After a tough qualification stage, the ESL Extreme Masters World Finals are coming closer and closer. The event, held from the 2nd till 6th of March at CeBIT, holds the best four of the best American, six of the best European and the two best Asian players. These players will be spread into two groups of six.

Alessandro "stermy" Avallone has been placed in group A, alongside players such as Cooller, Av3k and rapha.

Group A	Group B
rapha	DaHanG
chance	Vo0
Av3k	Cypher
Cooller	strenx
stermy	fox
Asian Qualifier	Asian Qualifier

//Roald "roy_chez" van Buuren

Alessandro "stermy" Avallone finds himself in the ESL Extreme Masters Game On National Playoffs! The Game On Cups are being held in ten different regions and with Italy being one of them, Alessandro is one of the hot favourites to make it to the European Finals, where ten of the best European players will be representing their country.

Now the groupstages are over, where stermy has beaten his country mates Rickmage, zip and lechung without dropping a map. He will now face DiMiTrI in his first playoff match, the upperbracket quarter finals. Other notable names in the Italian National Playoffs are cdv, spartano and exp.


For the playoff tree, head over to this page and for the groupstage results go here.

//Roald "roy_chez" van Buuren

Missed all the action of the ESL Extreme Masters European Championship Finals? Do not worry, the ESL staff has recorded all matches that took place and have uploaded the VoDs to their website. All Alessandro "stermy" Avallone his matches can be seen on ESL TV, so sit back and enjoy some great Quake with commentating by the always entertaining Joe Miller and James Harding.

Groupstage matches:
vs fox (2-1 win)
vs dem0n (2-0 win)
vs noctis (2-0 win)

Playoffstage matches:
vs strenx (3-0 loss)
vs calipt (3-0 win)
vs fox (3-2 loss)

//Roald "roy_chez" van Buuren

The best of the best attended the ESL Extreme Masters European Championship Finals at Bruhl, Germany last weekend to qualify for a spot in the World Finals. Of course, Alessandro "stermy" Avallone was in attendance as he came first in the online qualifier.

Over the course of the weekend, many exciting matches took place and Alessandro was placed in the toughest group, which meant some amazing matches. He had to face Swedish legend and his former FPO team mate, fox as well as the second-place finisher at the GamesCom tournament, Noctis. The fourth person in his group was Belgian LowLandLions player, dem0n, who was looking to cause upsets.

In the end, stermy won all his matches and had only dropped one map versus fox. This meant he was through to the play-offs and thus he had a top eight place at least, while the top six placed for the World Finals. Alessandro had to face the young and talented strenx and eventually this match was not to be won by stermy and was knocked out of the tournament, only leaving him to fight for a top five spot maximum.

He first had to face calipt and easily won the match with three to zero in maps. Mission accomplished, top six was reached and thus a ticket to the World Finals was secured. He now had to face fox for the match for fifth place. Unfortunately enough, Alessandro was all out of energy and lost the match with two maps to three and placed sixth.

In the end, this sixth place was enough to qualify for the real deal and win 350$ pocket money! See you at CeBIT for the ESL Extreme Masters World Finals from the 2nd till the 6th of March.

//Roald "roy_chez" van Buuren

Hey guys,
Sorry I haven`t been around much lately, I just had a pretty busy month.
I wanted to wish you all a Happy Christmas and Wonderful New Year! See you in 2010!

In the meanwhile, you can grab my latest cfg here: DOWNLOAD LINK