Today it's time for our last Extreme Masters I review. This review is about the finals of the first Extreme Masters season with all its thrilling games and emotions. The finals were held at CeBIT, the world's biggest IT trade fair, in Hannover, Germany, from 15th until 18th of March.

The finals of the first Extreme Masters season started on Thursday, 15th March, with a group stage. Eight teams in Counter-Strike and eight players in Warcraft 3 were divided into two groups, each with four teams and players: Europe's best teams and players competed for 160,000 Euro prize money.

Extrem Masters Finals Gallery
In Counter-Strike especially the German duel between mousesports and ALTERNATE aTTaX was in focus. Both teams played on a high level and all spectators were ecstatic. The end result of this thrilling match was 15:15. Furthermore MeetYourMakers.pl was able to beat one of the favourites: fnatic. But fnatic came back and reached the second place of group A in the end. At the end of the day these teams qualified for the playoffs:

MeetYourMakers.pl (Group A)
fnatic (Group A)
SK Gaming (Group B)
Gravitas Gaming (Group B)

Group Stage Results
Group Stage Rankings

In Warcraft 3 a German player was literally on fire in the group stage: fire_de. He lost his first match against LiiLD.C but after this match he beat the two stars from 4Kings: Grubby and ToD. Surprisingly fire_de placed first in the group and Grubby had to say good bye (he placed only third). These players qualified for the playoffs in Warcraft 3:

fire_de (Group A)
ToD (Group A)
Creolophus (Group B)
HoT (Group B)

Group Stage Results
Group Stage Rankings

After this hot group stage the playoffs were held from 17th until 18th of March. Especially in Counter-Strike one team surprised all: Gravitas Gaming. They were able to win against Pentagram and fnatic. In the big final they once again played versus Pentagram. But the players from Poland played an amazing match. They won both maps against the Danish dynamite. Pentagram are the first Counter-Strike champions of the Extreme Masters!

Playoffs Grid

In Warcraft 3 another player from the Loser Bracket was able to win the Extreme Masters title. French superstar ToD lost his first match against Creolophus but he won all following matches. In the grand final he beat HoT in two best-of-threes.

Playoffs Grid

These are the winners of the first Extreme Masters season:

MeetYourMakers.pl (40,000 Euro)
ToD (15,000 Euro)

A detailed listing of the prize money:

Counter-Strike Prize Money
Warcraft 3 Prize Money

Check the Extreme Masters Micro-Page for detailed information.