From the CEVO site:

As the season is quickly coming to a close, here is a brief look at the playoff structure for our 5th season of TF2. After week 8, the Professional and Amateur divisions will not be taking a break and the first round of playoff matches will have a deadline of Thursday, June 3rd for these divisions. The first round playoff matches for Main will be scheduled for Monday, June 7th. Playoff seeds and schedules will be released on Saturday, May 29th for Professional and Amateur; Main's will be released on Wednesday, June 2nd.

Below you will find specific information about your division's playoff schedule...

Dates & Map Rotation:

Professional:

The CEVO-P playoffs will consist of all 5 teams from the division. These teams will compete in a single elimination bracket with each match-up being a bo3 competition. Each team will choose a map of their choice for their half of the bo3. Tiebreaker maps will be decided by CEVO.

Round 1: bo3 (tiebreak: CEVO) - Thursday, June 3rd
Round 2: bo3 (tiebreak: CEVO) - Monday, June 7th
Round 3: bo3 (tiebreak: CEVO) - Thursday, June 10th
Round 4: bo3 (tiebreak: CEVO) - Monday, June 14th

CEVO-P Brackets: http://www.cevo.com/playoffs/bracket.php?id=1027

Main:

The CEVO-M playoffs will consist of the top 8 teams in the division ranked by the CPI. These teams will compete in an 8 team double-elimination bracket until a winner is crowned.

Round 1: koth_viaduct - Monday, June 7th
Round 2: cp_badlands - Thursday, June 10th
Round 3: cp_gravelpit - Monday, June 14th
Round 4: cp_granary- Thursday, June 17th
Round 5: cp_badlands - Monday, June 21st
Round 6: bo3 finals(tiebreak: cp_gravelpit) - Thursday, June 24th

CEVO-M Brackets: http://www.cevo.com/playoffs/bracket.php?id=1028

Amateur:

The CEVO-A playoffs will consist of the top 4 teams from the Atlantic conference and the top 12 teams from the Central conference (based on CPI). These teams will compete in a national 16 team double-elimination bracket until a winner is crowned.

Round 1: koth_viaduct - Thursday, June 3rd
Round 2: cp_badlands - Monday, June 7th
Round 3: cp_gravelpit - Thursday, June 10th
Round 4: cp_granary- Monday, June 14th
Round 5: cp_badlands - Thursday, June 17th
Round 6: cp_gravelpit - Monday, June 21st
Round 7: cp_granary - Thursday, June 24th
Round 8: bo3 finals (tiebreak: koth_viaduct) - Monday, June 28th

CEVO-A Brackets: http://www.cevo.com/playoffs/bracket.php?id=1026


Note: More information on the CPI can be found here: http://www.cevo.com/?page=forum&func=viewthread&id=4120

Important to note is the difference in first match deadlines between Pro/Amateur and Main. This difference is due to a number of incomplete Main matches that are wrapping up early this week.

Live tonight at 11:00PM EDT, Pwnage.TV will be broadcasting the ESEA-Invite matchup between eMazing Gaming (7-3) and Nexus Gaming (8-2). The map will be played on cp_gullywash.

Also we've switched to a Ustream player for the week to test out how things will run on it for the live audience. Your feedback on the player would be greatly appreciated.

Casting and video by Leonardo "leogeo2" Gonzalez.
#pwnage.tv on irc.gamesurge.net to get your shoutouts and predictions in live on air!

Via Valve Software:

If HL2 is coming to Mac tomorrow, TF2 surely can't be far behind, if not released on the same day. Cheers to an expanding player base!

Rumors are going around that Steam on Linux isn't too far off either...

By strong requests from the best demoman available on the free agent market and the 4th best scout on his own team, I have decided to write a second part for this week's power rankings.
Because there will be 16 teams in the playoffs, some of these teams should be highlighted. Just in case they pull of an upset in the first round I can say that I totally called it from the week 5 power rankings.
Honestly, the chances of upsetting a top team is very very low, but I do like ESEA's effort to give more players the playoff experience, even if it is only for one match.

11. The Legion (6-4)

The Legion had some roster issues at the beginning of the season when they couldn't find a solid replacement at scout for freddy. I think it is solidified now with kaidus and eriotic...but I'm not quite sure, since every time we scrim them, they have a different roster. One thing that has not changed from the roster is the consistent play of Jewbagel and Zate, their combo. They both have emerged statistically as a top 10 player in open at their class. Their demo also tends to hit players with pipes that I've only seen invite demos hit. Their win against Focus Gaming should be enough for the top teams to start paying attention to Legion. A win in their match on gullywash against expertise will set in ink for them as a playoff contender and a team to watch out for.

There's a new TF2 Blog post, which unforutnately isn't about the Engineer, but nonetheless has some pretty cool news!

