After another successful online season four teams have progressed to the LAN play-offs to see who is crowned ESEA Season 9 champion.

ESEA has long since been considered America's biggest and most prestigious competition in a range of titles. CS:S is one of those titles and it continues to grow year by year, this season saw some of the best the States had to offer battle it out in a hugely competitive online ladder, with each team looking to earn a spot at the LAN finals. After many weeks and plenty of upsets we are left with just four teams, each of whom have made the trip to Dallas where this weekend they will fight over the $12,000 prize pot on offer.

Last season's defending champions and the iron fist of the American scene - Team Dynamic - will be there once again and hoping to add to their insane run of titles on a National level. One team who will be hoping to prevent that happening will be the other Canadian side in attendance, Check-Six Gaming. Having burst onto the scene last year many questions their legitimacy thanks to some frighteningly good performances in the LANChamp online qualifiers, but they have shown that they can back it up with superb LAN play before and they will be looking to do it again.

Both teams are warming up for a crack at the ESWC title next month and what better way to do so than fight it out at the biggest National event around. The other American invitee for this years ESWC and the team with arguably the best chance of dethroning Team Dynamic is FullyTorqued - formerly CyberRev. With some of the most well known players in America they are regarded as one of the heavyweights alongside Dynamic. They met the Canadian team twice in the regular season, losing one and winning one and they have every chance of causing an upset this weekend.

One of the biggest talking points of the season is the fourth and final team to qualify for the play-offs. Little known, and much ridiculed, Team ForbiddeN. The team have come out of nowhere this season but have enjoyed wins over both FullyTorqued and Check-Six Gaming, whether they can replicate that form in a LAN environment remains to be seen, but very few people expect them to do so. As is the norm with ESEA events things will be played out in a best of three, double elimination bracket, with the tournament kicking off tomorrow and finishing on Sunday.

Twitch.tv will be providing live coverage of the event over the course of the weekend and will be giving away plenty of prizes. Make sure you keep up to date with what's happening by checking out the broadcast schedule Here. Details of the next invite season have also been released over at the ESEA website and the good news is that the total prize purse has been bumped up by 20%, taking it to a total of $80,000, with CS:S enjoying $10,000 for first place alone. You can see all of the details by clicking Here.

The Seedings:

1: Team Dynamic - AZK, PEX, Legend, anGer, adreN
2: ForbiddeN - aries, baGGs, Downy Browny, messiaH, talc
3: FullyTorqued - frozt, neiL, ryan, Steel, tck
4: Check-Six Gaming - COLO, ER1C, flashstep, hRL, virulent

Prize Breakdown:

Invite Division, Prize Pot: $12,000

$6,500
$3,100
$1,400
4th place: $1,000

Map Rotation:

UR 1 - de_train, de_inferno
UR F - de_nuke, de_dust2

LR 1 - de_nuke, de_dust2
LR F - de_contra, de_inferno

Finals – selected by teams

If a third map in a set is needed, each team will eliminate a map from the regular season map rotation and one will be picked randomly from the remaining maps.