"Replays.net announced the player list earlier today, where we see two Sparkyz players and two eStro players getting invited. The only player who is remarkably known by those four is the American player IdrA, currently the only foreign player in one of the 12 Korean progaming teams.
The Chinese players were determined by a long qualifier, where in the end top players as F91, Chinatttt and LeiLei came out on top. Pj and Lx were invited because of their earlier performance in the tournament and did not have to qualify
More interesting for the European scene, are the two players Dreiven and White-Ra who are also on the player list. Both players are hailing from MeetYourMakers, and both have a good TeamLiquid StarLeague season behind them.
The tournament will begin on June 4th in Beijing, China while both quarter-finals and overall finals will take place between June 12th and 14th in Changsha, China.
The groups have not been announced yet, but tough competition to expect for the world players, as the Chinese players have proved to be of hard steel in earlier tournaments."
Source: http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft/8498-dreiven-white-ra-idra-in-pgl-player-list
World Cyber Game's 2008 US Open event features the top four players from the previous year's US finals, as a way to give the top competitors a chance to skip the usual qualifiers and win some money in the process. The top two places are awarded a total amount of $900, a trip to WCG Pan America and two seeds into WCG US finals.
This year's event was held in New York City at the Samsung center on May 31st through June 2nd, and featured (in rank of last year's placings) iNcontroL, Nyoken, Skew and Artosis. After a long weekend, many great games and GG's, Artosis took the gold leaving Skew to second.
Both of them played very well and showed their continuing dominance over the US StarCraft scene. We wish them luck in the finals event coming up in October. You can checkout pictures from US Open at mnm's gallery.
"The first season was quite a success. With seven teams competing (one withdrawing), the heavy favorites, Micro Media, stormed their way through the season and went undefeated. Surprising sMi earned the 2nd spot, only losing to Media in the regular season. The east teams OD and NrG rounded out the playoffs. After dispatching NrG in an intense battle that went all the way to the ace match, Media would eventually face off against sMi, who defeated OD on their side of the bracket; setting up a rematch and clash of two Yankee titans.
What a battle it proved to be, coming down to the ace match with a tied score of 3-3, the powerhouse NonY, who has been dominating everything he's touched recently faced off against Spades, fresh off a big win against IdrA in a match that would decide the Yankee League Champions. After a hard fought battle, Media won that and the war itself, taking home the gold in season one.
Congratulations to team Micro Media for winning the Yankee League. Before the Grand Final, Artosis had complete confidence in his team, stating that he was 100% sure they would win. In that, his team did not disappoint, as they weathered the sMi storm and came through with a clutch victory. Honorable mention goes to sMi for coming 2nd place, and OD and NrG for reaching the semi-finals."
Source: Micro Media Emerges Victorious
"Back in October, an event by the name of Starcraft Superstars invited sixteen of the best North Americans to compete for not just money, but a potential spot on the professional gaming team eSTRO. An opportunity reserved for only the best in the world.
The goal for all of the competitors in this tournament was to finish in the top five. The top five finishers were Greg "IdrA" Fields, Alex "Skew" Brola, David "Dino" Kent, Zhe "XiaOzI" Teng, and Jian Fei "Iefnaij" Wang.Those lucky five would move on to tryout against actual members of eSTRO, so their skill can be fairly judged.
During the tryouts, the skill difference between the South Koreans and North Americans was evident. Even though, the North Americans put up a good fight in several of their games, none of them were able to bring home an actual victory.
After careful review from eSTRO coaches and players they came to the conclusion that Greg "IdrA" Fields has the most potential out of the five. He is planning on moving to South Korea sometime in early 2008. This is an achievement that only four other North Americans have experienced: Miguel "Maynard" Bombach, Guillaume "Grrrr" Patry, Brian "Assem" Fransioli and Dan "Rekrul" Schreiber.
Once he arrives to South Korea he will be training hard in hopes of improving his play enough to be useful in team leagues and individual tournaments.
Source: Starcraft: IdrA to eSTRO; Korea bound in 2008
"After months of preliminaries both offline and online, ten of the strongest American gamers have proven their worth to advance to the national finals. This group of competitors is an even mix of veterans and rising new talent that will be making their World Cyber Games debut for the first time.
Some of the competitors include the top three stars of the American based organized Micro Media: Dan "Artosis" Stemkoski, Greg "IdrA" Fields, and Alex "Skew" Brola. The lone Templar of Twilight known as Geoff "iNcontroL" Robinson will be making his first appearance at the United States finals. The new Nerd at Work Jacob "LzGaMeR" Winstead will be returning for his second national finals looking to show that he was a good pickup by the Swedish organization. Tyler "NonY" Wasieleski will also be looking for another 1st place finish after his surprising US Open finish.
With one of the strongest field of players to date, this tournament will certainly not be one to miss. The matches are set to begin tomorrow at Universal Studios in Orlando, FL.
Source: iNcontroL Wins WCG USA Finals 2007
"This years BlizzCon SC Invitational is set to be an exciting one. Out of the eight players invited, six of them hold the job title as a professional gamer in the ever-growing gaming world in South Korea. The non-Koreans, who are both coincidentally North Americans, will be given the opportunity to test their skills against these professionals.
In the first match of the tournament, we will see the defending champion of 2005's BlizzCon SC Invitational Jin Ho "YellOw" Hong go up against the local boy Alex "Skew[Media]" Brola. While one might believe this will be an easy win for YellOw, you may want to think again. Skew is one of the strongest terran versus zerg players in all of North America.
The following match will also include a Korean and a non-Korean. The Canadian, Nick "MYM.Testie" Perentesis is arguably the strongest player outside of South Korea. With his past performances at several WCG and Blizzard events, he has shown that he is certainly able to compete with the Koreans. His opponent, however, is perhaps one of the strongest protoss players to have ever walked the earth and he goes by the name of Jung Suk "Reach" Park.
The third match of the day is perhaps one of the most anticipated. Two of the biggest rivals in all of Starcraft will face off in a protoss versus zerg match up. Kang "Nal_rA" Min will make his return to this BlizzCon event looking for a win. His opponent, Jae Yoon "sAviOr[gm]" Ma will have victory on his mind also. The last and final match of the first round will include two of the strongest terran players in the world, Hyeong Tae "IriS[gm]" Byeon and the WCG 2004 Grand Finals champion Ji Hoon "XellOs[yG]" Seo.
Source: BlizzCon SC Invitational Melee