for Season V.