Oleksii “White-Ra” Krupnyk has been a notorious player around the European Starcraft scene, and has many years of experience under his belt. Considered one of the greatest European players currently in the scene, even at the age of 30, and with a wife back at home he continues to game, for the sake of his love for E Sports.

With his many acheivements in Starcraft 2 such as a second place at the recent Intel Extreme Masters European Championship finals, 1st place at HomeStory Cup #2, and 1st place at ROOT Gaming’s Warzone, it seems to many players that the Ukrainian should travel to Korea to compete in the most prestigious Starcraft 2 competition currently in the scene; Gom TV’s Global Starcraft 2 League.

However, White-Ra is currently 50-50 on his decision on whether to go to Korea or not, as revealed by a recent interview by fragster.de.

Can you tell us something about the eSports scene in the Ukraine? Is eSports widely known in the Ukraine?

White-Ra: “This time the situation is good, because you can see Na’Vi as well as good Starcraft 2 players and especially because we have this club. Of course we are not as big as Germany or similar countries, but we can show good games, good results and good organisation work as far as cybersport tournaments and teams and other things go.”

Now that you are married, how does your wife deal with this situation? Does she support you a lot, or is it difficult when you have to train for an an event or something and don’t have enough time to be with your wife?

White-Ra: “Sure, she supports me very well. Sometimes we go together to a tournament like DreamHack. She came with me and she liked Sweden and my friends there very much. So I might go to Korea for the next GSL, which I don’t know yet, it’s like 50/50, but if I go to Korea, we will go together, me and my wife.”

Read the full interview here.

Alice “ali” Lew spoke to ESFI World today about the interesting move announced last week that brought together a new United States Counter-Strike 1.6 team for SK Gaming. The team, assembled by Lew, will be one of only a rare few which consists of both female and male players. The squad plans to first compete in the ESEA’s open division before hopefully moving up to Invite in the next season.

If I didn’t genuinely feel that it was possible, I wouldn’t have said it,” she explains. “With discipline, dedication, preparation and practice, anything is possible. We’re starting to get really comfortable with each other and finding each other’s strengths and weaknesses… I believe that it will be only in due time that we’ll be at the top of our game, individually and as a team.

Read the complete interview at ESFIWorld.com.

Today was the Intel Extreme Masters 5 European Championship Finals, and fnatic came out as the victors against mTw Gaming.

The best of three started off on de_nuke where mTw won the match 16-11. This map was full of spam kills and agressive pushes from both sides. The second map waa de_train. This map really showed how close the two teams were in skill, and how badly both teams wanted to win. After a double overtime, fnatic wins with a score of 26-23. The final match was played on de_inferno. It was full of quick rounds and several strats that showcased the talents of both teams. At the end of the first half fnatic was down by one round with a score of 7-8 on the terroist side. As soon as the second half began, fnatic had CT side on lock. With several denied bomb plants and an epic clutch from Xizt, fnatic secured their victory and the title of IEM European Champions.

After watching the three matches, it is safe to say that the MVP of this matchup is Richard “Xizt” Landström

Prizes

1. fnatic – $20,000
2. mTw – $9,500 + World Finals slot
3. Frag eXecutors – $5,500 + World Finals slot
4. Natus Vincere – $3,200 + World Finals slot
5-6. Lions – $2,150 + World Finals slot
5-6. Meet Your Makers – $2,150 + World Finals slot
7-8. TCM-Gaming – $1,500 + World Finals slot
7-8. SK Gaming – $1,500 + World Finals slot
9-10. forZe – $1,250
9-10. Electronic Sahara – $1,250
11-12. mousesports – $1,000
11-12. Alternate – $1,000

In a story by HLTV.org, it has been confirmed that Baljit “zE-” Lal from TCM-Gaming and Roman “roman” Ausserdorfer from Mousesports were both harassed by Ukrainian police yesterday as they were in town for the IEM European Championship.

According to the story, Baljit did not have his passport with him when approached by police outside of a club. Because of this, he was asked to pay an undisclosed amount (under the table) to the police in order to avoid arrest and detainment. When the police found out that Baljit did not have any additional money with him, he was punched and brought to the ground. 30 minutes later, he was released by the authorities.

In a related incident, Mousesports star Roman “roman” Ausserdorfer was also asked for his passport which he did not have at the time, however, in this instance, he was able to pay the men and was not given any additional trouble.

Roman had this to say to HLTV.org:

Because my passport was at the hotel, I had to pay the police (“money under the table”) if I did not want to be placed in a small “prison room” overnight,” he said on his Facebook wall.

They did not accept driver’s licence or any other personal documents.

More information about this story can be found by clicking here.

In a poll done by GosuGamers, Jonathan “Jinro” Walsh has been voted the best non-Korean of the year. As one of the crowd favorites in 2011, Jinro beat out Tarson and White-Ra by a wide margin.

The results can be found below:

When interviewed by GosuGamers, Jinro had this to say:

Would you call yourself the best foreigner now? I mean, 4-1 against IdrA, two Korean progaming league semi final placings in a row, and MLG Dallas win. If you set Korea aside, what other trophies do want to win?

– I think its still too early, I dont think Im ahead of the pack to the the degree where Id want to call myself #1, if Im even ahead at all. I just think I have really good support from my team so Im able to overcome really strong opponents who might be lacking some of that support (such as IdrA, and this isnt a diss towards EG, since they are putting together a house in Korea as far as I understand it) I hope WCG has SC2 for 2011, and I wanna do good in there.

The official announcement by GosuGamers can be found by clicking here.

