The Global StarCraft 2 League

A monthly tournament with huge cash prizes to grab. Such was GomTV’s vision when they introduced the Global StarCraft 2 League only a couple of weeks ago. The qualification cups for the first tournament were played out last weekend and we see a few foreigners among many Koreans in the main event.

The 64-man tournament will kick off this weekend with an immense prize pool of $170.000, and first place takes home half of it. As if that weren’t already enough, ‘The Casting Archon’, namely Nick ‘Tasteless’ Plott and Dan ‘Artosis’ Stemkoski, will do commentary for the whole event.

Who would have thought that StarCraft 2 would raise all standards in just a couple of weeks? First, we saw the Intel Extreme Masters in Cologne (the American equivalent will take place at the beginning of October). We then had the MLG in Raleigh and yesterday Cyberspace announced the Western Digital PSI STORM 2010 tournament for Oceanic and Southeast Asian players. Each tournament has a prize pool of several thousands of dollars. The biggest StarCraft Brood War tournament for foreigners however, saw only a prize pool of $10.000 US dollars.

The enormous cash prizes of the GS2L attracted and completely astonished thousands of players around the world. This is also why Team Liquid players Dario ‘TLO’ Wünsch, Jonathan ‘Jinro’ Walsh and their captain Victor ‘Nazgul’ Goossens, left for Seoul, Korea. Beforehand, they partnered with the Korean SC2 team oGs, which helped them out with accommodations and training. Unfortunately, only one member of the team made it into the round of 64. The German Terran player TLO was able to defeat all of his opponents without losing a single map and therefore still has a chance at winning the $85.000.

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Interestingly, the only foreign player to ever win a Korean StarLeague, Guillaume ‘Grrr…’ Patry, is back in business, having tried to qualify for the GS2L as well. Losing in the second round does not qualify him for the main event. Also taking part were the well-known Americans Greg ‘IdrA’ Fields, whose contract with CJ expires at the end of August, and Dan ‘Artosis’ Stemkoski. Both were able to defeat their opponents with a clear score of 2:0. A newcomer to the field was ‘Torch’, from vT Gaming. Known in the cell phone gaming scene for coming in third at the WCG, he is now in the round of 64 in the GS2L.

Four foreigners against 60 Koreans: Tune in on Saturday, September 4th 2010, as Tasteless and Artosis entertain the crowd when the opening match takes place.