IEM American Championships Schedule Announced

The Intel Extreme Masters Season V American Championships schedule has been announced. In under just two weeks, eight players will battle it out at the New York Comic Con for a grand prize of $10,000.

The American Championships will start from day one of the Comic Con in New York on October the 8th 2010. The Grand Final will be streamed live on ESL TV on October the 10th 2010, which is also the last day of the Comic Con. To help them with their streams, ESL has also recruited Sean 'Day[9]' Plott and Justin a.k.a. TheGunRun from GLHF.tv to cast their streams.

The Champsionships are void of any Zerg players and has a majority of Terran players compared to the Protoss. A total of five Terran players will be participating along with three Protoss players. Of the previous 16 players in the stage prior to the finals, only three players were Zerg and only one of those Zerg players participated in that stage of the tournament.

Group A holds what some would consider the favourite to win, Chris 'HuK' Loranger. Currently ranked third on the Gosu Rankings, he is the most accomplished of all the players in the tournament in StarCraft II. His accolades carry him from North America to over the Atlantic and soon, no doubt, to over the Pacific as well.

One player that stands out is Jian 'Fenix' Morayra Alejo. He is the only non-North American player to play at this championship. Although he may seem like an outsider in the lists he is no stranger to the players in his current group. While the other players in his group have had much more experience tournament wise thus far, Fenix has still managed to stay above the others in the Gosu Rankings sitting at the 26th spot. A poor show at these tournaments could mean a drop in the rankings and a rise for the others.

Root teammates qxc, CauthonLuck, and KiWiKaKi just might take that chance to rise in the rankings. All three players will be battling out of their groups against each other and at least one of the Root players will get through. All three have had experience already in playing live at the MLG Raleigh tournament where KiWiKaKi came in second place. Of the three players only qxc did not finish with any prize money. While all the players in this group will be looking for a prize money finish, KiWiKaKi is no doubt a favourite to make it out of his group.

Group games will be broadcast starting at 16:00 CEST on October 8th and end with all round 3 matches of the groups starting at 23:35 CEST. Not all round 1 and 2 games of the group stages will be broadcast. The semi-finals broadcast will be held the day after on October 9th starting at 2030: CEST. The Grand Final will be broadcast on October 10th at 20:40 CEST.

IEM American Championships Broadcast Schedule
Date/Time	Match
October 8th 2010
08/10 16:00 CEST	HuK vs. suggy
08/10 17:05 CEST	qxc vs. Fenix
08/10 18:10 CEST	CauthonLuck – KiWiKaKi
08/10 22:30 CEST	qxc vs. KiWiKaKi
08/10 23:35 CEST	Round 3 matches of Group A & B
October 9th 2010
09/10 20:30 CEST	Semi Final #1
09/10 22:20 CEST	Semi Final #2
October 10th 2010
10/10 20:40 CEST	Grand Final

Links
ESL-World.net - Source