Weekend Update: April 15th-17th

by Alex “Yeunanimous” Yue

This past weekend saw some crazy StarCraft II action. With the NASL, TSL3, and The V going on, it’s easy to see how someone may miss out on some of the action. That’s why I’m here giving everyone a quick rundown of the events from this past weekend.

NASL

Starting off with the NASL’s results, this weekend featured some great games and some amazing upsets. Starting with Saturday’s broadcast, the first game was between the American Terran SeleCT and the German Protoss HasuObs. Thanks to his aggressive play and abuse of mobility, SeleCT was able to win his debut match in the NASL 2-0. Match 2 saw the German Terran Goody, known for his solid mech play, take on the creative Zerg CatZ. Showing why he’s the leader of ROOT GAMING, CatZ took the match from Goody 2-0. Match 3 was between Team Liquid’s Ret and the Korean Protoss ACE from team StarTale. Unfortunately for Ret, he just couldn’t hang with ACE’s cleaver play and solid execution losing 0-2. Match 4 was between compLexity’s hero Terran Stalife and Evil Geniuses’ Zerg Machine. In a back and forth series, Stalife was able to come through and bring home a win for compLexity. The final match on Satuday was between Brat_OK VS MC. Unfortunately there was some complication and MC was unable to make the predetermined match time, forcing him to forfeit his first match in the NASL.

Sunday’s NASL broadcast saw some of the most iconic names in SC2 duking it out. Match 1 was between Evil Geniuses’ IdrA and the German Protoss Socke. Despite losing game 1 to an extremely aggressive six Gate push, IdrA was able to take the next to games winning the match. Match 2 was a PvP between Mouzsports MaNa and Team Liquid’s Tyler. Despite Tyler’s reputation as being one of the best StarCraft players in the world, Mana was able to defeat him convincingly with a score of 2-0. Match 3 was a TvT and saw Lazarus Gaming’s PainUser Vs. Meet Your Makers’ Cloud. After a lot of Siege Tank play, Cloud was able to take home a win with a score of 2-1. Match 4 was between oGs Zenio and FnaticMSI Sen. Showing off his ZvZ prowis, Sen won 2-0. The last NASL match of the weekend saw ROOT GAMING’s Drewbie take on none other than “The Emperor” himself, SlayerS_BoxeR. In an exciting back and forth TvT series, BoxeR showed the world why he’s such a legend by bringing home a 2-1 win.

TSL3

This past weekend also saw the final games in the round of 16 in the TSL3. The first match was between FnaticMSI.Sen and SlayerS_BoxeR. Holy crap was this game good. In a classic battle of TvZ, SlayerS_BoxeR (who has been having a bit of bad luck in recent games) reminded everyone why he is “The Emperor” by bringing home a win. If you only watch one game from this past weekend, make it this one. BoxeR’s creative play Vs. Sen’s fantastic macro makes it one of the most entertaining games in recent SC2 history. The second match was between the two European powerhouses mouz.HasuObs and mouz.MorroW. In this ZvP match up, HasuObs’ aggressive play style overcame MorroW’s macro. Game three saw dignitas.NaNiwa Vs. ESC.GoOdy. Proving that his absolutely stunning streak at this past MLG Dallas was no fluke, NaNiwa managed to beat GoOdy, sending him to the round of 8. The last game of TSL3’s round of 16 was between compLexity’s CunCher and Meet Your Makers’ Mondragon. Despite being a titan from the Brood War scene, Mondragon was no match for CunCher’s turtle style Protoss.

The V

Lastly, this past Friday saw week 12 of The V. This week’s edition saw ROOT Minigun take on the relativly new Zerg phenom Spanishiwa. Spanishiwa completely dominated Minigun to open up the matches, however Minigun fought his way back to force a seventh and final game. To the seventh game, Spanishiwa managed to knock Minigun’s crown off becoming the new champion of The V.

VoD’s from The V can be found here.

That’s what happened in the SC2 community over the weekend. As always, if you know about a tournament that is occurring next weekend, please leave a comment on this post with the details. That was I can be sure to include it in next week’s edition of The Weekend Update.

Baneling BBQ: This is Awkward

by Emil Erlandsson

Visit Baneling BBQ for more cartoons from Emil Erlandsson

Today the founders of three of the largest online poker websites were indicted by the FBI. Eleven executives from PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker are facing charges of bank fraud and money laundering. So far, only two of the executives have been arrested with federal agents searching for the other nine.

The U.S. government is seeking to shut down the websites, send these executives to jail and recover $3 billion from the companies.

In 2006 Congress passed a law making online gambling illegal. Since then, numerous gambling websites has found loopholes in the law that allow them to operate so long as they are using foreign banks. Prosecutors now allege that in circumventing the law in such fashion these companies have, again, broken the law.

According to U.S. attorney Preet Bharar, “These defendants concocted an elaborate criminal fraud scheme, alternately tricking some U.S. banks and effectively bribing others to assure the continued flow of billions in illegal gambling profits.”

How does this affect gamers and eSports? Unfortunately for ROOT Gaming, one of their biggest sponsors is PokerStars.com. How will this affect ROOT? So far no official statement has been released. As word comes in, expect an update to this post.

It is also important to note that TeamLiquid and its TSL3 StarCraft II tournament is sponsored by PokerStrategy.com. While PokerStrategy is not one of the sites targeted by the F.B.I., it is a website affiliated with online gambling. When at the PokerStrategy site this disclaimer can be found at the bottom of the page:

Please be aware that due to the current legal situation in the USA, we do not accept players currently residing in the USA. This means that we unfortunately cannot allow you to have an account at PokerStrategy.com and ask you to refrain from using our bonus codes.

