Dreamhack Summer 2011

48 contestants. I’m not sure how they’re picked; I know a few are actually pulled from a Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) side tournament, so technically there are more than 48, but most players start in in the 6x8 group bracket.

The groups, simply labeled A through H, each contain 6 players. The groups phase consists of round-robin tournaments within each group, with each matchup being a best of three. Once the round robin games are done, the two highest scoring players from each group are pulled into the round of 16 (there are some tie breaking rules etc.).

From the round of 16 it’s a simple elimination bracket, with each match again being a best of three. After the semi-finals, two more matches are played: another best of three to determine third and fourth place along with a best of five to determine first and second place.

The matches were played over three days, requiring some parallelism, so no single live caster managed to get all the games. The ones I watched were cast on the main stage by Day9 and Apollo. They are available on (spoilers) Day9’s archives but for the sake of ordering I’m posting links here. As the group rounds are round robin, I’ll list the names on the links. For the round of 16 and beyond I’ll simply give a generic label to avoid spoiling anything.

Again, this is the main stage cast so the hosts will definitely spoil games they don’t cast. So if you want to watch those games unspoiled then make sure you watch them in order (see the streaming schedule). Other than that, dummy anti-spoiler links are provided so don’t worry :)

Groups A & B

Tyler vs Strelok G3 (G1 and G2 not cast)

MorroW vs Dimaga G2 (G1 not cast)
MorroW vs Dimaga G3

Tyler vs Ret G2 (G1 and G3 not cast)

Brat_OK vs MorroW G1
Brat_OK vs MorroW G2
Brat_OK vs MorroW G3

Dimaga vs Socke G1
Dimaga vs Socke G2
Dimaga vs Socke G3

Naniwa vs Ret G2 (G1 and G3 not cast)

Groups C & D

Naama vs Kas G2 (G1 and G3 not cast)

MC vs Sen G1
MC vs Sen G2
MC vs Sen G3

Sase vs Kas G1
Sase vs Kas G2
Sase vs Kas G3

Idra vs Grubby G1
Idra vs Grubby G2
Idra vs Grubby G3