UKCT - UKCounterTerrorist

ESWC 2008 kicks off tomorrow and I thought I'd whip up a summary post for the 1.6 event.

Prize list:

1st. £20,000
2nd. £12,500
3rd. £7,500

A slight improvement on last years prizes make the ESWC finals one of the biggest events on the eSports calendar and representing the UK once again is the dignitas name but a different lineup. The squad that attended last year included KritikaL and RattlesnK and pulled off a number of memorable victories, beating emuLate and TR.Victory as well as drawing with NiP.

dignitas is:

Kal "101" Meek
Alex "Aleski" Way
Kurtis "kurt1s" Shore
Song "Song" Kwong
Mark "Sp|ke" Quigley (interview)

Once again the team are without Suffian "Suffz" Arshad but they are still confident they can get out of the first group stage. Captain Aleski commented:

If we play well and don't get Tuscan, hopefully we can make our way to a respectable position. Drea Reilly!

Group B:

MiBR
dignitas
Millenium
mindless

Update: there has been a group shuffle. Click here for them.

Realistically digntias should have no problem with the smaller South American team and the real challenge will lie with MiBR and Millenium. After losing 12:16 to MiBR at GameGune its not within the teams reach to beat their Brazilian foes, but failing that a win over Millenium should put them through.

When and how can we watch these matches I hear you cry? Well, as the event is hosted in San Jose we're looking at an eight hour time difference. Providing there are no event delays, dignitas should play at the following times: (BST)

vs Millenium at 18:00
vs MiBR at 19:00
vs mindless at 20:00

As usual HLTV will be available at HLTV.org.

If dignitas manage to come second or even first they'll go through to a second group stage that kicks off at 02:00 Tuesday morning. The winners and runners up of the four groups in that stage will then go through to single elimination best of three that will kick off on Tuesday at 18:00. The overall final is planned to be live at around 04:00 Wednesday morning.

Its shaping up to be an awesome event, with every one of the top seeds able to win. Hopefully dignitas can provide a few upsets and get further than last year, but we'll wait and see.

We'll be providing full coverage of this event, but due to the eight hour time difference updates in the small hours of the morning might be delayed. Uzi from theSGL is on hand at the event to help the whole UK ESWC team out so we might see some updates from him.

Modified by Nic on August 25, 2008, 12:13 am.