Intel Extreme Masters World Championships are in the House!

The Intel Extreme Masters Hall is hosting the best Starcraft ll, League of Legends and Counter Strike 1.6 players in the world, all competing for $283,000 dollars, that’s right, $283,000 dollars in prize money… unbelievable!

This Intel Extreme Masters World Championship is the biggest yet with three competition arenas under one roof. The finals for Starcraft ll, League of Legends and Counter Strike 1.6 will be held on the largest eSports stage ever built, 38 meters in length and sporting 3 huge screens.

There are two smaller arenas that are hosting the elimination rounds for StarCraft ll and Counter strike 1.6 with all League of Legends play taking place on the main stage.

The first day of competition played to a full house but here’s what will blow your mind… we had 200,000 concurrent viewers watching the live video streams, 1500 tweets for #iem and 500,000 #iem followers, and that was just on day 1 of Intel Extreme Masters!

The first rounds of competition have been intense with no clear favorite emerging, of course that doesn’t stop me from making predictions… My pick for Leagues of Legends is Team Digntas, for no real reason other than I like their shirts. For Starcraft ll I’m thinking MVR will take the top honors and in Counter Strike 1.6 it’s hard not to go with the last season’s winner, Natus Vincere. You can follow all the preliminary rounds as well as the finals on ESL’s Intel Extreme Masters website. All of the competition is being streamed live so there is no reason to miss any of the live action.

This year we are hosting something special in the Intel Extreme Masters Hall, we have an impressive display of Intel powered Ultrabooks from our partners ASUS, Toshiba, HP, Samsung, Dell and Lenovo. These ultra-sleek, ultra-thin devices are drawing a lot of attention, these devices are really sexy and can add an element style to whatever your persona, for more information on Ultrabooks please visit the Intel web site.

Even with the Ultrabook display and all the gaming competition Intel Extreme Masters wouldn’t be an Intel Extreme Masters without our consumer zone; this is where attendees can experience Intel’s 2nd generation Core, i7 and i7 Extreme processors. We have 48 desktop systems and 12 notebooks running the most popular game titles available including Battlefield 3 in 3D! Good times!

And of course my blog post wouldn’t be complete without a comment about food. Here in Germany I’m not on a search for the perfect steak, no, I’m on a search for the perfect Schnitzel… and I’m happy to say I’ve found it, several times. So that’s all for now, in a few days I’ll post my season wrap up so be sure to check back.