By Ben “functioN” Winkworth

The Coverage

It's that time again and GotFrag is here once more with all your pre-CPL Summer coverage! Kicking things off this year is our CPL introduction, giving you the lowdown on all five of this year's CPL tournaments. That's right, this time Call of Duty, Halo, UT2K4 and Painkiller all get a mention too, as well as the ever popular Counter-Strike tournament! We will provide the basic info for all the tournaments. For in depth information on the teams attending and their chances of winning, check out our previews of each tournament later on in the preview.

We'll once again be updating our own GotFrag World rankings taking into account the recent ESWC and Everlan tournaments, as well as the many recent roster changes teams have been desperately trying to finalize for the biggest eSporting event of the summer. GotFrag will also be breaking down some of the big matches from the last few weeks, such as Virtus.Pro's big win over SK.swe at the ESWC in France two weeks ago. We'll also be delivering extensive articles highlighting just what really is going on in the eSport's world today.

This time, GotFrag is bringing you several great player profiles of some of the world's hottest players such as Mousesport's recent pickup of r4id and Brazil's most-famous eSporting entity Kikoo. There'll also be some interesting Articles such as “Changes in CounterStrike” where Midway takes an indepth look into the competitive cs world after the money changes and the affects it has had on many teams that are attending this CPL. There'll be more extensive previews of the Call of Duty, UT2K4 and Halo tournaments coming up right around the corner too.

GotFrag visitors will also be subject to both America and Europe's finest which is where we take a look at some of the top teams attending the event from the US and Europe. South American Invasion takes a look into some of the South American teams attending the CPL – that’s right, MIBR isn’t the only South American team attending. There will be coverage of the final CPL Qualifier in Spain as well as live coverage of the usual Lethal Gamers Pre-CPL tournament with Midway and Viiraxe on location. With the CAL-invite finals set to take place early this CPL, Brooks takes a look at zEx and Rival and their chances at winning it all. But wait... There's more! This summer GotFrag are taking you on the Road to the CPL, and bringing you the Top 5 Rounds in Counter-Strike, ever! So buckle that seat belt and prepare yourselves for GotFrag's CPL Summer coverage, it's the next best thing to being there!

The Event

The highly anticipated CPL Summer 2004 event will be taking place at the Gaylord Texan Resort, in Texas of course! Starting July 28th, attending players and spectators alike will be subject to quite a spectacle, with huge exhibitions resembling games show similar to E3 or something to that effect. On entrance to the Gaylord Texan Resort, people attending will find it extremely difficult to get to any of the tournament areas without experiencing an overload of advertisement. The primary sponsors of the event nVidia and other major companies all have exhibitions on the floor. To be honest though, the amount of money these sponsors must be pouring into this event is easily deserving of these giant exhibitions.

The CPL is renowned for going smoothly. Very smoothly. Seven months ago at CPL Winter, they had VALVE technicians on the floor to make sure there were no glitches with what was at the time, a relatively new piece of software, Steam. Considering VALVE technicians were absent from the CXG event a month later, which went disastrously due to problems with Steam, it’s obvious that the ones attending the CPL must have helped greatly. We can be sure the CPL will have made as many, if not more arrangements to make sure this, one of the largest CPL’s to date goes as smoothly as possible.

Check out the next few pages for information on each individual tournament!