Dong Hwan 'viOlet' Kim joins ranks Serious.Razer Warcraft III

SonKiE 2nd at Blizzcon US Regionals

DowaQ, av3k & Cypher in running for "eSports Player of the Year" award

Nikolaus 'SonKiE' Cassidy at Blizzcon US Regionals

Cypher beats RazerJ to advance into EMS Finals

Serious Gaming is proud to announce an addition to its Warcraft III division. None other than former SK-Gaming player Dong Hwan 'viOlet' Kim will strengthen our lineup, starting from the 1st of July 2009. This prodigy Orc player has been competing at the highest levels for some time now, and has been on our radar since his entrance in the pro scene. We are happy to be in the position to sign this highly skilled player and look forward to see him compete under our flag.

Serious.Razer Warcraft III has been relying on the strength of the same three players (DowaQ, SonKiE and RotterdaM) for the past 18 months, a period in which they have done a great job representing us. However, with a new season of WC3L coming up, the time is right to ensure we can put up a diverse and a competitive line-up. We strongly believe viOlet is the right player to fulfill these expectations.

By accident one of our three current players got to know viOlet real well this past weekend, as our Undead player Hjalle ‘DowaQ’ Hogberg faced viOlet in the finals of the weekly ZOTAC Cup. viOlet showed good form and won this match 3-2 and as a result won his fifth ZOTAC cup.

Statement by Dong Hwan ‘viOlet’ Kim:
“After departing from SK-Gaming about 3-4 months ago I am really glad that Serious Gaming is giving me the chance to play with them. I had some very tough months when our house burned down, but now everything is fixed and I can focus on my gaming career again. I will do the best I can for srs, and will work hard to get much better. I am happy to join a very strong team and hope that we can achieve our goals.”

Lineup Serious.Razer Warcraft III:
orc Kevin ‘RotterdaM’ van der Kooi (Captain)
undead Hjalle ‘DowaQ’ Hogberg
human Nikolaus ‘SonKiE’ Cassidy
orc Dong Hwan ‘viOlet’ Kim

Nikolaus 'SonKiE' Cassidy this weekend secured himself of a spot for the Blizzcon Finals in Anaheim (USA) next August, by taking a second place in this weekends US Regional Qualifiers.

SonKiE played a solid tournament without excelling. He managed to beat all his opponents, all human players, except for Phil 'LongWalk' Crawford. The only America nightelf player in the competition and former team mate of SonKie, showed great form throughout the entire tournament and finished on top in both the winner bracket final and the grand final. Both times LongWalk managed to beat SonKiE with a 2-1 score.

Besides a spot for the Blizzcon Finals, to be held from the 21st until the 23rd of August in Anaheim (USA), SonKiE walked away with a $2000 cheque for his efforts.

Blizzcon US Regionals Grand Final

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Information about this year's eSport Player of the Year award was released this morning. Competitive gaming fans around the globe will be given a opportunity to vote and determine which player will be recognized by the award as the player of the year in one of six regions. Out of these six regional winners one will be crowned player of the year.

No less than three Serious Gaming players are up for a award, to be more precise:

Our Warcraft III player Hjalmar 'DowaQ' Högberg is one of the fifteen nominees for Northern Europe eSport Player of the Year (voting will be possible at SK Gaming, fragbite and rakaka.se). He is the only WarCraft III player in this category and earned this recognition for his stellar rise from a unknown player to a player representing his country, team and continent at a global scale including a ESWC event in Korea and many victories in major online competition including a 2-0 win vs. gaming legend Dae Hui "FoV" Cho just a few days ago in the NGL professional league.

