Or as the World Cyber Games like to call it, the Samsung Euro Championships will be starting in just 2 short days at the massive computer and technology fair that is CeBIT in Hannover, Germany. The tournament, which is of course what all us gamers are looking forward to the most, will feature 9 different games, 6 of which are on PC: Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament 2004, Warcraft III, Starcraft, FIFA 2005 and Need For Speed Underground 2 - the first three of which will probably be the most exciting, each featuring around 16 top teams or players from the same number of countries.

While the participant number has dropped in most tournaments below 16 due to local WCG organizer troubles, the major tournaments still look to be quite an exciting introduction to the new season of major events. Currently, the participants list looks as follows:




The CS tournament looks to be interesting, with both NiP and SK making their LAN debuts under their new banners as well as the challengers astralis, x6tence and aTTax as well as EuroCup X winners, Pentagram, trying to mix up the pack. A few good matches should be sure to happen in the UT2004 tournament as well, with astz!, lauke and the TDM god frag^m most likely taking the top spots. I can't really make a call about Warcraft III, other than saying that WCG 2004 winner Grubby looks set to take this one as well, but perhaps Zeus[19], Miou and Caravaggio could cause an upset.

For the full list of tournaments and participants, make your way over to the tournament page. TheRogue will be providing live coverage of the event from #ecg.ut on QuakeNet for those interested, along with (nearly) live coverage of most of the tournaments right here, on ESR.

I've decided to add a coverage section on the next page of this item, where you can find the upcoming matches, results and links to brackets for all three major games. I'll be updating this regularily, so check back for the low-down on the ECG.

Finals begin at 9.15 CET, the stream addresses can be found here

The winners for the 3 main tournaments are now in:
UT2004: devilmc
CS: Pentagram
WC3: Grubby

Congratulations to all the winners and a job well done by the organizers of the ECG!