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As the days go by we get one step closer to this year’s ESWC Masters. The event will be an extra opportunity for teams to qualify for the grand finals in San Jose late August.

Fresh news regarding ESWC Masters has been announced. The event will as earlier mention, be a new addition to ESWC this year. Quite a few countries do not have their national qualification this year. Therefore ESWC Masters will be a opportunity for those teams that failed to qualify trough their national qualification or simply didn’t have any, to qualify for the grand finals.

The event will start off in a group stage with four groups with each five teams. Top two in each group will advance to the playoffs, being played single elimination and best of one map. This is a bit untraditional from the tournament-structure ESWC used earlier on (single elimination best of three). This means the teams advancing to the brackets will really have to play their a-game, if they want to play for one of three spots for ESWC grand finals.

The map pool this year will consist of five maps. Last year ESWC announced that the 2008 season would use de_tuscan as the fifth map in the pool. The map is mostly known from ESL EPS leagues, which especially favors the Germans on this map.

So far there are only listed eightteen participants for ESWC Masters on ESWC’s homepage, but a total of twenty teams should be attending the event. The eighteen participants signed up are:

roccat - contE, ruuit, naSu, tihOp & plastE
emuLate - R!Go-, MaT, mSx, ioRek & HaRts
SK Gaming - allen, RobbaN, walle, Tentpole & SpawN
mTw - ave, MJE, Sunde, whiMp & zonic
Hellway - Predator, Spew, Ess1x, Malkav & Mickey
CNO - hich, ferrid, xire, muh & skire
Get2Gev - bisou, moman, matz, mystiq & mshz
SoA - ArcadioN, hpx, zitic, spx & wazorN
x6tence - DrastyK, FliPiN, r1bera, siok & was1n
MYM - Neo, LUq, TaZ, kuben & loord
Evil Geniuses - evolution, n0thing, ninespot, steno & chE
mousesports - Tixo, Kapio, gore, cyx & gob b
dimension4 - YoR, Mayers, Yoshi, Dafunk & OliGan
Alternate - approx, CHEF-KOCH, mooN, paN & Roman R.
Neophyte - oskar, monty, rasan, arsas & zigurat
mibr - bit, btt, cky, ton & Lance
fnatic - Archi, cArn, dsn, f0rest & ins
aAa - Dr. Crow, Yank, kara, jed & Xp3

HLTV.org will be in Paris covering the ESWC Masters taking place 4-6th of July. Stay tuned for more ESWC Masters updates.