It is unfortunate that one of CS's premier teams will not be in attendance at the Intel Summer Championship. The fourth place finisher from CPL Winter, NiP, says their decision not to attend the Summer event is centered around three main reasons, delayed payout from the CPL Winter Event, the use of TFT’s in the tournament, and NiP will be busy with PR events.

The Intel Summer Championship, formerly CPL Summer, had its operating rights purchased by the World Series of Video Games. In short, this means that the summer event is no longer a CPL tournament. The prize payouts from the Intel Summer Championship will be handled by the WSVG. Angel Munoz said the following on the CPL forums about the relationship between the CPL and WSVG:

They purchased the rights to operate, manage and promote the event. They acquired all of the existing registrants, broadcast rights and then last week additionally acquired the rights to rename the event.

They promoted the event as a CPL event for months and that must have a tangible value to them. Now they renamed it to promote their lead sponsor. To me it seems like a good decision on their part.

NiP also states the use of TFT monitors as another reason for not attending the event. WSVG’s sponsorship by Dell ruffled some feathers with some in the community who saw the line in the press release “begin to feature gameplay on Dell plasma TVs and Dell UltraSharp LCD displays” and drew the conclusion that the tournament would feature TFT’s.

However, no official announcement has been made regarding a change in montiors for the CS event and there has been no modification of the PC specifications post on the WSVG forums. The current tournament monitors listed by the WSVG are 19" DynaFlat Samsung CRT's. The only definitive change is for the Quake 4 tournament, which will be held of Dell’s XPS laptops.

UPDATE:Tonya has confirmed below in the comments that the "Intel Summer Championships will not be using TFT monitors, but rather Samsung CRT monitors."

Here are the PC tournament specifications from the WSVG forums:

Zalmans Fatal1ty Champion series case
Abit AW8D Guru Motherboard
Intel Pentium D 955 EE 3.46Ghz Processor
ATI Radeon X1900XT 512
Crucial DDR2 1gig
Creative Sound blaster X-fi Fatal1ty FPS series

Monitor:
Samsung CRT
19" DynaFlatTM
Smart IIITM Surface Treatment

With that being said expect to see NiP involved in several PR related activities and events in the coming weeks. The CPL and WSVG could not be reached at this time, GotFrag will update this story as nessecary.

UPDATE NIP has given a further clarification for their previous statements.

I, Peter Hedlund, would like to clarify some of the information we have announced on the NiP site recently regarding the summer event, as well as to somehow give answers to many of those questions and comments raised due to this specific post.

I was informed late last night by WSVG themselves that WSVG has taken over the complete arrangements for Intel summer 2006 event and that there is no connection between WSVG and CPL. My apologizes to WSVC in case they feel that I have somehow involved them into this issue. I have not understood the transition from CPL to WSVG taking care of this specific event. One reason for the confusion on NiP’s side was reading through the WSVG site for Intel Summer 2006 it states the following (link):

FAQs
Where is the CPL Event located?
The WSVG CPL event is held in Grapevine, TX at the Gaylord Texan Resort.

As you might understand this is one reason for me being a little confused about who is behind the event, something which was also shown in the statement posted at www.nip-gaming.com. No shadow should be placed over WSVG in this case. Instead I would like to wish them all the best with their tournament.

At the same time I would also like direct my apologizes to Mr. Munoz and CPL in case our statement has caused him/them any kind of harm. We were not trying to insult any of the organizations in our statement, but instead to give an answer to all those emails and messages which we recieved regarding NiP's attendance in this tournament.

I agree that NiP has not done sufficient research before our last announcement of NiP not to attend the Intel summer 2006. Instead of doing proper research we have listened to several people which have informed us TFT-monitors will be used at this event. We are congratulating the decision provided to us by WSVG yesterday night that WSVG refuses to use TFT-monitors at a big event like this. This since we believe that using TFT-monitors wouldn’t bring out the most and the best out the exciting game Counter-Strike. At the same time we see the importance of being up to date with the technology so my ambition is that the NiP team will do more practicing and playing on TFT- monitors and by that also to attend possible future events which, by some reason, would use these kinds of monitors.

Regarding the outstanding payment for CPL winter that is unfortunately still a fact. No money has been banked even though all paperwork has been sent over to CPL according to what CPL required after the CPL winter event. I have this morning been in contact with our banks and looking back at all the transactions from May 15th nothing has yet come into NiP. Being in contact with CPL in February asking them if the paperwork was done properly and out of satisfaction for CPL, we assumed it was since no comments were made from CPL’s side in this matter.

Regarding the PR-events, those are still scheduled and will take place. At the same time I would like to announce that NiP is also going to attend some tournaments during the summer so fans all over the world will be able to follow the progress of our Ninjas again in the near future.

My apologies to both parties once again and I would like to wish both organizations good luck with their future events.

Peter Hedlund

Source: NiP Gaming

NiP's original press release is on the next page.