FXOpen e-Sports announced the FXOpen Invitational Series #3 with $1500 on the line.  The tournament will be a three-day, 64 player invitational/qualification event with a $1500 prizepool, distributed 900/400/200. The 64 players will compete in a best-of-three double elimination competition.

The Invited Players

dignitas.SeleCT
FXOpTiKzErO
EGAxslav
fnaticMSI.Fenix
VTPokebunny
WE.GIGABYTE.SuperPrime
WE.GIGABYTE.LonerPrime
WE.GIGABYTE.LoveTT
WE.GIGABYTE.LuffyPrime
coL.CrunCher
REQDarkCell
ROOTKitty
sixjax_dde
ONEKyhol
dignitas.KiLLeR
CN!MoMaN
iM`YoonYJ

List will be updated with the rest of players when they’re announced

Schedule

Day 1
Saturday, Apr 23 7:00pm CDT (GMT-05:00)
UB Rounds 1-3
LB Rounds 1-4

Day 2
Friday, Apr 29 7:00pm CDT (GMT-05:00)
UB Round 4 and 5
LB Rounds 5-8

Day 3
Saturday, Apr 30 7:00pm CDT (GMT-05:00)
UB Final
LB Round 9 and LB Final
Grand Final

Streams

English Cast

German Cast

Russian Cast

Chinese Cast

Prizes

1st – $900
2nd – $400
3rd – $200

Prizes are in Australian Dollars ($AUD) which are roughly equivalent to US$

In addition to cash prizes, players who participate in our invitational series will accrue ladder points directly towards invites for future LAN events with much bigger prizepools.

FXOpen is a forex trading company seeking to get more involved in the game they are passionate about – StarCraft 2. FXOpen currently sponsors MMA, drift car series and various other sporting events.

FXOpen

Despite being April, The Electronic Sports League is holding it’s March Monthly Finals tonight at 7:00 PM EST.

For those of you who may not know what the ESL Monthly Finals are, each month the top 8 players (determined by cup points earned in the Go4SC2 cups) get a chance to duke it out in a single elimination tournament for $200 in prize money. They’re not alone, however. Anyone who is a Premium member of the ESL is allowed to register and participate.

The top 8 players participating in this the March Finals are:
1. MoMaN
2. LaCuS
3. Rookie
4. Future
5. Pheo
6. coL.Ryze
7. Attero
8. LoWJimRiSiNg

The map pool consists of: CrossFire, GSL Crevasse, GSL Terminus, RE Metalopolis, Scrap Station, Shakuras Plateau, Shattered Temple and Xel Naga Caverns.

Coverage of the games will be provided by Hakumei.TV.

Round 3

Score	1	2	3	F
coL.Ryze	0	0	–	0
Attero	0	0	–	2

Round 2

Score	1	2	3	F
coL.Ryze	0	0	–	2
ccJroy	0	0	–	1

Round 1

Score	1	2	3	F
coL.Ryze	1	1	–	2
coL.Stalife	0	0	–	0

A few days ago I made a post about how the team behind Reddit’s SCReddit tournaments was moving on to bigger and better things. Last night that team finally announced what they’ve been up to. Working under the new name of “WellPlayed,” the former SCReddit crew has designed a new website with the mission statement of “To be the world’s most foremost producers of eSports coverage and events, and through our passion expand the presence of eSports into every household in the world.”

With that said, as friendly and welcoming as the StarCraft community is, for an outsider it can be quite daunting to get into. There are many, many great casters and tournaments that do not get noticed – not because their content isn’t as good, but because the discovery process is undeveloped. This worked fine when the community was small and more streamlined, as during the Brood War days. Now with hundreds (and soon thousands) of tournaments, showmatches, episodic content, live streams, podcasts and more, the barrier to entry for a new fan has to be non-existent. Right now there is a wall that you have to bust through. We’re here to put up a welcome mat.

In the future, there is no question that we will be partnering with other organizations to bring you great tournaments, leagues, and showmatches, and we will also be doing the same independently, just as we did with the SCRI. But before we did that, we wanted to put our talent and skills into helping grow this community, for the benefit of everyone. The goal of WellPlayed is not to take traffic from one place or another – it is to build a giant bridge to the island of passion and excitement we all live on so a lot more people can come join us.

Basically combining Reddit.com with TeamLiquid.net, eSports fans are able to find news, strategies, live streams, etc. all in one place and have the power to “up vote” or “down vote” each post so that only the best information is at the top.

Along with the announcement of the WellPlayed.org site launching, it was also noted that WellPlayed will be providing the coverage for the newly announced IGN Pro League.

Today, after a long series of hints and clues, games industry giant IGN officially announced its StarCraft II Pro League Tournament.

