Av3k faces group of death at IEM day 1

Possible 'Newcomer of the Year' viOlet ranked 5th worldwide

Serious.Razer beats ieS Virtual Gaming in WC3L play-offs

Cypher wins ASUS Winter 2010 from lower bracket

Serious Gaming welcomes Lennart 'Sushilicious' Roest

The remaining matches of Group A are postponed to be played after the matches of group B due to technical issues.

Quake fans around the world are glued to their seats as the world championship finals of ESL's Intel Extreme Masters season IV kicks off today. After qualifiers and tournaments around the globe twelve of the world's best players are currently gathered in Cologne, Germany to compete in the biggest QuakeLive event up to date.

Serious / Razer is represented at the event by two players:

Alexey 'Cypher' Yanushevsky, currently ranked 1st worldwide, he is the reigning ESWC world champion Quake, a former QuakeCon champion in QuakeLive and the winner of the European edition of the Intel Extreme Masters.

As well as Maciej 'Av3k' Krzykowski, currently ranked 3rd worldwide, Av3k is the reigning Quake 4 world champion, the youngest ESWC world champion ever as well as the reigning champion of Dreamhack, he took second place at the European edition of the Intel Extreme Masters.

Today will be Av3k's day as he has been seeded in group A, the group of death, and will have to take down a host of professional gamers if he wants to qualify for the play-off phase. The schedule looks as followed:

12:30 CET (matchlink) - Av3k 2-0 Stermy. Stermy is a seasoned professional gamer as he has been a very active particpant on the pro circuit since 2005 where he took 3rd place at the CPL world tour finals. The match is streamed and is watchable at tv.esl.eu.

13:10 CET (matchlink) - Av3k 0-2 Rapha. Rapha is currently ranked 2nd worldwide and has been the dominant QuakeLive player of the past year, winning QuakeCon as well as the first IEM event. Only in the past few months has he shown any signs of being challengeable. The match is streamed and is watchable at tv.esl.eu.

13:30 CET (matchlink) - Av3k faces Jibo. Jibo has been a pro Quake player for years now and consistently dominates Asian events. He won the Asian Extreme Masters in convincing fashion and showed himself up to par with both Cypher and Cooller (ranked 4 worldwide) at the most recent ASUS Cup in Moscow.

14:10 CET (matchlink) - Av3k faces Chance. Chance took third place at the American edition of the Extreme Masters.

14:50 CET (matchlink) - Av3k faces Cooller. Cooller is a two-fold ESWC world champion and has a complicated relationship with Av3k. The young Pole used to cite Cooller as a source of inspiration in the early days of his career but has seen him turn into a main rival as the two competed at many tournaments including the finals of ESWC 2007 (won by Av3k) and the semi-finals of IEM Europe. This match is streamed and watchable at tv.esl.eu.

Cypher's group B will be played out tomorrow. If both players pass the groups they will both see action in the play-off phase of day 3!

Every month the European based gaming website GosuGamers publishes a so called 'GosuGamers' ranking, a overview of the currently best 30 players in the Warcraft III scene. This month one player was noticable for climbing the ladder fast and taking a top position, I speak of course of no other than Serious.Razer's own Kim 'viOlet' DongHwan! He managed to take 5th place after dominating WC3L war after war and winning the sixth season of the XP League.

Of course viOlet is not the only Serious.Razer player in the top 30, our very own Hjalmar 'DowaQ' Högberg currently holds the number 20 slot and could still have a long way to go as he is currently competing in the European Stars War qualifier, the Warcraft 3 Premier League as well as the on-going season of the Warcraft 3 Champions League.

Nevertheless viOlet's quick rise as a player is the most notable one, something with which the annual GosuGamers award agrees. viOlet is one of five nominees for 'Best newcomer of the year 2009' and considered one of the favorites to take home this award. The entire community can help vote to make this a reality for the star player by logging in to GosuGamers and casting a vote in the survey.

