Winners League - The 'all-kill' Proleague

On January 13 2009 09:51 mrmin123 wrote:
Today, the Korean eSports Association (headed by President Kim Sin Bae) revealed the brackets and league logo of the new Shinhan Bank Winner's League 08-09. The league is scheduled to start on the upcoming Saturday (17th), and features the winner-progresses format.

The regular season of the Shinhan Bank Winner's League 08-09 will span over 7 weeks, and progress seperately from the semi-playoffs, playoffs, and finals. Scores after the semi-playoffs will not be added to the regular scores. Changes to the Shinhan Bank Winner's League include:

1. Regular Season "7-game 4-win winner" system & All-kill system revitalization
The league, which starts on January 17th (Saturday), will use the same regular season all-kill format. The 'all-kill' format allows the winning player to continue playing to the next round, allowing teams with one or two ace players to be able to be able to sweep the series. Also, a special quarterfinals playoff selection will be used to create more excitement for eSports fans. The winner of the three-round Shinhan Bank Winner's League 08-09 will receive 10,000,000 KRW (~7,360 USD) in prize money.

2. Game schedule management - Weekends & Wednesdays: 1 PM, Mondays & Tuesdays: 6 PM
In consideration of possible game number increases and the personal league schedules, the League game start times will be tightly regulated.

The Korean eSports Association has spoken with both broadcasters (Ongamenet and MBCGame), and the parties have come to a mutual agreement in pushing the broadcast times earlier.

Thus, the broadcasts originally scheduled on Mondays and Tuesdays 6:30 PM have been pulled forward 30 minutes to start at 6 PM, and the broadcasts originally scheduled for 2 PM on Weekends and Wednesdays have been pulled forward an hour at 1 PM.

Only the Shinhan Bank Winner's League broadcast have been altered, and the 4th round of the league will revert back to the originally planned 2 PM and 6:30 PM broadcast times.

3. Entry Announcement: Only the opener will be announced 48 hours prior
48 hours before the Saturday game of every week, on Thursday 1 PM, the entries will be made public.

Only the opening player will be announced, and any subsequent player selections will be made on the spot during the series. Teams will be given 1 minute to decide their next player. In addition, to stay true to the all-kill theme, the players will be designated 'titles' according to their order of play. The opening player called the 'Vanguard,' the second player the 'Chabohng,' the third player the 'Center,' the fourth and last player the 'General.'

4. The 5-minute Setup Rule
Each players will be allowed 5-minutes prior to each game to set up their computers. New players from the team who just lost a game will be allowed to introduce themselves to the crowd, and then be allotted another 5 minutes in their booths to set up.

5. Neo Requiem is out, Tau Cross is in!
The Shinhan Bank Winner's League 08-09's official maps are based off of the 2nd round maps. However, Neo Requiem has been swapped out for Tau Cross. Balance issues on Neo Requiem has been brought up, and there has been many complaints that the map did not fit with the rest of 3rd round maps.

The new 3rd round map Tau Cross is from the 2006 SKY Proleague and the 2007 Shinhan Bank Proleague, and is a 3-player symmetrical macro-based map. Tau Cross provided intense games for all races, and received much positive feedback when in use, thus will be brought back during the 3rd round to provide for more exciting games.