In a post by ESEA, the format for the new Starcraft II league has been detailed. According to the post, 50 teams have signed up for the chance to compete for one of the 36 slots that are available.

Below is an official explanation of the format:

The format for the brand new Starcraft 2 league will be as follows. All matches will pit teams of four or more players against each other in a best of 5 series with each match in that series consisting of a best of 3. Although it may sound confusing, I assure you it is not. It is simpler to think of this in broad terms. The first team to win three best of threes will win the match. The way it works is each team sends out a player to play against a player from their opponents team and whoever wins that three game series will have earned their team a point, first to 3 points wins. This will repeat with a different player from each team playing in all the matches until a team has either accumulated the necessary 3 points or a tiebreak is required to decide the winner. Up to this point, no player has played in more than one game. But wait, There’s more!

The tiebreak match, also referred to as the ACE match, is the same format as the previous four best of three series with the exception that the teams can send any of their players even if they have played in a previous match leading up to this. As you might have guessed, the ACE match features the team’s best players going at it head-to-head to determine who will take home the W. Teams will be playing twice a week with the first map of each match predetermined well in advance. However, every map after the first is up to the discretion of the loser of the previous match. If you lose the first game, you are given the opportunity to choose the second map and so on and so on until a winner is determined. Also worth noting, a player must use the same race for every map in each match. So if you start out playing Zerg, you have to play all the games of your best of three series as Zerg. That is unless you have the cojones to roll the dice and play as random, but few dare.

More information about ESEA’s SC2 league can be found by clicking here.

Yesterday a video was posted on YouTube about the Call of Duty: Black Ops Ultimate Combat 4v4 Open Domination Ladder in GGL. The video consisted of one of the players in the ladder explaining how he felt the tournament spots were fixed, and that the admin (GGL-DonKing) did next to nothing to prevent, or mediate the situation.

The ladder, which started early December, was set up so that the top eight teams at January 17, 2011 would compete in the tournament and the top four teams would attend a LAN tournament to compete for the grand prize of $13,000. As the ladder progressed, one of the teams called Average Gamers decided to kick up their play a notch as they decided to challenge a higher ranked team, Scary Kids Scaring Kids (SKSK). SKSK did not show up until 8 minutes after scheduled match time, and there were only three of the four members of the team ready to play. By 14 minutes after scheduled match time, the members of Average Gamers could not wait any longer and had to call a Forfeit Win. This was an acceptable action because of the rules posted for the tournament:

Failure to show up to compete within 10 minutes of a scheduled match time will result in a forfeit loss (with point penalty) for the squad that does not show up, and a forfeit win for the squad that does.

After posting the forfeit, the team captain of Average Gamers XIplayaXI received a message from the team captain of SKSK, stating that he contacted DonKing and he had said the match should be played. XIplayaXI then responded saying that is not that big of a deal, and they should just get over it because they are still in the top four. SKSK then sent a message saying that the match had been deleted by the admin and that a match can be rescheduled whenever is best. The major flaw in this is that the admin did not listen to both sides of the story. He only listened to SKSK and acted on their behalf. XIplayaXI then messaged DonKing on AIM and requested a party chat to hear both sides of the story and he refused.

XIplayaXI then received several messages from the top ranking teams saying that they will help Average Gamers win and advance into the top 8 where they will be safely entered in the tournament. In doing so, they revealed their plans to fix the tournament slots. The plan was to help Average Gamers advance into the tournament, ensuring the victory for the top tier teams without any extra effort.

We contacted GGL-DonKing, but he refused to comment on the subject.

Below is the original video regarding the matter:

Welcome to the newest program in our lineup of gaming entertainment shows: THE MIND OF THE GAMER. 

MotG is a series hosted by Daniel “Sheekthief” Coreano of Ragequit.tv.  The premise of the series is to watch replays and demos of pro players while they describe why they did what they did and what they were thinking at the time.  Learn new thought trains and ways of approaching your game from the best out there!  Get into the Mind of the Gamer.

For our first episode Sheekthief sits down with our very own Ryan “Ryan” Rushia of compLexity’s StarCraft 2 squad.  Ryan discusses some Protoss game play and explains the different things he was thinking during the match. 

Enjoy!

The tenth TeamSpeak Team Liquid SC2 Open has been announced. This is another qualifier tournament for the upcoming TSL3 tournament. The event will feature several professional StarCraft 2 players including all of coL.SC2. This tournament is also an open tournament, so if you want to give it a shot, sign up as long as you have a North American BattleNet account. The maplist is Shakuras Plateau, Metalopolis, Xel’Naga Caverns, Lost Temple, and Scrap Station. The tournament begins January 22, 2011 at 12PM EST.

Prizes

1st:    $100 + Qualify for TSL3
2nd:    $50 + 100 TSL3 qualifier points
3rd-4th:  $25 + 51 TSL3 qualifier points
5th-8th:  26 TSL3 qualifier points
9th-16th: 14 TSL3 qualifier points

For more information on the event, or is you wish to sign up, click here.

Starting today, 12 teams will decend upon Kiev, Ukraine for the IEM5 European Championship. The teams will be competing for one of the 7 spots in the Global Finals that will be held in Hannover, Germany next month.

Teams will begin the tournament in two groups of six, with half of each group moving on to the bracket stage. Fortunately for the 4th team in each group, they will have the opportunity to battle it out for the 7th position.

Group A	Group B
frag eXecutors SK Gaming mTw Mousesports MYM esahara	Fnatic Lions Na`Vi Alternate forZe Copenhagen Wolves

The matches are set to begin on Thursday, January 19th. Stay tuned for the latest information and results from the event.