Live tonight at 10:00PM EST / 7:00PM PST, www.pwnage.tv will be broadcasting the ESEA-Open Lower Bracket matchup between Control Alt Defeat and eMazing Gaming on cp_gravelpit. The winner of this match will be moving onto the lower bracket's semi-finals, the loser gets dropped from the playoffs.

Casted by Leonardo "leogeo2" Gonzalez. Hang out in the IRC channel during the match at #pwnage.tv on irc.gamesurge.net to get your shoutouts and predictions heard live on air.

Edit: Vod is now up, check it out here!

On Tuesday Night, 10PM Eastern 7 Pacific, TGBF.TV will be casting the ESEA-Open Lower Bracket Round 3 match between BringAmbaLamps and eXpertise. On CP_Badlands, this game will decide who stays in the playoffs to face Apocalypse Gaming in the Lower Bracket Quarter-Finals. Whoever wins faces a tough climb to the grand finals, needing 3 more wins just to make it there.

The dream of a Lower Bracket come back starts or ends tomorrow as only one of these talented teams can survive. Match commentary by eXtine with special guest FLAME. Tune in for the broadcast, jump into mIRC and say YAOOOO!

League updates:

TWL's season 5 playoffs are now all but finished. Congrats to division 2 champions TONY HAWKS PRO SKATERS and division 3 champions Just4Fame. Signups for TWL season 6 are still open.

Signups for CEVO season 5 are open for the remainder of this week.

From the blog:

djfivenine gives us a follow-up to an evening with Keith Smerbeck. Buick talks to us at length about the medic class.

eXtine draws our attention to a TGBF post about MLG and follows up with some insights of his own.

Following up on the medic roundtable from last month, djfivenine gives us a demoman roundtable interview. b4nny, You Must Recover, and Droog all provide insights about the demoman's role in competitive play.

eHfK recently stepped down as ESEA admin. Kermit interviews him about ESEA.

Kermit interviews Fragga, a European soldier who recently started playing North American TF2. Fragga describes differences differences between European and North American play, two popular European maps, and more.

Focus Fire is a series of commentaries produced by Sigma, Jestr and Breather. Episode 6 came out last week. The rest of the episodes can be found here.

Jesus talks to us about the important role of team chemistry.

Videos:

decap created a video featuring highlights from the Alienware Arena tournament from earlier this year. download link

In the latest episode of eXtv, TCM-Gaming and I Don't Know? face off in the Esports Heaven's Sennheiser Challenger finals with the final match being played on Gullywash.

With 500 euros up for grabs, the finals of the Esports Heaven's Sennheiser Challenger were played on 2/25/10 between TCM-Gaming and I Don't Know? (idk?). The 64 team single elimination tournament played over the course of 3 days culminated with this best of 3 series between these two European Giants.

Badlands, the first map in the bo3, was tied 4-4 after 30 minutes of play. An overtime Golden Cap round was won by idk?. The second map was a different story, with TCM-Gaming storming Granary 5-0. GullyWash, rarely seen in the North American TF2 Scene, is the deciding 3rd map.

eXtelevision.com-ing soon! Stay tuned for more episodes, and keep watching cuz its only gonna get better.

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So it's been awhile since I last wrote an article and this time I wanted to impart some advice to the community. One of the most important things in any team game whether it's an e-sport or otherwise is team chemistry. Often times it's ignored by players who think that skill can overcome it, but what they fail to realize is that team chemistry is a prerequisite to good team work. What does it mean to have good team chemistry? How much does it affect your teamwork? I'll cover all this and more after the jump.

Focus Fire is a series of commentaries produced by Sigma, Jestr and Breather. Their latest episode, episode 6, was released earlier today, so I suggest you go and check it out!
http://www.mediafire.com/?tzdmtiih4qv

Also check out all the previous episodes of Focus Fire to hear in depth commentary from quality tf2 players.
http://commforums.com/focus-fire-t3234.html?t=3234

I did an interview with Fragga, a soldier from the other side of the Atlantic. He's a soldier that used to play a lot in European leagues and recently made the switch to the North American scene. With more experience on both sides of the Atlantic than any other player in tf2, I thought he'd be a good candidate for an interview. The interview does a lot of comparing TF2 in North America with TF2 in Europe and also discusses weapon balances.

Kermit: Introduce yourself and explain how you first started playing TF2.

I'm Fragga, I main soldier but also play scout and sniper. My first FPS game was Doom. Quakeworld was the first game I took seriously and in 1997 I joined the newly formed clan 4Kings. Later on I joined Demonic Core with my brother and some others who all lived in the same city as myself. Coming from a Quake background the soldier class in TF2 seemed the obvious choice, and back then the soldier was a powerful and influential class which could carry a team with a good medic.

A relatively old and short interview (about a month old) that I was too lazy to post until now. It's with eHfK, head ESEA TF2 admin and discusses the upcoming ESEA LAN, ESEA's future plans with TF2 and more.

You’re stepping down as an ESEA admin after this season, any reason why?

I've really enjoyed everything I have done with ESEA and trying to build a community around it for TF2, although it wasn't as successful as I had hoped it would be. It is a very stressful job, as some could imagine. I often find myself being the middle man between an upset community and management that doesn't want to budge. It has also become a very time consuming job, and as I am nearing the end of my university career, I think it would be best for me to focus on my studies. Who knows though, I may just pull a Brett Favre.