December 14th, 2006 – Dallas, TX – With the World Series of Video Games wrapping up a few days ago, the eSports community braces itself for the next, and final, major tournament of the 2006 campaign. The Cyberathlete Professional League's Championship Finals are being held this weekend from December 16th to the 20th at the Hyatt Regency in Dallas, Texas.

For the first time ever, the CPL will use round robin and single elimination best-of-three in lieu of their traditional double elimination format. As it is for many of the tournament staff, this will be new ground for many of the spectators and gamers, who are used to the old format. The ESWC and WCG tournaments have used similar formats, but this will be the CPL's first crack at it.

The event begins in two days, and this guide was created to help break down this new format so you, the spectators, know what to expect. The CPL will take the two group play stages from the ESWC and merge it with the single elimination best-of-three brackets to form the CPL's new tournament format.

Stage I – Group Play

Begins: Sunday, December 17th – 10:00am CST (Click here to find out when this is in your city)
Teams: 64
Groups: 16 with 4 teams per group
Ranking: Wins – 3 pts, Loss – 0 pts (No Ties)
Tiebreaker: head-to-head

Each of the opening sixteen groups will feature four teams, meaning each will get three guaranteed matches. As with the WCG, the CPL will use head-to-head matches as a tiebreaker should two teams be tied in points. If more than two teams are tied in points, another set of group play matches featuring those teams will be played. The top two teams per group will advance to stage II.

Stage II – Group Play

Begins: Monday, December 18th – 1:30pm CST
Teams: 32
Groups: 8 with 4 teams per group
Ranking: Wins – 3 pts, Loss – 0 pts (No Ties)
Tiebreaker: head-to-head

With half of the teams already eliminated at this point, stage II will drop to eight groups of four teams. The tiebreaker rules remain the same as in the previous group stage. Once again, the top two teams in each of the groups will advance on to the next stage, which will be a best-of-three single elimination bracket.

Stage III – Single Elimination (best of three)

Begins: Tuesday, December 19th – 10:00am CST
Teams: 16
Map Pool: CPL_Mill, Dust2, Inferno, Nuke, Train
Rounds: 4

The final stage is a basic single elimination best-of-three bracket featuring the top sixteen teams that advanced through stage II. Each match will contain up to three maps (if necessary), with the first team to win two maps advancing to the next round. The team with the higher seed will choose the first map and the team with the lower seed will choose the second. The tiebreaker map is chosen by each team eliminating one map, the one not chosen and not used previously is then used for the tiebreaker. Brackets for this stage are likely to be based off the tournament seeds, which will be decided by the CPL committee.

Note: Places 5 through 8 will be determined by another stage of round robin play consisting of teams that were eliminated in round two of the single elimination bracket.

Stay tuned for GotFrag's CPL viewers guide (which will be posted on Saturday, December 16th) that will contain information on how to catch all the action at the CPL Championship Finals. This guide will contain information for online video streaming by GotFragTV, Half-Life TV for Counter-Strike, GTV for Quake 3, and also IRC scorebots for both games.