Manuel Schenkhuizen, better known as Grubby, is a Dutch real-time strategy gamer and former professional esports player. He competed in the RTS games Warcraft III (WC3), Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne and Starcraft II. Grubby is the most successful WC3 player of all time, as an Orc player, having won more than 38 LAN tournaments, of which six were World Championships. His command over the Horde placed him early enough among the elite of the WC3 players, while his clash with Jang "Spirit Moon" Jae-ho rewarded him with a legendary status among the fans of the game. Grubby has been known for being part of one of the most successful WC3 teams in history, namely the British 4Kings. Later teams include the Danish MeetYourMakers and the North American Evil Geniuses. Grubby is widely regarded as one of the greatest Orc players of all time. Grubby is now a popular full-time streamer on Twitch.
The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) was a professional sports tournament organization specializing in computer and console video game competitions. It was founded by Angel Munoz on June 27, 1997, in Dallas, Texas. The CPL is considered the pioneer in professional video game tournaments, which have been held worldwide. The CPL's tournaments are open to all registrants, but due to the ESRB content rating of some video games, CPL competitions are restricted to participants age 17 or older. The CPL has distributed more than US$3 million in cash prizes.
SK Gaming is a professional esports organization based in Germany that has teams across the world competing in different titles. SK is particularly known for their success in Counter-Strike (CS) tournaments. SK's Brazilian CS team won the ESL One Cologne 2016 Major. SK currently has players and teams competing in League of Legends and Hearthstone. SK Gaming was founded in 1997 by a small group of Quake players in Oberhausen, making it the oldest esports organization in the world.
The Electronic Sports World Convention (ESWC) is an international professional gaming championship. Every year, winners of national qualifier events around the world earn the right to represent their country in the ESWC Finals. The event has been praised for its organisation and ability to put on a good show for spectators.
Johnathan Wendel, also known as Fatal1ty, is an American entrepreneur and former professional esports player. He made his professional debut at a 1999 Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) tournament, securing third place and $4,000. Wendel continued to compete in CPL events, claiming multiple championships and accumulating $110,000 in prize money. His success soared in subsequent years. Wendel won the CPL World Championship for Aliens vs. Predator 2 in 2001. He became a world champion in Unreal Tournament 2003 after winning the 2002 CPL Winter event. Wendel's achievements extended to Doom 3, where he became the inaugural champion at QuakeCon 2004. In 2005, he won his fifth world title in as many video game titles, after winning the CPL World title in Painkiller, securing an unprecedented $150,000 prize. By the end of his playing career, he had amassed an esports record of $450,000 in prize winnings.
Sander Kaasjager, who plays under the pseudonym Vo0, is a Dutch professional player of the first-person shooter games Painkiller, Quake II, Quake III , Quake 4, Quake Live and Quake Champions, and also World of Warcraft. He has won more titles and prize money—over US$250,000—at professional Painkiller tournaments than any other player.
This article lists the top four teams or players in each of the various eSports world championships of the 2006 season.
The 2005 CPL World Tour was a year-long gaming competition held by the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL). This competition took place throughout 2005, with a total of nine international stops and a finals event held in the New York City, United States and televised by MTV.
The 2006 CPL World Season was a series of electronic sports competitions organized by the Cyberathlete Professional League in the fall of 2006. It was a follow up of the 2005 CPL World Tour and was announced by the CPL on July 1, 2006.
Chun Jung-hee (Korean: 천정희) is a retired South Korean professional player of the real-time strategy game Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. He used to play for the Chinese professional gaming team Beijing eSport Team. He goes by the gamertag of Sweet and is a member of clan WeRRa.
