Quarterfinals:

Harvard vs. Princeton – Diggity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-CvYhCUg7k
MIT vs. Yale – Cholera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZNqwtVfybs
Tsinghua vs. KAIST – Cholera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7bQbgwi6zU
KTH (Sweden) vs. Peking U – Diggity (on VioleTAK): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S95RSNjCOHY

Semifinals

American Semifinals -
International Semifinals – Cholera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4Rmu847T4g

Finals – Cholera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFfUszE3XA8

Finals will be tomorrow (Sat) evening, 9pm EST (stream starts at 9:30pm EST), Stream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cotter-cup-2009 livecast by Cholera.

Semifinals results

MIT vs. Princeton – MIT wins 3-0

Tsinghua vs. Peking University – Tsinghua wins 3-0

The 1st place competitor will receive $750 and a special trophy!  The second place competitor will receive $250!

Friday, May 8, 8:30pm EST: American semifinals, stream starts at 8:30pm EST athttp://www.ustream.tv/channel/cotter-cup-2009 livecast by Diggity off replays (for less lag).

International semifinals have been postponed to tomorrow (Sat) at 10am EST. We’re still waiting on confirmation for who will be casting and where the stream will be.

Finals will hopefully be tomorrow (Sat) evening, 9pm EST, Stream:http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cotter-cup-2009 livecast by Cholera or Diggity.

Quarterfinals Results
KAIST vs. Tsinghua – to our great and abiding surprise, Tsinghua pulled out all the stops and beat KAIST handily 3-0. The replays have been acquired and will be up on YouTube sometime soon.

Princeton vs. Harvard – Princeton wins, 3-1

Yale vs. MIT – MIT wins in ace match, 3-2

PKU (China) vs KTH (Sweden) – PKU wins

8pm EST: Semifinals match between Princeton and Yale – livecast by Cholera or Diggity, Stream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cotter-cup-2009

1.  Princeton vs. MIT – time TBA,  stream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cotter-cup-2009

2.  Tsinghua vs. winner of KTH vs. PKU – time TBA, stream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cotter-cup-2009

Results so far:

KAIST vs. Tsinghua – to our great and abiding surprise, Tsinghua pulled out all the stops and beat KAIST handily 3-0.  The replays have been acquired and will be up on YouTube soon.

MIT vs. Yale – MIT wins in ace match 3-2.

Harvard vs. Princeton – Princeton wins 3-1.

VODs will be up on YouTube shortly.

Rescheduled:

PKU did not show up for their match against KTH and it has been rescheduled to 8am on Friday, May 8 (8pm China time, 2pm Sweden).  The winner will play Tsinghua University.

Stream Updates:

1) Harvard v Princeton Thursday night, (7pm EST) – livecast by Hazel - Stream location:http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Cotter-Cup-2009-Stream-2
2) Yale v MIT, Thursday night (8pm EST) – livecast by Cholera (possibly off replays) Stream location:http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cotter-cup-2009

1) Harvard v Princeton Thursday night, (7pm EST)
2) Yale v MIT, Thursday night (8pm EST)
3) Tsinghua v Korea, Thursday morning (8am EST)
4) Peking vs. KTH, Thursday morning (10am EST)

KAIST v Tsinghua

Destination  : Seokmin Lee “[KAIST]Flyingstone” Random

Neo Medusa : Sangjeon Lee “[KAIST]103ekj” Protoss

Colosseum II : Cheolhyung Lee “[KAIST]bloodwass” Protoss

Tau Cross : Sungho Eun “[KAIST]dkrtndhkd” Terran

Blue Storm ACE

Destination  :  Qiang “smth_xq” protoss

Neo Medusa : Shuguang Liu “smth_willow” zerg

Colosseum II : Yubin Gao “smth_GB” zerg

Tau Cross : Hao Yu “smth_orion”   zerg

Blue Storm : TBA

KTH v Peking

Destination – [KTH]Siege (z)

Neo Medusa – [KTH] Scoobydoo (t)

Colesseum II – [KTH] Pizza_maker (z)

Tau Cross – Fagerlund (p)

ACE

Peking lineup TBA

MIT v Yale

Destination: Hyun Soo ([MIT]StRyKeR, Z)

Neo Medusa: Yongjin ([MIT]yongstra, Z)

Colosseum II: Max ([MIT]MAX, P)

Tau Cross: Haitao ([MIT]HAITAO, Z)

Blue Storm: TBD

Destination – Sherwin P, Sherwin[yale]

Neo Medusa – Randy Z,  julysick[yale]

Coliseum 2 – Jeff P, dullahan[yale

Tau Cross – Justin Z, justin[yale]

ACE

Princeton v Harvard

Destination – Patrick Park “[pu]agonyx90″ zerg

Neo Medusa – Peter “[pu]daisy” Protoss

Colosseum II – Jack “[pu]raiame” Zerg

Tau Cross – Bowen “[pu]Ja.” Zerg

Blue Storm – TBA

Harvard Lineup TBA

Match times for Friday, May 8th will be decided once the quarterfinals are finished, due to issues with time zones.

