This Friday, September 16th, marks the start of DreamHack’s Valencia Invitational, a StarCraft II tournament featuring eight of the best players from around the globe. Technically the fourth event in DreamHack’s Sapphire AMD Championship, the Valencia Invitational will see players duking it out for the 100 000 SEK prize purse plus a spot in the Grand Finals at DreamHack Winter 2011.
As you can see from the bracket below, coL.MVP DongRaeGu has one of the eight invited players. He is going to have his work cut out for him considering the other players include: HuK, Thorzain, Hero, IdrA, Rain, Naniwa, and Lucifron.
The rules of the tournament are pretty simple. All matches will follow the standard best-of-3 format, except for the finals which will be a best-of-5. The map pool includes: TSL3 Metalopolis, Antiga Shipyard, ESL Shattered Temple, GSL Dual Sight, ESL Shakuras Plateau, Tal’Darim Altar LE, and GSTL GSL TerminusRE. Much like the GSL, each player will be allowed to blindly veto one map. The map order then will be decided randomly from those remaining in the pool.
The official hosts of the event are Hailey Bright (known for her work on Coin-op TV and Spike TV) and James ‘2GD’ Harding (eSports celebrity and host of the previous DreakHack events). Streams will be available in English, Swedish and Spanish. To find the specific stream in the language you want, click here.
Be sure to watch the event on both the Friday16th and Saturday the 17th as the event spans two days.