The expansion to the computer game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, known as The Frozen Throne, had an active professional competition scene, particularly in China, Germany, and South Korea. The game was featured at eSports festivals including the World Cyber Games, the Electronic Sports World Cup, the World e-Sports Games, the World Series of Video Games and the International E-Sports Festival. Outside of the professional circuit, the game had many active competitive circuits, with users at Battle.net ranging between 70,000 and 100,000 at any given moment. In China, in which Warcraft III was extremely popular due to it being easily available through piracy, fans and users often used an alternative client due to the country's poor internet connections to the outside world. Around 3,000,000 copies of the game were sold in the country. 500,000 Chinese competed in the Chinese qualifiers for the 2006 World Cyber Games. The amount of prize money through the years has been significant with top players winning hundreds of thousands of dollars. As usual in competitive gaming, income for Warcraft 3 professional players flowed from various sources like team salaries from pro-gaming teams and sponsorships usually computer technology related. A famous example was the Danish gaming organization known as Meet Your Makers which boasted of paying their players US$300,000 on an annual basis. Similar to older games with huge competitive scenes like Starcraft:Brood War and Counter-Strike 1.6, the popularity of Warcraft 3 steadily declined and towards the end of the previous decade almost all tournaments and players were Chinese. After 2010, with Starcraft 2, League of Legends, and Dota 2 being released and becoming popular, Warcraft 3 gave up its position as one of the prime eSports titles.
Mouz, formerly mousesports, is a professional esports organisation based in Germany. It fields teams in several games but is particularly known for its CS:GO team. MOUZ was one of the founding members of the G7 Teams. MOUZ's League of Legends team currently competes in the ESL Pro Series, having formerly competed in the European Challenger Series.
Yoan "ToD" Merlo is a French former professional player of the real-time strategy games Warcraft III and Starcraft II. In WarCraft III he played as the Human race and in StarCraft he played as Protoss. he was signed to the top esports team in the United Kingdom, Four-Kings, until November 7, 2007, when he decided not to renew his contract for unspecified reasons. He later explained in an interview that the dissatisfying results of the Four Kings team were the reason for his departure. After much speculation, Merlo unexpectedly joined the team Mousesports on December 1, 2007.
Maciej Krzykowski, who goes by the pseudonym Av3k, is a professional Quake and ShootMania player. He has Polish nationality and resides in Ostróda. He actively competes in international Quake competitions and was signed to Razer and Dutch electronic sports team Serious Gaming and French organization Millenium, but is now signed to British organisation Endpoint. On July 8, 2007, at age 16, he became the youngest Quake champion ever after winning the Electronic Sports World Cup 2007 in Paris without losing a single map.
Serious Gaming is a professional gaming team based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was founded in 2004 by entrepreneur Bas Peeperkorn. Serious Gaming is known for their achievements in first-person shooter Deathmatch tournaments, most notably those by Quake series players Maciej "av3k" Krzykowski and Alexey "cypher" Yanushevsky.
The Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) is a series of international esports tournaments held in countries around the world. These Electronic Sports League (ESL) sanctioned events, sponsored by Intel, as of 2022 currently host events in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and StarCraft II. Other game titles were hosted in the past. The body that owns the league is Turtle Entertainment. The League has operated 17 seasons as of 2023. The season finals, with the largest prize pool, takes place in Katowice, Poland. Mid-season events are held in numerous cities around the globe, including Chicago, Shanghai and Sydney.
Lu Weiliang, who also goes by the pseudonym Fly100%, is a Chinese professional esports player of the real-time strategy game Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. He previously been a member of Team Hacker, EHOME and Mousesports. He is considered one of the best Orc players. He had one of the longest playing careers of professional players of Warcraft III.
Alexey Yanushevsky, who also goes by the pseudonym "Cypher", resides in Minsk, and is a Belarusian professional player of the first person shooter series Quake. He has been actively competing in international Quake competitions since February 24, 2006. Cypher was most notably the first one to win the QuakeCon 1v1 tournament four times. He has been a champion of many other tournaments, including Electronic Sports World Cup, Intel Extreme Masters, Dreamhack and Asus Cups.
