This past week the 2008 Electronic Sports World Cup took place in San Jose, California. $200.000 was at stake in five games, Serious Gaming/Team Razer being represented in three of them by nine players.

Unfortunately for us the tournament started with some sad news as the nine were supposed to be ten, the visa of ESWC 2007 champion Maciej 'av3k' Krzykowski was denied and he was unable to defend his ESWC title. av3k remains the Quake 4 world champion however and we are looking forward to seeing try and reclaim the ESWC world championship next year. 

As the actual tournament progressed some good news came to us that somewhat relieved the pain. After winning the ESWC Masters and QuakeCon Alexey 'Cypher' Yanusheuski was one of the favorites to win ESWC, but we still find it somewhat unbelievable to see the 18-year perform so well as he kept the world cup in hands of the team and became the reigning Quake 3 and ESWC world champion.

The entire team is proud with his performance. 

None of our other players might have won titles likes av3k and Cypher have, but they still performed admirably and proved to be worldclass players at this event.

Our Defense of the Ancients team managed to beat ESWC Masters champion SK Gaming. Unfortunately a loss to the eventual runner-up KingSurf prevented them from reaching the finals, but they still finished a admirable 7th in the event.

Similiarly our Warcraft III players more than held their own and were only stopped in their progress by the very best players at the event, Kevin 'RotterdaM' van der Kooi's only losses came from the eventual number two and four of the event and Nikolaus 'SonKiE' Cassidy beat French champion Christopher 'Wolf' Laporte only to be defeated by the eventual champion Du Seop 'WhO' Chang.

Hjalmar 'DowaQ' Högberg came within one map of upsetting a higher seed, however former Serious Gaming player  Valentine 'FiX' Krulikovsky managed to prevent the young Swede from beating the odds in his international debute.

All in all the event was a great succes with a world title and otherwise good signs for future events. We are looking forward to the 2009 Electronic Sports World Cup!