While this release made little of the updated rules and the new format, they are a surprising departure from precedent for the original professional CS league.

The biggest change is the move away from the double elimination format. The tournament is now split into two group stages, one of 64 teams and one of 32 teams, followed by a 16 team best of three single elimination bracket. Mike Allen, Tournament Director for the CPL, said the change was made to improve the tournament experience for all gamers.

"We were not fans of single elimination for teams that travel to the CPL and play only one match and if they lose are completely out of the tournament," said Allen, in a GotFrag interview. "We were looking at something that can offer the gamers a better tournament experience at the CPL... By switching the tournament to group play, we give every team at least three matches to play in a full tournament. We believe that this is going to offer gamers an enhanced experience at the CPL, by giving them more matches against differently skilled teams."

Seedings will be done by committee, with the actual seeds having less impact than in the double elimination tournament due to the addition of group play. Also similar to how the seedings were done at CPL Winter 2005, seeds will be based on all known results including CPL events and CAL results. The rules also specify that up to 14 teams will receive berths to the CPL, but does not specify exactly what that entails. In addition a berth does not guarantee a team a specific seed.

The CPL released their map list, which is subject to change up until one month prior to the tournament.

Update: The CPL has announced a new map list for their Winter Championship Finals which consists of Train, Nuke, Inferno, Dust2 and CPL_Mill.

Map list is:
De_Train
De_Nuke
De_Inferno
De_Dust2
De_CPL_Mill

The way maps will be selected for the best of three will be different as well. Out of a five map pool, both teams will select one map to play, with the higher seed going first. Then each team will discard one remaining map and the map that has not been eliminated will be the tie breaker map.

Check out Jason "Alchemist" Baker's interview with Michael Allen, Global Tournament Director of the CPL on their new rules HERE.