Team Fnatic from Sweden has won the ESL DUBAI 2009 CS 1.6 Masters tournament. Team Fnatic beat Meet Your Makers 2-0 in de_inferno and de_train. An interesting point to note is that all top 3 finishers are Swedish.

1. Fnatic
2. Meet Your Makers
3. SK-Gaming

Congratulations to Fnatic. The ESL Dubai 2009 continues with the QuakeLive Pro/Am Challenge #1/#2 on Friday (tomorrow) and Saturday (day after).

The CS groupstages are almost at an end at the ESL Dubai 2009 with one local team in each group representing the UAE. The playoffs will begin soon. You can head over to http://tv.esl.eu to watch the 700 kbps stream which is being provided for free with excellent commentary by Jay "2GD" Harding and Joe "Joe" Miller.

GROUP A
Meet Your Makers
ALTERNATE aTTaX
WeMade FOX
KerchNET
Fnatic
Assassin's List

GROUP B
SK Gaming
Virtus.pro
Vitriolic
mousesports
IMPULSE
k23

As expected, the UAE teams are not able to compete with the international level but we did see an interesting match with team IMPULSE taking the game quite close with a 16-12 score against mousesports.

http://www.HLTV.org and http://www.esl-world.net are doing detailed coverage with updated scores, pictures and more.

I've made a short blog about my experiences at the ESL Dubai 2009 for QuakeLive.

Quote:The aim felt a lot different on LAN. Well, maybe it's because I haven't really gotten to play a low ping game in QL. Now I really don't know. The dodging at this level is really insane. Not to mention the fact that the QL pros seem to use the jump-crouch a LOT and they use it extremely well. The model animation for the jump-crouch looks really retarded though because it looks like they have a leg sticking out of their ass. I'll give you an example of how effective the jump-crouch is. Imagine your opponent rushing/charging at you while you're basically holding your ground or preparing to counter him with a readied stance, you fire a rocket when he's close enough to you, you predicted the rocket well BUT the opponent simply jump-crouches and the rocket sails below his feet. It's like the dodging scene in the Matrix except that you simply jump over the rocket using the jump-crouch technique (which also lowers your vertical model height from the head a bit I think) in Quakelive.

ESL will be hosting an international QuakeLive GameOn Cup with hardware prizes sponsored by Intel. One of the countries will be the UAE.

Links: http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=1767358

The 2 Local Qualifiers of the Intel Extreme Masters Season 4 have been completed. The teams that will advance and play in the Global Challenge Dubai group stage alongside professional international teams are Impulse (iM) and Assassin's List (A.list).

iM lineup:
whmsy, havok, jAP, shazak, add1ct

A.list lineup:
zTara, U43.KB, Danger, Blanka, St1cker

You can view the tournament trees here and here, and the groupstage here.

Groups for both game disciplines are now up.

I have been asked to replace 2 others ( k1llsen & linkoo) who could not fill the last slot for the QuakeLive Pro tournament.

Counter-Strike 1.6 Groups:

Group A
fnatic
WeMade Fox
Team ALTERNATE
MeetYourMakers
KerchNET
Local Qualifier

Group B
SK Gaming
Vitriolic
mousesports
k23
Virtus.pro
Local Qualifier

QuakeLive Groups:

Group A
Shane 'rapha' Hendrixson
Magnus 'fox' Olsson
Anton 'Cooller' Singov
Pierre-Emeric 'l1nkje' Portier
Group B
Richard 'noctis' Gansterer
Alessandro 'stermy' Avallone
Pelle 'fazz' Söderman
Felix 'smoke' Pafel
Group C
Sebastian 'Spart1e' Siira
Tim 'DaHanG' Fogarty
Zhibo 'jibo' Fan
Anas 'spammah' Ilyas
Group D
Alexey 'cypher' Yanushevsky
Kévin 'strenx' Baeza
Chance 'Chance' Lacina
Michael 'madix' Hindersson

Links: ESL CS 1.6 Local UAE registration - ESL Dubai 2009

The World Cyber Games UAE National Qualifiers concluded on October 2nd with Lords Of Heaven (LOH) and Assassin's List (A.list) taking 1st and 2nd place respectively.

1. Loh lineup:
St1cker, Smasher, Teka, Blanka, 4lW47sh

2. A.list lineup:
zTara, Danger, U43.KB, DaLa3, K4Z4

However, some of the Loh players have now joined A.list and this new A.list lineup will be given the slot to travel to WCG China.

New A.list lineup:
St1cker, zTara, U43.KB, Blanka, danger


The WCG UAE CS1.6 Open Finals will still be taking place on October 27th-29th.


Many thanks to St1cker for giving us the heads-up.

The Snooker Point Warrior LAN network in Al Ain (one of the emirates of the UAE) will be hosting one of their weekly CS 1.6 LAN tournaments. The prize money is confirmed to be AED 3,500 ($USD 953). It will be held today which is October 9th, Friday.

The tournament is now over.

Results Updated:

1st: Impulse [havok/shazak/zmx/whmsy/add1ct] (Dubai)
2nd: A.list [ztara/U43.KB/st1cker/danger/blanka] (Abu Dhabi)
3rd: l33t [lion/ (Al Ain)

16 of the world's best players have been selected for the Pro event. The prize money has also been slightly modified to fit the previously 12 slot system to 16 slots now. Unfortunately, no local player will be in the Pro event to represent the United Arab Emirates.


Links: ESL-World QL final participants

ESL has now revealed that the 'secret' game discipline is indeed going to be QuakeLive. The ESL Dubai 2009 QuakeLive prize purse is a total of $6,500. They have now opened up sign-up applications till October 2nd if you want to try your luck against some of the best of the best like Noctis and Spartie who will be flying down here. I will also be attending the event and hopefully will be accepted for the Pro division. There is no word on how the Open division will take place at the moment.

Links: ESL-World Dubai QL announcement - ESL Dubai QL participants