Maps for both days: Destination, Neo Medusa, Colosseum II, Tau Cross and Blue Storm (ace)

The format will be five 1v1 games per set.

Stream location: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cotter-cup-2009

The invitees ended up being schools which Hazel was able to recruit from the first season of the CSL as well as international schools we contacted who were able to confirm participation in the event. Originally the call went out to several of the CSL school teams according to the sponsor’s vision of the event, but when no teams aside from Princeton and MIT offered to participate, the US side of the competition became invite-only to facilitate confirmation of participating schools. After winning the first season of the CSL, UC Berkeley was offered a spot in the competition but neglected to respond.

The important thing to keep in mind is that the sponsor of this tournament has very specific requirements for the participants. There must be 4 US collegiate teams and up to 4 non-US collegiate teams. This requirement prevented the organizers from reaching out to other collegiate teams such as UCSD or UC Riverside to participate once four US teams were confirmed, even if a spot remained open on the non-US team side.

The Tsinghua StarCraft team was already confirmed to participate at the beginning of the tournament’s organization. The other international teams were invited based on responses to many diverse inquiries for international collegiate StarCraft teams. Originally, Seoul National University was scheduled to play but recently dropped out of the tournament for unknown reasons.

2.  Why is a South Korean university participating if they already have an intercollegiate tournament of their own and the skill disparity is likely to be high?

The tournament organizers were very enthusiastic about having a South Korean university team participate in the Cotter Cup because of South Korea’s status as the center of the competitive and professional StarCraft world. Possible skill level disparity aside, one of the aims of the Cotter Cup is to foster international intercollegiate StarCraft competition, and since South Korea is home to a well-established StarCraft collegiate scene, unlike most other countries, giving that scene exposure to an international audience will hopefully inspire others to become more enthusiastic about establishing a collegiate scene in their own countries, no matter which they may be.

3.  Why does the CSC aim to promote the collegiate scene at the possible expense of providing a tournament which showcases the highest StarCraft skill level?  What is the goal?

The point, as I see it, is to reach a new audience through the specific idea of having an international intercollegiate tournament. There are many precedents for international intercollegiate competitions, and there are many precedents for non-intercollegiate StarCraft competitions, but no precedents exist for the intersection of both concepts. It’s true that the intercollegiate level of play leaves much to be desired currently, but the organizers in their capacity as directors of the CSL hope to change that situation. There are already tournaments that aim to showcase the highest skill possible, but of course they all fall somewhat short of the professional tournaments that take place in South Korea. This fact alone does not mean that intercollegiate StarCraft competition can’t become an eSports trend in itself – there has just never been an organized opportunity to develop the latent potential and demand for intercollegiate StarCraft competition.

The collegiate angle serves to broaden the fanbase for competitive StarCraft. Currently there are many fans of competitive StarCraft in the world who are familiar with tournaments such as the OSL and MSL and perhaps international professional or semi-professional teams such as FnaticMSI. There is, however, a wider population that could be interested in competitive StarCraft if they had more of a personal stake in the events, such as college pride. Developing this fanbase will serve the ends of the greater StarCraft community well, since it has the potential to attract resources which international eSports in and of itself does not cater to.

US Collegiate Competitors:

Harvard University

Yale University

Princeton University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

International Competitors:

Tsinghua University (Beijing, China)

The Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden)

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Daejeon, South Korea)

(TBA, if applicable)

Further details on matchups and casting times as well as the ustream.tv url will be posted very soon. The Tsinghua vs. KAIST quarterfinals match in particular promises to be extremely exciting. Stay tuned!

The schools which have confirmed participation in the CSC may not be the most elite in terms of StarCraft ability (with the exception of the Korean university tentatively set to participate), but the point of this tournament and related events in the nonprofit sector does not seem so much to organize the highest level of StarCraft play as it is to just get something going that people will pay attention to.  eSports needs to gain more recognition as a legitimate arena for exciting competition, and the CSC (as well as the CSL) seems set to take steps in achieving this very goal.  I am personally very hopeful that the success of the CSC will inspire other non-eSports entities to sit up and take notice of something we all already can feel intuitively: eSports isn’t going anywhere, and perhaps in the hands of the college student demographic with the passionate ambition many of us show in our interests, it can actually become “the next big thing” very soon.