As you know IEF, or International eSports Festival is about to kick off in Korea, tomorrow to be more specific (30.10.09). First of all here's the list of every single StarCraft participant:
From South Korea:
Slayers'Boxer: invited as a special guest, has been doing well in Proleague lately
Effort: nominated by KeSPA, one of the strongest players in Korea right now
Bisu: winner of the last two IEF events, ranked second by KeSPA
Stork: last year's runner-up, would be nice to see him fight Bisu again
Not to forget Terror[fOu] who got an invitation by winning an amateur tournament. All in all it's a very interesting line-up. Boxer is doing quite well at the moment, so we can expect some nuke drama. You might want to ask: Where is Jaedong? In a slump, that's where! Plus there could be an issue with Jaedong being overused last year, his parents, new contract with Oz and all the rest of it.
Moving on to foreigners, in alphabetical order:
Artosis: voice of the modern StarCraft nerds from around the Globe
Assem: he's back, apparently. I've had the opportunity see him play, he's still quite strong
Chill: Comes as a surprise, my guess would be he's Testie's replacement from Canada.
Dimaga: WCG finalist from Ukraine, one of the stronger Zergs, enough said
Fenix: winner of everything lately, WCG Peru, Zotac, you name it
G5: performed well in WCG USA, nice to see a Protoss in the mix
Gretorp: he's got the skillz, he wanted to go, raised enough cash to do so
IdrA: expect certain games end in his favor, but without the usual GGs
iNcontrol: because you always need someone who can b-press 500, you just do
iNfernal: shame he is the only German player at the event
Machine: regular streamer, good player, i'm betting on Machine
Midian: from the Kingdom of England land; has been quiet for a while
Rekrul: second Protoss the States, the more the better
Ret: he's in Korea, he's training with the best and he probably is the best
Sen: we all simply love Sen, ex GG.net #1 ranked player
Strelok: second Ukrainian representative, seems to be in good shape
White-Ra: another WCG finalist from Ukraine, arguably the strongest Protoss
My money is on IdrA, Ret and Fenix, possibly Machine. As you can see it's already a killer line-up, and we didn't even get to Chinese players.
Last, but not least, China:
Jaystar: F91 was replaced by Jaystar; i don't understand the world anymore
LBH: yet another Zerg, has been relatively inactive lately
Never: the only Terran representing China at the event and a good one
PJ: we all know and love PJ, the only WCG finalist of the four
You should know that every single non-Korean player that you might be interested seeing on IEF was invited, those are the ones who have enough time and minerals to participate.
More information:
The map pool is pinned down to Byzantium III 3.0, Carthage III 3.0, Destination 1.1, Heartbreak Ridge 1.2 and Outsider SE 2.0.
Previous winners of IEF StarCraft events:
2006 - NaDa (over iloveoov)
2007 - Bisu (over sAviOr)
2008 - Bisu (over Stork)
IEF 2009 will be held a Suwon, Korea on the final weekend of October, specifically 30.10 - 01.11.
If you'd like to know even more, Artosis talks about IEF in his "StarCraft Weekly" video that you can find by following the link below.
Links
SCForAll - StarCraft Weekly With Artosis
