Coming weekend one of the big names in esports returns. After an absence of a year, the Electronic Sports World Cup reopens its doors with the 2010 edition to be held in Disneyland, Paris (France). Already some time ago two of our QuakeLive stars already received a direct invitation to the main event. Alexey 'Cypher' Yanusheuski was invited as the last ESWC winner (2008), and Maciej 'Av3k' Krzykowski got invited based on his third place during the ESWC Athens event.

Last night the draw of the groups took place. The 16 competitors will play in 4 groups of 4 players. Each group will hold a top, high, middle and a low seeder. Both Av3k and Cypher were amongst the top seeds, which made it impossible to draw in the same group. Av3k was drawn into Group D and Cypher into Group C. Please find below the full first round group draw.

The tournament will start thursday July 1st in the morning with Groups A/B, in the afternoon Groups C/D will play their matches. After a one day break, QuakeLive is back on Saturday the 3rd on which in the morning the second group stage will be played, and in the afternoon we can see all playoff matches except the final, this last match of the tournament will be played on sunday.

Group A
Shane 'Rapha' Hendrixson
Richard 'noctis' Gangsterer
Marcel 'k1llsen' Paul
CAREEM

Group B
Anton 'Cooller' Singov
Kevin 'strenx' Baeza
Bogdan 'bodzo' Mazur
Ismael 'Sl1p' Rivera

Group C
Alexey 'Cypher' Yanusheuski
Alessandro 'stermy' Avallone
Gareth 'GaRpY' Marshall
Pierre-Emeric 'l1nkje' Portier

Group D
Maciej 'Av3k' Krzykowski
Tim 'DaHanG' Fogarty
Pär 'fazz' Söderman