From the 4th to 6th July 2008, one of the major tournaments of the 2008 season will unveil in front of a worldwide audience. The ESWC Masters of Paris will commence at the "Palais Omnisports of Paris" and play home to ESWC's official game selections; Counter-Strike 1.6, WarCraft III, Defence of the Ancients, Quake III Arena and TrackMania Nations.

The first Masters of Paris event ever in the history of the Electronic Sports World Cup has been highly anticipated over the months leading up to it and will boast a total prize purse of $65,000 split into individual game categories with Counter-Strike 1.6 male holding the best part.

Palais Omnisports of Paris

Fnatic will be sending a seven man delegation to the world-class event in the form of:

• Samuel "zr0" Mathews (Managing Director)
  

• James "TooGoood" Harding (General Manager - Quake player)
  

• Joe "Joe" Miller (General Manager)
  

• Elroy "Noname" Pinto (WarCraft III Manager - Head of WarCraft III)
  

• Patrik "Spittie" Bernadotte (WarCraft III Organiser)
  

• Lloyd "devine" Jones (Lead Journalist - Head of Counter-Strike 1.6)
  

• Samir "aSpeN" Maouchi (Head of Counter-Strike: Source)
  

Whom will all be providing first-hand coverage from the tournament including videos, photographs, on-the-spot updates, daily blogs and a lot more so that you guys at home who aren't as fortunate enough to travel to France, will enjoy the best possible experience as to what is exactly going down at the first ever ESWC Masters of Paris!

Quick Score Overview

Time	Game	Team / Player	Result	Opponent	Map	Stage	Date
10:00 CET		Fnatic.Cypher	[xx:xx]	ddk	TBD	Group Stage	05/07/08
11:00 CET		Fnatic.CS	[xx:xx]	Roccat	de_TBD	Group Stage	05/07/08

It's summer outside and the sun is shining, its the biggest event of the year so far this weekend and FNATIC have some awesome news! Today we are extremely excited to announce a new partnership to take us through from 2008 to 2009 and carry on our success as a team! We are pleased announce our new partner as none other than than the giant in gaming peripherals SteelSeries, who we will work together with to create the next generation of professional gaming gear!

“Only by working with the best gamers can we hope to create products that actually help decrease reaction time - which is the only thing that matters to a professional gamer", said Kim Rom, global vice president of marketing for SteelSeries. “When Fnatic approached SteelSeries about working together, it brought our collective brainpower to a whole new level. We also work with SK Gaming, Meet Your Makers, mousesports, Made in Brazil and wNv Gaming - with the Fnatic team, arguably the best collection of pro gaming organizations in the world."

“SteelSeries designs and creates professional gear for gamers who want to achieve the highest ranking and best results", said Fnatic's owner, Sam Mathews. “Our squads strive for and achieve those same goals; they are professionals in the world wide phenomenon of electronic sports. Our expertise, coupled with SteelSeries professional gear for gamers, will help make our players even more of a force to be reckoned with. We are looking forward to the successes we know this relationship will bring!"

Under the new agreement, the SteelSeries portfolio of professional gaming mice, headsets, keyboards and surfaces will become the official gaming gear of the Fnatic's 27 professional gamers.

Read more for the full announcement!

Since the Extreme Masters Season II in Hanover, Germany, the majority of the community have been criticizing the Fnatic Counter-Strike 1.6 team's recent performances.

Whether it be a flame on a forum or a commentator sharing his "expertise," Fnatic have not been performing to the high standards that they are used to and that everyone expects of them.

Such to the extent of not clinching victory at a few major events, Fnatic have become the topic of conversation because of their high expectations to win everything they attend.

You wouldn't normally categorise Fnatic, "the best in the world," in a list that may be on the downfall. After all, at the beginning of the year they were the best, weren't they?

I caught up with Oscar "Archi" Torgersen from the team to discuss the matter and the agonizingly close, Electronic Sports World Cup: Masters of Paris starting on Friday.

The IEF Korea Qualifier will commence from the 12th of July starting at 13:00 Korea Standard Time. 6 groups have been announced each fielding 8 players but some are with 7.

The first round of the group stage will be a best of 1 style format and the following rounds will be in a best of 3 style format with the following map order used:

Terenas Stand
Twisted Meadows
Turtle Rock

To know more about the matches for the 1st round of games click "Full Story".