For those interested in the complete rankings, they are also located on the GosuGamers website: Warcraft III Rankings.

Today our Warcraft III division played the 2nd round of the lower-bracket of the Warcraft 3 Champions League. We faced ieS, known for having a line-up of some of Korea's strongest professional gamers. The winner would qualify for the lower-bracket finals versus World Elite and would be gauranteed a top four position in the world's most prestigious team league.

We beat ieS with a 4-0 score, thus eliminating them and making the 2on2 as well as any possible ace match redundant. Serious.Razer will now face World Elite somewhere between the 1st and the 7th of march to determine who will face the loser of WMF vs. MYM in the consolation finals of the league.

Our entire WC3L season so far has been:
4-0 ieS Virtual Gaming - Round 2 lower-bracket
4-3 Raptor Gaming - Round 1 lower-bracket
2-4 WeMadeFOX - Round 1 upper-bracket
4-0 Mojawi Gaming - Relegation match
6-1 SK Gaming - Groups
3-4 Team EG - Groups
4-3 Infernal Gamers - Groups
3-4 Against all Authority - Groups

Serious.Razer	vs	ieS Virtual Gaming
DowaQ (TR, PI)	2 - 0	Check
viOlet (EI, AZ)	2 - 0	Myth
DowaQ & viOlet (TM, AV)	0 - 0	Tresh & SurnaturaL

In the ASUS Cup series yesterday the Winter 2010 edition took place, and in the QuakeLive tournament European Champion Alexey 'Cypher' Yanusheuski defended the colours of SeriousRazer.

With the Intel Extreme Masters World Finals just around the corner, the ASUS Winter 2010 tournament can be looked upon as a nice test case for Cypher and the other two IEM participants Anton 'Cooller' Singov and Fan 'Jibo' Zhibo on their way towards one of the highlights of this QuakeLive season.

Cruising through Group D in easy mode, the real challenge for Cypher started in the playoffs of the tournament. The winner bracket final, in which Cooller was waiting, was reached via clear vicories over iddqd and evil. In the winner bracket final Cypher had to take his first only loss of the tournament, Cooller proved himself better on dm6 and dm13 after losing on ztn.

Cypher made up for his loss by first taking down Jibo in the consolidation final and after that beating Cooller in the grand final. Cypher won the grand final with two times 2-0, it took two sets of best-of-three matches since Cypher reached the final via the lower bracket, to take home the overall victory.

Final standings:
1. Alexey 'Cypher' Yanusheuski
2. Anton 'Cooller' Singov
3. Fan 'Jibo' Zhibo

Serious.Razer

ieS Virtual Gaming

Start time: 15:00 CET

www.waaaghtv.com/
Coverage:

Today we are proud to announce a addition to our Warcraft III division: Dutch top gamer Lennart 'Sushilicious' Roest will be joining!

Serious.Razer recently qualified for WCIP using effectively a three man squad, with our manager lined up in a 1on1 slot every war of qualifier, we realized we needed a 4th player for the team. After surveying the current top players of the game, we realized we should be looking close to home and decided to add Sushilicious. He is a player whose WC3 career has been a upward trajectory for years and we feel he still shows a lot of potential for further growth. Of course he is not only promising, among his many national LAN accomplishments Sushilicious is a two-fold Dutch champion which resulted in him representing the Netherlands two times at iesf in Seoul, Korea. He was also part of the team that took team Netherlands to a second place in the European Nations Championship 2009, representing the team at the LAN finals in Cologne.

Most of all he is a nice guy tho, and a welcome addition to the team.

Our full WC3 division now is:

viOlet
DowaQ
SonKiE
Sushilicious
Zerter (manager)

Statement Sushilicious

“Today I got asked to join srs gaming by my fellow country mate 'Zerter'. I felt very honored since it's a very high profile clan in my opinion with players like Violet and Dowaq. It's a great motivator to play together with players of this caliber. Hopefully I can put up some good games for srs[razer] and prove I can do good when the pressure is on!

Greetings Sushi”