Of course with a link to an external site, which is totally getting hammered, it's hard to get details atm of what Valve has planned here. It seems though that they're giving community members a chance to design new polygon models for the existing weapons! The guidelines mention that they should retain the look of their current functionality, although that doesn't mean that once released these models will only be used as vanilla weapons with customized appearances. Perhaps upon release they could actually have new uses and strengths. With submissions needing to include weapons of each type, Primary, Secondary, and Melee, it's probable that a pack will be picked for each class and due to the same author needing to make 3 weapons there will be some consistancy among the released items.

Exciting stuff as Valve continues to expand what TF2 has to offer by engaging the community! Good luck to all the Model makers who will be submitting weapons!

Leave your thoughts in the comments, I know this excites me... Maybe I can convince Valve to implement that Uniform system sometime :D

Dear Swaty,

Mainline was not a fun map. At all. My team wasted hours scrimming and matching on this map, only to find ourselves in a stalemate on 2/3 as my soldier nOem cries in frustration and I start to have flashbacks of TWL matches on fastlane. There are a lot of things you will need to change on this map, because I refuse to support a retarded baby made from well and fastlane for another league rotation until there are changes made.

Please use this week's map, gullywash, as an example of what a fun competitive map should look like. There is constant action everywhere, there are original aspects on every single point, and the name is fuckin awesome.

Also, Lost finale was FINE, I wish people would just stop whining about it and realize that they are mainly just upset that the show is over.

Love,

djfivenine


Nothing really to add after my mid-season awards. So here are the rankings.

1. Team neXziL - LW: 1 (10-0)

Not quite sure what is going on with them dropping Hostile Faction or the other way around, but it looks like they have moved on from their sponsor. Their name sounds like half nexus and half zilla gaming? I also heard something about idemise being in the picture as well? Whatever, let's not worry about sponsors, let's talk about the team. Yes, Harbleu left the team for invite. Going to be very difficult to replace the top fragger on the top team in open. Rumor has it that the team is not interested in giving their backup, tehoreoz, a try at that roam solly spot. Instead, they are going to try out Warpy as well as try to lure some sollies away from their current teams. I guess I cursed these guys when I said they were going to have a perfect season. It is still possible, but with a new soldier coming in, you never know how the chemistry with the team will be like. That exult/unr match on thursday is a huge trap game for these guys. New map, new solly, facing a team with solid teamwork.

The maps for preseason have been set..

Since preseason will be matched up against the playoffs of other leagues, I wanted to get some of the usual suspects into the rotation so teams can use preseason to prep for matches if they so choose. Also we will be running all four game modes during preseason to validate the configs and get feedback.

So, without delaying what your interested in any further, here is the schedule.

Preseason:

• Week 1: May 30th thru June 3rd
  
  • Map A: cp_granary
  • Map B: cp_gorge
• Week 2: June 6th thru June 10th
  
  • Map A: ctf_deliverance
  • Map B: koth_viaduct
• Week 3: June 13th thru June 17th
  
  • Map A: cp_badlands
  • Map B: cp_gravelpit

If you include the playoffs, we are around the half way point of the season. So let's take a look back and check out what happened during the first half.

The Sky is blue award for "stating the obvious":
Last season, we saw eMg and AG pull away from the rest of the league, but the second tier of open gave the best and closest competitions. Tight matches between VG, Focus, expertise, hostile faction, vires and detox made that league and playoff so great.

This season, you have NO ONE behind Vicious Gaming and Hostile Faction. It is a two horse race. That's all you can talk about, comparing who is the better team. And that's a tough one too, it's like asking who is the hotter jailbait, Miley Cyrus or that chick from Gossip Girl. And don't fool yourself by thinking that HF win on granary solved this puzzle. Granary can easily contain daniel and slardel. I would love to set them loose against HF on badlands or yukon. And don't fool yourself by saying VG now has the upper hand with Harbleu leaving for invite, tehoreoz is more underrated than the movie Silent Rage staring Chuck Norris. Also, there are talks of Droog coming back to retake his starting positions from sheep, just throwing some more sriracha in this VG pho.

Coming up on Thursday night @ 10:30 EST/7:30 Pacific, TGBF.tv will be casting Complexity versus Blight.Fanom (The ex-Pandemic squad) with eXtine and m0lk on the mic.

The two top teams of ESEA-I will be facing off on another new addition to the map rotation, CP_Mainline_RC5, which has been a contentious addition thus far. The map has potential, and some interesting aspects, but attacking Last is a dangerous proposition. This match-up between 7-0 Complexity and the 7-1 Blight.Fanom (Only loss against coL on Gpit) will be indicative of how these teams compare to each other. If Complexity has shown any weakness the last couple of seasons, it's been on unfamiliar maps. Then again, Complexities propensity for off-classing and utilizing odd strategies might seriously pay off on this new map.

However the results end up, spectators will be guaranteed a captivating match on unknown territory. Tune in and check it out!