Other nominees are:

Jimmy 'allen' Allén (CS1.6)
Alexander 'ave' Holdt (CS1.6)
Patrik 'f0rest' Lindberg (CS1.6)
Magnus 'fox' Olsson (Quake)
Kalle 'FrostBeule' Videkull (Trackmania)
Christopher 'GeT_RiGhT' Alesund (CS1.6)
Rasmus 'Gux' Ståhl (CS1.6)
Jonas 'JonasL' Laursen (FIFA)
Jonathan 'Loda' Berg (DotA)
Tomi 'lurppis' Kovanen (CS1.6)
Jacob 'Maelk' Toft-Andersen (DotA)
Robert 'RobbaN' Dahlström (CS1.6)
Sebastian 'Spart1e' Siira (Quake)
Christoffer 'Sunde' Sunde (CS1.6)

Quake IV world champion Maciej 'av3k' Krzykowski & Quake III and QuakeLive world champion Alexey 'Cypher' Yashunevsky were nominated in the category "Eastern European Player of the Year" (voting will be possible at SK Gaming, Gameinside and eSport.pl). They are the only quake players in this category and have been recognized in this fashion due to their dominating performance in the various Quake disciplines over the past year. av3k is a previous winner of two eSports Award's, namely "Newcomer of the Year" and "Quake Player of the Year" and Cypher has been nominated in various categories before.

The other nominees in this category are:

Valent 'Another' Sebatijan (WoW)
Marius Victor 'BeBe' Craciun (FIFA)
Petar 'Desis' Chenkov (WoW)
Grzegorz 'Dreiven' Kordek (SC:BW)
Ioan 'Edward' Sukhariev (CS1.6)
Dmitriy 'Happy' Kostin (WC3)
Cezary 'KarteKpL' Gontarek (FIFA)
Levent 'LevenT' Isyapar (DotA)
Aleksey 'LeX' Kolesnikov (CS1.6)
Yegor 'markeloff' Markelov (CS1.6)
Filip 'Neo~' Kubski (CS1.6)
Daniel 'Phenomenon' C. (WoW)
Marek '.PhP' Kádek (CS:Source)
Karel 'sneix' Pavlica (CS:Source)
Yuri 'Sting' Sheremetov (WC3)
Eugin 'Strelok' Oparyshev (SC:BW)
Wiktor 'TaZ' Wojtas (CS1.6)
Aleks 'White-Ra' Krupnick (SC:BW)

We are very proud to see our players recognized this fashion and hope you will join us in supporting them!

Source: eSports Award

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This weekend Blizzard organises its Blizzcon US Regional Finals alongside with the European Regionals in Cologne, Germany. Yesterday the Europeans kicked off, and Manuel 'Grubby' Schenkhuizen, Nikita 'nicker' Pomadov and Pedro 'LucifroN' Moreno Duran managed to secure their tickets to Blizzcon 2009. The finals will be held in Anaheim (USA) from the till of July.

For SonKiE today the US Regionals will start at 16.15 CET with a match versus Canadien Undead Mustafa 'Deuce' Tobi, an opponent SonKiE under normal circumstances should be able to overcome. More threatening opponents in this years Human stacked Regionals are Phil 'Longwalk' Crawford, Nicholas 'Shriek' Whittier and Nick 'HolyHuman' Pesu.

The tournament will be played in a best-of-three formatr including a loser bracket. All the action from today can be followed live via the Blizzcon Stream.

Coverage: Blizzcon Regionals Stream
Bracket: US Regional Finals

Round 1 Winner Bracket

Teams	1	2	3	4	5	F
serious.razer.SonKiE	1	1	-	-	-	2
Deuce	0	0	-	-	-	0
Start time: Saturday 27th June, 16.15 CET
Maps: Echo Isles, Twisted Meadows

Round 2 Winner Bracket

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srs.razer.SonKiE

Start time: June 28th 14.00 CET

Maps: Echo Isles, Turtle Rock, Secret Valley

Alexey 'Cypher' Yanushevsky last night bounced back after losing the last couple of times versus one of his main opponents Fan 'RazerJ' Zhibo. In round 2 of the winner bracket in the ESL Major Series, Cypher played two solid maps to beat the Chinese aim machine with 2-0.

Already last sunday in the first round match versus Richard 'noctis' Gangsterer, Cypher showed glimpses of his returning shape. Cypher played more aggressive and his aim was getting to a level we all are familiar with from the Belarussian player. Noctis might have considered this match only being a distraction to become the next QuakeLi...

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