Sase and Naama in the opening night of ESV.tv Grand Prix 1

Photos: Millenium.org, Dome.fi

Few hours from now, at 00:00 CET, begins the war for the ESV.tv Grand Prix 1 crown with more than thirty players fighting for the $2,000 and the last remaining Assembly Winter seed. The tournament is scheduled to run for four days, ending on February 16th.

ESV.tv Grand Prix 1 will consist of two group stages and a single elimination playoffs phase. The first batch of games are the ones from Ro32 groups A, B, C and D and are set to begin today at 00:00 CET. As group stage #1 completes tomorrow, the top two of each pool will join the invited seed - namely Morrow, Jjakji, Squirtle and Xigua - to form another four groups of five. Once again, the top two of each group shall advance to the playoffs phase, played on February 16th.

There are a couple of things worth noting in regard to the Ro32. First, FXO's TheBest and Leenock have been disqualified due to accepting the invitation but not showing up for the games. Secondly, be on the look for Sase and Naama, who are the only foreign representatives in the first group stage, placed in pool B and D respectively.

ESV.tv grand prix 1 groups
Group A	Group B	Group C	Group D
Taeja	Crank	GuineaPig	Symbol
Shuttle	Sase	Ryung	JookTo
Jjun	KingKong	Zenio	Naama
TheBest	Hoon	Dream	Sage
Group E	Group F	Group G	Group H
Hack	Alive	Tails	Tassadar
Revival	Treme	Monster	Seal
Tiger	Ace	Avenge	Ragnarok
Leenock	Life	Luvsic	Vampire

If the prize purse and the large player pool is not making the strife fierce enough, the last seed for ASUS ROG Assembly Winter should definitely do the trick as the Finnish tournament has $20,000 to offer to its top contenders.