Tonight we see Fnatic.CoD4 in action at the ESL EMS front. In the ESL EMS we arrived at the consolation final of the event where Fnatic.CoD4 will play LowLandLions in a match for a place in the grand final!

As said above, Fnatic.CoD4 is in the consolation final against the Benelux LowLandLions. You can check out the match live at 21:30 CET at QuadV.com. The winner of the match will face Team SPEED-LINK in the grand final, so both teams will try their hardest to go for the win and eventually hopefully take down SPEED-LINK.

Both teams agreed to use the newly released beta version of the ProMod. This will be the first time a major match that is streamed live will be played with the new mod.


Match Overview

ESL EMS Consolation Final

	Team	1st Half	2nd Half	OT	Result
	Fnatic.CoD4	06	06	04	16
	LowLandLions	06	06	01	13

Fnatic: mintR - Tidde! - odyx - LINQAN - zEm

LLL: qwertYYY - joepoe - doekoe - Restyle - sticky

To watch the video on demand, click here!

Our beloved WarCraft III Manager, Elroy "Noname" Pinto, joined the organization back in April 2007 as a WarCraft III Coverage Director. Only a month later his work paid off and he was promoted with the manager status.

Today we are very pleased and honoured to announce that he will give up his home and comforts for a while in beautiful India to join the Fnatic Office in the sunny Southampton.

We are happy to have Elroy in the centre of things in the UK. He will help out the current management team on their daily tasks which we hope will become a great learning experience and one that will benefit from his skills and knowledge.

His first diligence will be this weekend as our favourite Indian will depart for Paris tomorrow to provide the fnatic.com website with coverage from the ESWC Masters where our Quake 3 player Cypher and our Counter Strike 1.6 team are participating.

Fnatic's Main Sponsor Cooler Master have released yet another survey offering you the chance to win some fantastic prizes! All you have to do is answer a few simple questions.

Exclusively for gamers, the survey consists of seven questions revolving around what is and what isn't the best brand in certain functions that exist in hardware. The survey takes about two minutes to complete, where you just have to rate what is the best and worst.

This survey literally takes two minutes to complete, and by leaving your name and e-mail address you will automatically be joining the lucky draw for a chance to take home some shiny new performance hardware from Cooler Master.

- Cooler Master

The winner, selected at random, will receive a Cosmos S chassis, featuring a new racing design and a touch-sensitive panel. The two runner-ups will also go home with the V8 CPU which is compatible with all current CPU sockets and provides unsurpassed cooling performance.

So, what are you waiting for? Click here and win!

We have been very patient since the patch 1.22 was announced last year. Now after months and months of waiting the "final" WarCraft 3 patch appeared with it's changelog as follows.

Additionally to the Patch Blizzard announced the Battle.net Season 6 which included a ladder reset. After a short time the first best finishing players of the ladder will be invited to compete in a special tournament.

Fnatic's Counter-Strike 1.6 team and Quake player Alexei "Cypher" Yanushevsky have both been placed in Group A in their selected games at the first ever ESWC Masters of Paris.

The group draw, which took place earlier today, saw twenty Counter-Strike 1.6 teams and twenty-four Quake 3 Arena players split into four groups of five (CS1.6) and six (Quake).

The Counter-Strike 1.6 team are currently bootcamping before the event, and have written a couple of blogs!

Bootcamp Blogs

• Archi 1
  

• Archi 2
  

• dsn
  

• ins
  

Click Full Story to see Fnatics ESWC Masters groups.

UPDATE : CAN ALL PRIZE WINNERS SEND THEIR FINAL POSITION IN AN EMAIL TO bestpoker@fnatic.com WITH THEIR POSTAL ADDRESS AND NAME, ASWELL AS T-SHIRT SIZE IF APPLICABLE!

Tonight sees the long awaited grand final of the Fnatic Poker Tournament!

The top players from the satellites will tonight battle it out for a crazy bunch of prizes!

After an earlier cancelation Bestpoker decided to DOUBLE the prize money for the 3rd-20th place finishers! The new prize funds can be seen by clicking Full Story!

The following players will battle it out for some AMAZING prizes :

xPYSCODELICx	espider21	OzM.BraK	newbgg	superkoe
Ravenshoops	Ztrider	sheepson	eggs n bacon	ipestz
Jeerka	Ogrik	dAbljoe	para_noia	hetishetdor
Neecola	x2Samael	kooop	Fr4gGie	Fnatic Caal

GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE!

To see the list of amazing prizes, click Full Story!