Today at 5 PM EST The Collegiate Starleague (a StarCraft II league for college students to participate in) will be holding its grand finals featuring The University of Waterloo versus The University of British Columbia. What’s interesting about this tournament is that three of compLexity’s players are participating. On Waterloo’s side you have coL.Antimage and on UBC’s you have coL.Stalife and coL.FireZerg.

The format of the CSL is a tad bit strange. You see, the finals will be a best of seven, except that each game is played by a different player. To mix it up even more, set three will be a 2v2 game. The match ups have already been determined as follows:

coLAntimage [Metalopolis] coLStalife
NrGHumble [Tal’Darim Altar] coLFireZerg
SuperNinja and lALalA [War Zone] Saikou and tQWannaBe
xiGerbil [Shakuras Plateau] ValiditySAGA
tGKangpo [Xel’Naga Caverns] Saikou
SCMonk [GSL Crevasse] tQWannaBe
? [Shattered Temple] ?

To watch the CSL finals (which are commentated by none other than Day[9]) head over to Day9tv at 5PM EST.

Yesterday GOMtv announced that it will be holding a “GSL Super Tournament” starting May 23rd and running through June 18th. What makes this a “Super Tournament?” For starters, first place will be taking home $85,700.

The tournament will follow a standard 64-player single elimination format with players from both Code S and Code A. The tournament will start off with a best-of-3 series until the round of 8, where it switches to best-of-5. The finals will be best-of-7. Players are selected according to their GSL rank (determined by previous season’s results), which can be found here and here.

Tonight the Swedish tournament DreamHack announced that it will be holding its third tournament of the year on June 18th through the 20th. Featuring a prize pool of 200,000 SEK (roughly $32,00) as well as “some of the world’s best” StarCraft II players, there’s no doubt that DreamHack Summer 2011 will see some great games.

So far only five of the participating progamers have been announced. The player list includes:
1. Naama ( DreamHack Winter 2010 Champion)
2. MC ( DreamHack Stockholm Invitational Champion)
3. White-Ra (DreamHack Stockholm Invitational Runner-up)
4. Socke (DreamHack Coin Toss Tournament Champion)
5. Bischu (DreamHack Coin Toss Tournament Runner-up)

So far there hasn’t been any announcement regarding the commentary or if/how the games will be broadcast. If it’s anything like the most recent DreamHack tournament, expect some amazing production levels that put almost every other tournament to shame.

For all of the details click here.

Today, in a press release by Mass Luminosity, a new project by the infamous Angel Munoz, the former president of the CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League), it appears that the company has partnered with AMD (Advanced Micro Devices).

According to the release, Mass Luminosity, Inc. is a social-network marketing and technology company with a focus on interactive experiences.

The entire release can be found below:

Tuesday, May 3, 2011 – Dallas, Texas, USA – Mass Luminosity is proud to announce that Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) has become its first global co-marketing partner. As part of Mass Luminosity’s “bring the FUN back to gaming” initiative, AMD is collaborating with Mass Luminosity to expand AMD’s presence within social networks and to increase its visibility in the video gaming community. AMD is a global design innovator leading the next era
of digital computing with its ground-breaking AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), AMD Radeon™ graphics and computing technologies that power a variety of solutions including PCs, game consoles and servers.

“We are very excited to have AMD as our first global partner,” said Angel Munoz, Founder and CEO of Mass Luminosity. “AMD has been very active with the video gaming community for years and we look forward to helping AMD excel. One goal of this new collaboration is to further highlight AMD’s cutting-edge technologies that have made them a top choice for gamers worldwide.”

“AMD is thrilled to be the first official co-marketing partner of Mass Luminosity, demonstrating our long-term commitment to gaming as well as gamers in general,” said Neal Robison, Director, ISV Relationship Management, AMD. “We are excited to be part of this new enterprise, and look forward to the development of this new era of gaming via increased interaction with gamers worldwide.”

