The applications are in, the teams have been looked over, checked out, seeded and lovingly placed into the groups that make up the first stage of the Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme Challenge. Each of these groups contains four teams who in turn will play each of the other teams once. This means each team will play three matches over three weeks each on a different map (inferno, cpl_mill and dust2 in that order) and the top two teams in each group will go through to the knockout stage. Teams who end the group stage tied on points will be separated on round difference.


For those of you who may be new to theSGL and our website, here are a few things you will need to know. On your clan page you will find at the bottom a list of upcoming fixtures (you should find three). You can view the details for each of these matches from the Details link and this will take you to a page which will show the match server IP and the SRCtv ip. On this page you can also view and post comments about the match and wager SGLp (virtual points on the website) on the outcome of the match (the site members with the highest SGLp total at the end of the Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme Challenge will be rewarded with a prize - more on that in an upcoming news post. After the match has been played you will also find this page will display the result and as soon as it has been retrieved from the match server and uploaded it will also contain the match demo. Post match you find the all important bragging right inducing SkillTracker stats here where you can view your own and everyone elses stats for the match and see where you fit into the order of things.

All clanleaders should ensure at this point that their players appear on the clan roster and all have the correct steam id's entered to make the player eligible to take part. Due to the time constraint between application and the first matches the seventy hour eligibility period will not apply. All teams must have their roster in place and ready to play no later than the first match of the tournament which is 8pm this Thursday. Players added after that deadling will be subject to the seventy two hour wait beforebeing able to take part.

Finally all players require the latest version of the SGLac client which can be downloaded here. SGLac is our anti cheat client which has served us well over the course of thousands of prior matches. It does not upload anything during the match and once it has completed its initial scan (just a few seconds) it will sit idly between screenshots not using up your system resources. Use of this client in matches is mandatory and players connection to the server without the client in use will be automatically removed.

We wish all the teams involved in the Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme Challenge the very best of luck and look forward to seeing you in action either from an admin's eye view of the match, via SRCtv or via the tremendous coverage brought to you by our very good friends at QuadV who present featured matches with full commentary and veido streams of the action. If you're not playing a match yourself - sit back and let the QuadV team bring you every moment of the match - live and exclusive at QuadV.