According to the website:

IGN Entertainment and its eSports division is excited to announce the IGN Pro League! The first season of the IPL is an invitational tournament to showcase what we can provide to you, the viewer, as well as serving as a test run for us for all of our new production and operations mechanisms. 16 players representing 9 different North American based clans will be competing for a prize pool of $5,000 and 4 automatic qualifier spots for IPL Season 2!

The goal of the IPL is to bring a professional, polished viewing experience to fans of eSports, as well as supporting the development of eSports both nationally and internationally through a sustainable tournament system that rewards those who play in it.

The players who are participating include: ROOTCatZ, FnaticMSITTI, SeleCT, FXOSheth, ROOTKiwikaki, VTSpades, EGIdrA, ROOTMinigun, ROOTdrewbie, EGMachine, LGAgh, FnaticFenix, sixjaxViBE, EGiNcontroL, EGAxslav and CompLexity’s own stalife.

Commentary will be provided by DJ Wheat, Total Biscuit HDStarcraft and LGPainUser.

Be sure to checkout http://www.ign.com/ipl/ on April 21st when the tournament kicks off.

To check out the format, complete schedule, bracket seeding and FAQ click here.

Congratulations to team Dignitas’ Naniwa for winning MLG Dallas! Naniwa came from Sweden to participate in the 2011 MLG Pro Circuit in Dallas, Texas, and managed to go undefeated until the grand finals against ROOT Gaming’s Kiwikaki. With an unbelievable run of 25 games won to 2 games lost, Naniwa managed to come out on top as the victor for this event. Naniwa battled his way through the entire open bracket, and then had to face some huge names such as his own teammate SeleCT.

The finals was a PvP between two top tier players. Because of the way the MLG brackets and finals are set up, Naniwa started the grand finals with a 2-0 lead over Kiwikaki. The series would be played as a best of 7. If you missed the action, here is a brief summary of the matches from the grand finals

Game 1: MLG Shattered Temple

To start off game 1, both Kiwikaki (spawned at the 3 o’clock position) and Naniwa (spawned at the 9 o’clock position) built a standard 4 gate opening. Naniwa then decided to build an early Twilight Council and began to research blink. Pushing aggressively, Naniwa lost a lot of his blink stalkers attempting to blink right into Kiwikaki’s base. This put him on a strict defence based game as Kiwikaki responded with a hard counter-attack. Extremely effective blinking kept Naniwa alive and in the game as he managed to hold off everything Kiwikaki could send at him. With a huge mass of stalkers in the middle of the map, Naniwa decided to push and blink into Kiwikaki’s idle army. He managed to get a perfect surround with his stalkers, and ultimately won himself the first game of the series. The score was 3-0 in favour of Naniwa.

Game 2: MLG Metalopolis

Kiwikaki spawned at the 9 o’clock position on the second map where as Naniwa spawned at the 6 o’clock position. As the last game, both players again opened with a standard 4 gate build. Trying to be sneaky, Naniwa warped in a proxy pylon into Kiwikaki’s base, but due to an excellent scouting job, Kiwikaki took out the pylon before any units could be warped in. As the game progressed, it was Kiwikaki who decided to research blink for his stalkers. Using the same strategy Naniwa had just used on him, Kiwikaki managed to blink a ton of stalkers into Naniwa’s base destroying all of Naniwa’s defence. Naniwa had suffered the first map loss of the event. The score was 3-1..

Game 3: MLG Shakura’s Plateau

At the beginning of game 3, Kiwikaki started off with his signature gas steal, and then built into a 4 gate. What Naniwa failed to notice was that the probe that had stolen his gas had also placed a proxy pylon dangerously close to his nexus. By warping in 4 zealots, Kiwikaki forced Naniwa’s probes off of the mineral line, disabling Naniwa from creating any units to defend his base. By warping in a couple of reinforcing stalkers, Naniwa is forced to surrender. The score was then 3-2.

Game 4: MLG ICCUP Testbug

This map was played completely different than the other maps. Both players used a different build than their standard 4 gates. Naniwa uses Kiwikaki’s strategy against him and steals one of his gases and then builds three gateways, and an early Robotics Facility. While Naniwa begins building Immortals, Kiwikaki decides to early expand and build a forge for the access to photon cannons. With 5 warp gates and the extra income, Kiwikaki had a sizeable amount of stalkers and decided to push forward with them. After building two Immortals, Naniwa then built two colossi. Conflict arose in the middle of the map where Naniwa managed to place a couple of amazing force fields that allowed him to take out all of the stalkers, even though he was outnumbered. Since all of the stalkers were destroyed, Naniwa could just waltz on in to the natural expansion of Kiwikaki where he surrendered and Naniwa took the victory 4-2.

A huge congratulations goes out to both Naniwa and Kiwikaki for achieving first and second place in MLG Dallas 2011!