Mass Luminosity, Inc. is a social-network marketing and technology company with a focus on interactive experiences. On the web it’s located at http://www.massluminosity.com

Munoz came under fire in 2007 when the winners of various CPL events failed to receive due prize money. In late 2009, Munoz sold the CPL to investors and stepped away from the scene.

To visit Mass Luminosity, click here.

Today the eSports division of IGN Entertainment made an announcement regarding Season 2 of their IGN Pro League. First off, Season 2 is slated to start on July 14th and will see gamers duking it out for a $50,000 prize pool (ten times larger than Season 1’s prize pool).

Another major facet of today’s announcement is that there will be open qualifiers for the North American, South American and European servers. According to IGN:

The top four players from season one have received automatic qualifier spots for season two. The remaining 28 spots will be awarded through IGN’s open qualifier system, powered by Z33K. Z33K, a tournament web service, will maintain the IPL qualifiers and ensure it is a smooth and efficient process.

For all the information on how you can register for the Season 2 qualifiers, click here.

Weekend Update: April 30th – May 1st

by Alex “Yeunanimous” Yue

This past weekend saw some awesome SC2 action. While the TSL3 was taking a break, the NASL, IGN Pro League and The V did more than enough to make up for it. Without any further adu, here’s the Weekend Update.

NASL

Starting off with Saturday’s episode of the NASL, gamers were treated to some amazing games. The first match saw Brat_OK going up against ROOT Catz. Going all the way to three games, Catz fought hard but just couldn’t hold out against the Russian monster that is Brat_OK. Match two was between Team Liquid’s Ret and the meching Terran Goodie. Ret was on top of his game and shut Goodie down 2-0. Game three was a TvT between SeleCT and coL.Stalife. Unfortunately for Stalife, things just weren’t going his way and ultimately SeleCT won 2-0. Game four saw HasuObs crush Machine, continuing the 2-0 theme of the night. The last match of Saturday saw the Kratos Protoss MC take on StarTale’s ACE. Apparently ACE had the Titans on his side allowing him to shut down MC 2-0.

Sunday’s episode started off with the Taiwanese Zerg Sen vs. the American Terran PainUser. Sen’s aggressive style was just too much for PainUser, allowing him to win 2-0. Game two saw the infamous Zerg IdrA take down Mouz.MaNa 2-0. Game three was a TvT between the Italian beast Cloud and the Canadian monster Drewbie. Cloud proved to be too much for Drewbie taking him down 2-0. Game four saw none other than “The Emperor” SlayerS_BoxeR vs. the Korean Zerg Zenio. “The Emperor” tried his best, but ultimately fell to Zenio 2-1. The last match of the weekend was Liquid`Tyler vs. Socke. Despite his best efforts the American Protoss Tyler just couldn’t hold out against Socke’s aggressive Protoss style. Socke won 2-1.

IGN Pro League

This weekend was the conclusion of season 1 of the IGN Pro League. The semi-finals, held on Saturday, saw IdrA take on SeleCT. In a stunning back and forth series, IdrA’s usage of Brood Lords proved too powerful for SeleCT, allowing him to move onto the finals with a score of 3-2. This loss put SeleCT down in the losers bracket where he was forced to take on ROOT Gaming’s KiWiKaKi. Despite his best efforts, SeleCT just couldn’t get past KiWiKaKi. With a final result of 3-2, ROOTKiWiKaKi moved onto the finals where he faced off against Idra.

The final match started out pretty rough for IdrA. He lost the first two matches, and even allowed KiWiKaKi to get a MotherShip out on the field. Despite this two game deficit, IdrA managed to get his head back in the game winning out the last three matches, making him the Season 1 champion of the IGN Pro League.

