The Warcraft III groups for the 2008 200.000$ Electronic Sports World Cup have been drawn today, Serious[Razer] is represented in this discipline by three players,  Hjalmar 'DowaQ' Högberg,  Nikolaus 'SonKiE' Cassidy and  Kevin 'RotterdaM' van der Kooi all of which have recieved medium seeds.

Pan-American champion Nikolaus 'SonKiE' Cassidy has been drawn in a group with ESWC Masters 4th place & WCG Korea 2nd place Du Seop 'WhO' Chang, ESWC 2006 5th place Christophe 'Wolf' Laporte, Czech champion Martin 'Bonecracker' Hušák and EPS Austria champion  Peter 'Firestrike' Staudacher.

SonKiE should be able to beat Bonecracker and Firestrike.  Wolf, who beat  RotterdaM at the Masters and ToD at ESWC.fr, should give him more trouble; however the Night Elf player has not been very active in the international scene and SonKiE can be considered the favorite. Beating WhO is not out of the question as SonKiE is well-trained vs. Orc, however SonKiE can still be considered the underdog in this match.

RotterdaM is making his third consecutive ESWC appearance at this event and has progressed to the second groupstage two times earlier. He has been drawn in a group with two-fold WCG champion  Xiaofeng 'Sky' Li, ESWC 2005 3rd place Seo Woo 'ReiGn' Kang and outsider Darkdancer.

He should beat Darkdancer, but Sky can be considered a heavy favorite against RotterdaM, making ReiGn vs. RotterdaM the deciding match. ReiGn is considered a bit stronger than RotterdaM, but this should nevertheless be a close match that can go either way.

DowaQ is making his international tournament debut at this event and has been drawn with defending champion Seong Deok 'SoJu' Lee, Ukraine champion Valentine 'FiX' Krulikovsky, Canadian champion Colin 'Hasuelf' Hamilton and the experienced Paulyan.

The young Swede is probably outclassed by reigning champion  SoJu, he should however be a heavy favorite vs. Hasuelf as well as Paulyan. This leaves the match to progress between him and FiX, and given the srs player's strong mental game and results in Swedish and online competition he should be the slight favorite in this match.

The remaining groups can be found here.