The event features group play, 32 teams, with eight groups of four. The top two from each group will advance to the second half of the tournament. The second half f the tournament will feature a double elimination format of 16 teams, one map per match. The map rotation will include de_nuke, de_train, de_inferno, de_dust2 with Drax's flash bug fixes.

69°N-28°E
Tomi "lurppis" Kovanen
Max "ruuit" Aspe
Joona "natu" Leppanen
Juuso "contE_" Sajakoski
Niko "NA5U" Kovanen

Flying 5,000 miles to a tournament with a top prize of $13,500? Sure, why not. The current top finnish squad has been putting in long hours bootcamping this past week in anticipation of an easy money win. But with mouz, Convention, and NiP jumping in the mix, it won’t be the cake walk they planned on. It hasn’t really worried team member Tomi “Lurppis” Konaven though as is evident in an excerpt from his pre-event interview

“Obviously I would have liked to see more top teams attending but with the US teams switching to CS:S for CGS I guess it just wasn't going to happen. There is no particular team I'd like to play or avoid playing against; I'm mostly worried about dust2, not any team.”

Recent NGL Champions and fourth place SEC finishers, this will be a top three finishing team and anything less will be a shock.

Convention
KF3
drei
noLA
syrtekz
r00fz

Last month the Norwegian Synergy squad left their former management and joined up with a local LAN center to become Convention and was able to fund the trip to Louisville. Recently, they fell to mouz in a EC series 2-1 with a overtime 19-16 razor thin loss on dust2. While they are a shoe-in for top five, top two would be a small upset.

SK
Jimmy "allen" Allen
Christer "fisker" Eriksson
Robert "RobbaN" Dahlstrom
Emil "striker" Westerberg
Abdisamad "SpawN" Mohamed

Only yesterday did SK announce that they would be attending this tournament. The addition throws a little more euro skill into the pot and provides another challenge for any American hopeful. Despite a early departure from ESWC Sweden, the lineup is nonetheless a top 5 placer. SpawN and fisker are going to need every all of their quick flick reaction shot goodness to come into play though if they want to top mouz or 69N-28E.

x3o
Tarik "rockyte" Elkhatib
Jeff "hero" Mettetal
Joshua "PineKone" Springer
Ryan "NineSpot" Bell
James "jame^s" O'Connor

According to NickFitz, "Our entire month of June has been a boot camp for the team", and it pretty much was. The WCG U.S. Open saw them taking home 2nd place behind eMazing Gaming (also in attendance). The week after was spent putting in long hours at the local x3o lan center, going over strats and getting themselves together for Louisville. They just finished a local tournament, C3 Cyber Club, and walked away with first. This is all good for the team but bootcamping, no matter for how long, against teams of questionable skill makes one wonder how beneficial the practice is.

A long shot but not unheard of would be an x3o upset against a euro clan on LAN. If they can pull that off, expect surprised faces from the fans, but knowing acknowledgment from a team that continually is confident in their own ability. While no one will put them in the top three here, it's safe to assume top six. How they place is largely going to attribute itself to the performance of teams like Turmoil and eMazing.