Hamburg to host EM Finals
Germany's Hamburg will be home to this year's Intel Extreme Masters Finals.
It was recently announced that this year's ESL Continental Extreme Masters Finals would be held in Hamburg, Germany at the Congress Center of Hamburg. The venue will be able to host 1000 visitors during the event which will be held between 13th and 15th February 2009.
It is foreseen that this is going to be among the biggest happenings in the Intel Extreme Masters history so far as the Hamburg audience has proved to be worthy in earlier stops such as the Intel Friday Night Games, where everyone (players, visitors and crew) had a real blast and witnessed a great atmosphere.
In the Counter-Strike tournament, 12 teams will progress to these offline Finals. The Extreme Masters III European qualifiers are being played as we speak, currently in Qualifying Round 1. Teams will play a second qualification round before moving into a main round and relegation. The top two teams from each group in this main round will automatically advance to the Continental Finals while the 3rd and 4th places will play the respective 4th and 3rd of the other group.
The total prize purse for the CS competition amounts to 50,000 USD which will be divided as such:
1st: $ 25,000
2nd: $ 10,000
3rd: $ 6,000
4th: $ 4,000
5th: $ 2,500
6th: $ 2,500
The top two teams will also earn places in the Extreme Masters Grand Finals.
The ESL have released a trailer from last year's Finals to celebrate this news, here it is:
Stay tuned to HLTV.org for more updates and remember you can keep up with the tournament progess with us via our coverage pages.
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