(NOTE: There is a special time change for tomorrow’s show, 3 hours earlier, and 4 hours earlier for Europe with DST in effect)
The ESL Extreme Masters Dubai event has concluded with Shane “rapha” Hendrixson and fnatic taking home the Quake Live and Counter-Strike 1.6 titles, respectively.
The American dueler has now won four straight major Quake events, dating all the way back to ESWC Athens. After a loss to Magnus “Fox” Olsson in the group stage, Rapha redeemed himself by taking out Michael “madix” Hindersson and Richard “noctis” Gansterer in convincing fashion to meet up with Alexey “Cypher” Yanushevsky in the final. The final was a rather defensive, low-scoring affair, rapha able to pull out the victory in 4 maps. The event saw the return of the Russian legend Anton “Cooller” Singov, surprising many by winning his group and barely losing to noctis in double overtime in the quarterfinals, as well as USA’s Tim “DaHanG” Fogarty, who was never a Quake 3 player.
Fnatic bounced back after their poor play at the IEM SuperCup and loss to SK at IEM Chengdu with a win over SK in Dubai, and another title to boot. After early losses to Alternate and MYM, fnatic was on the verge of not even making the playoffs, but came back strong to advance from their group with a crucial win over WeMadeFox. From there, fnatic stepped up their game, getting payback on SK with a combined score of 32-6 on Nuke and Train. Fnatic then faced a surprising MYM in the final, taking them out in close games on Train and Inferno. The MYM team that advanced to the final was the most shocking story of the tournament. With three members performing at their first ever major international LAN tournament, not many gave them a chance to even make the playoffs. They swept their group, demolished Vitrolic with that same 32-6 scoreline, and gave fnatic a run for their money in the final.
This week’s special guests will be Quake Live Dubai champion Rapha, and MYM’s in-game leader, Jimmy “Jumpy” Berndtsson. We’ll talk to Rapha regarding his streak of wins in Quake so far, if he’ll be attending Dreamhack, and his impressions of the overall play from Dubai. Jumpy will be chatting with us regarding the team’s remarkable performance in Dubai, how the new blood has adapted to a major LAN event, zet’s impact on the lineup, and their preperations for Dreamhack.
Other topics on the show include:
– SpawN has officially returned and announces that he has joined the Swedish team H2k, along with former SK player zneel
– Slasher attends the Capcom Super Street Fighter 4 Fight Club event in NYC, impressions on the game and conversations with Justin Wong and Capcom Community Manager Seth Killian
– Dreamhack Quake Live and SF4 signups have opened, Brian “dkt” Flander has signed up along with Swedish greats Alexander “Z4muZ” Ihrfors and Karl “fooKi” Johansson.
– Dutch Starcraft player Jos “ret” de Kroon has arrived in Korea, where he will play at IEF 2009 in the next few weeks, how will he do?
– MLG has confirmed the WoW team list for Anaheim, which includes EG’s return, two compLexity teams, two SK teams, and Button Bashers from Korea
Tune in Sunday, October 25th at 1 PM EST / 18:00 CET at http://www.djwheat.tv for all the action! (takes into account European DST)