The V

The 14th edition of The V featured current champion Spanishiwa and his unique Zerg style going toe-to-toe with Fnatic’s Terran player KawaiiRice. Much like last week’s edition, KawaiiRice managed to take Spanishiwa to game six, but was unable to overcome the new Zerg phenom’s style. Congratulations to Spanishiwa on becoming a three-time champion of The V. If he wins this week’s edition, he’ll be tied up with coL.CrunCher for longest winning streak in The V. Be sure to tune in this Friday to see if Spanishiwa has it in him.

The concept of eSports can be pretty hard to convey to someone who isn’t into gaming. It’s difficult enough to get them to come to terms with the idea that you can make a living off of playing games, let alone that there are whole communities of fans who enjoy watching these people play. But that’s exactly what the mini documentary Star Dreams does.

Made by Luke Schoeppler Pierson (known as “Scretis”) and Veronica  “Verou” Idoate, Star Dreams is a series of interviews with the University of Illinois’ StarCraft II team asking players to describe what eSports is and what it means to go pro.

If you have a spare eight minutes check it out. These people obviously put a lot of work into this film and are genuine in their support of eSports.

Star Dreams from Luke Pierson on Vimeo.

Today Major League Gaming revealed an updated StarCraft II map pool for their upcoming MLG Columbus event.

The new map pool includes:
MLG Metalopolis
MLG Shakuras Plateau
MLG Shattered Temple
MLG Tal’darim Altar
MLG Testbug
MLG Typhon Peaks
MLG Xel’Naga Caverns

Some of you may be wondering what makes these MLG maps different from the ones on the ladder. for starters, “Building Blockers have been replaced with Neutral Lowered Supply Depots on all Maps.” There are also map specific changes, for example, “starting spawns on Metalopolis and Shattered Temple have been modified to prevent close ground spawns” and “starting spawns on Shakuras Plateau have been modified to ensure cross-map spawns only.”

MLG’s Columbus event will take place on June 3rd through the 5th. Be sure to tune in that weekend so you can cheer on the compLexity crew.

Piggy-backing off of yesterday’s announcement of OneMoreGame TV, today team Evil Geniuses announced that Season 5 of their Master’s Cup Series will begin on May 8 and will be broadcasted by djWHEAT on his new channel.

Featuring eight of the best StarCraft II teams and spanning seven weeks, the EG Master Cup Series has a slightly unusual format. Teams will start off by playing three 1 vs. 1 games (best-of-one) followed by a 2 vs. 2 game (best-of-one) and ending with another 1 vs. 1 (best-of-3) tie breaker.

The following teams have been invited:

EG
Dignitas
FnaticMSI
Mouz
ROOT
Sixjax
Millenium
MYM

First place will receive $5,000, second will get $3,000 and third place will get $2,000.

For all the details, click here.

Today, staple of the eSports community Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham announced that he has teamed up with Scott “SirScoots” Smith of Evil Geniuses to launch “OneMoreGame TV,” a brand new weekly broadcast network for gamers. Premiering today on www.justin.tv/onemoregametv, OneMoreGame TV provides unique gaming shows every day Sunday thru Wednesday. According to the press release, expect to see notable members of the eSports community like “Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson, Greg “IdrA” Fields, Rod “Slasher” Breslau, Taylor “PainUser” Parsons, Blake “Chill” Muzar, Chris “WackSteven” Iannitti and others.”

The current line up for OneMoreGame TV includes:

• Sunday at 11a.m. PDT – Weapon of Choice
• Monday at 4p.m. PDT – Kings of Tin
• Tuesday at 4p.m. PDT – Inside the Game
• Wednesday at 4p.m. PDT – Live on Three

I am incredibly excited to finally bring one of our most ambitious gaming initiatives, OneMoreGame.tv, to life. I’ve been working in the gaming industry with Scott of Team Evil Geniuses for many years now, and this project is another step in our efforts to further the growth of the amazing content that’s being created to entertain the worldwide fans of pro-gaming,“ commented Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham. “Using our collective experience in production and competitive gaming, we plan on delivering great shows, world class event coverage, and more!

For more information on OneMoreGame TV, you can visit the offical website here, and even follow it on Twitter here.