Hopefully this will not affect TeamLiquid or their TSL3 tournament.

Source

Recently the FBI raided the apartment of two University of Michigan students who are suspected of (get this) “potentially fraudulent sales or purchases of virtual currency that people use to advance in the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft.” That’s right, the FBI is hunting down gold farmers.

The two students, a sophomore and a junior who are roommates, claim that the FBI has the wrong people and that they don’t even play WoW. Apparently the FBI confiscated “laptop computers, hard drives, video game systems, credit cards, a cell phone, paperwork and other computer equipment” to look for evidence of any wrong doing. “Specifically, agents were looking for online transaction records associated with WoW, the Chinese gold-farming website gameusd.com, eBay, PayPal and the United Services Automobile Association.”

The sophomore stated, “They thought we were involved in some kind of fraud. I’m pretty sure they have the wrong people, but they took all my stuff.”

According to the FBI, they suspect that at least one of the students is involved with a “scheme to set up fraudulent bank accounts to buy and/or sell ‘virtual currency’ or ‘gold’ to be used in the game.”

Source: Computerworld

Without a doubt the World Cyber Games has been a staple of eSports and the progaming community for quite some time now. Today the WCG announced that the US National Finals will consist exclusively of online qualifiers and will see “4 teams/players into the National Finals, with the exception of StarCraft 2 which will qualify a total of 8 players.”

Each game will include at least one “Last Chance” qualifying round which will consist of the top 32 teams / players from each of the previous online qualifiers who will be automatically autoberthed into the event.  Each qualifier will be a single elimination into double elimination finals format with only the top team or player successfully qualifying for the US 2011 National Finals.  Players must be US citizens and live within the continential United States, and will not be allowed to qualify for multiple games.

In case you haven’t been following WCG news, the games being played this year include:

Counter-Strike 1.6
StarCraft II
League of Legends
Tekken 6
Cross Fire

The online qualifiers will be running from April 25th through July 31st. To register for the WCG or to check out all the details, click here.

After numerous issues with the sound coming from the casters at MLG Dallas this past month, MLG has decided to implement soundproof booths at MLG Columbus, the next event on the MLG Pro-Circuit. In Dallas, the casters live audio had to be cut as players could hear the play by play, which may have led to unfair gameplay from its competitors.

MLG’s Lee Chen had this to say:

Soundproof booths have already been successfully implemented into the GSL, WCG and Dreamhack events. CompLexity Gaming will be on-site at MLG Columbus to bring you all of the latest videos, pictures and news from the event.

After months of waiting, tonight finally marks the start of the North American Star League. At 8:30 PM EST pregame interviews will start, followed by the first match at 9:00 PM EST.

Expect to see some fantastic games from tonight’s Division 1 group featuring: Moon vs. Grubby, Vibe vs. TLO, Artosis vs. Sheth, Fenix vs. Kiwikaki, and Rainbow vs. Morrow. For a breakdown of Division 1, click here.

Each match will be a best of three and will feature the maps Terminus RE, Crossfire SE and Backwater Gulch.

In order to tune into tonight’s matches, just head over to the NASL homepage to check out the free stream. If you have already paid for your HD stream pass ($5 per broadcast or $25 per season), you will be able to log into the high quality stream from the NASL site as well. Commentary will be provided by Geoff “iNcontrol” Robinson and Andre “Gretorp” Hengchua.

Please note that the NASL will be broadcasting Tuesday through Saturday until Season one ends on June 11th. Be sure to tune in tomorrow so you can cheer on compLexity’s CunCher as he takes on Darkforce.

Tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM EST the Dreamdrehack Stockholm Invitational StarCraft II tournament will be kicking off. With an impressive player list consisting of: MC, Jinro, IdrA, Huk, Morrow, White-Ra, TLO and Sjow, entertaining games are pretty much guaranteed. Top that with the fact that the winner will be taking home 100,000 SEK (roughly $16,000) and you can bet each player will be playing his heart out.

Coverage of the tournament will be provided by DreamHacktv, with casting by Shaun ”Apollo” Clark and Benjamin ”Demuslim” Baker.

The bracket looks like:

The format is relatively simple. Every game except the grand final will be a best of three. The final match will be a best of five. Unfortunately there is no information available regarding the map pool.

For the rest of the details click here.

Recently GOMtv announced that the well known and respected American commentator Noah “moletrap” Kalb will be arriving in Korea to help doa with the Code A casting.

For those of you who may not be familiar with Moletrap, he’s been an active member in the eSports community for a long while. His resume includes: “many live events both online and offline,” even working “as the official SC caster for WCG US Final 08. He has also casted a several VT Opens and some Reddit events with the most recent event being CSL Invitational.”

In preparation for this new gig, Moletrap has recently uploaded several replays to his Youtube page where he commentates along side his future Code A casting partner doa. To get an idea of their chemistry check out the replays here.

Anyone who watches GOMtv’s Global StarCraft II League is familiar with the Code A commentator DOA. Today DOA uploaded a short video to Youtube showing off the backstage area of the GOMtv studio.

It’s pretty interesting to see how GOMtv makes the GSL happen. For most viewers, myself included, we’ll never get a chance to fly out to Korea and check out the GSL live. Videos like this help us “foreigners” feel a little more connected to the GSL and eSports. Hopefully DOA will keep bringing his camera to work so we can get an idea of how Korean eSports operates behind the scenes.