HotLips, one of the managers of World Elite, spared some time for a interview on WCG, China and eSports in China, and of course, World Elite.

Meet Your Makers have managed to stay alive in the WCG tournament by beating Made in Brazil on de_train. They will be going through from second place and, interestingly, this wins them the easier half of the playoff bracket.

Group A, one match down in the tie-breaker, Yaws put up a fight on Twisted Meadows and could have taken the game had Grubby not managed to pull off building two expos allowing him to then get back into the game. Grubby looked genuinely relieved at the end of the game and now Yaws will face SaSe, the player he beat on the main stage earlier today. Does Yaws have enough micro left in him?

There are hardly any question marks left in the WCG CS tournament. mTw beat k23 and topped Group D, leaving Team Alternate out of the tournament (at least they do not have a long way to go home, if that is any consolation). Group A was topped by SK and NoPression, Group B by Ola "elemeNt" Moum's team CBTEAM and the Australian underdogs Team Immunity.

The final question mark is who will progress from Group C alongside eSTRO. Will it be MIBR or MYM?

Group A enters a tie breaker after Marc 'yAwS' Förster emphatic performance, he is now in a three-way tie with Kim 'SaSe' Hammar & Manuel 'Grubby' Schenkhuizen, the top 2 go through and it will be interesting to see if Yaws can really put the icing on the cake after defeating both Infi and SaSe

The Korean team eSTRO won Group C beating both Meet Your Makers and Made in Brazil. MYM and MIBR are now playing a game where a spot in the playoffs is at stake.

Team Alternate have lost to the Danes of mTw. This puts their defeat count to two, putting them below mTw and k23. This is the first major upset of the WCG in Counter-Strike.

Yaws strikes again to defeat WEG winner Xuwen 'infi' Wang on the main stage after having also defeated Kim 'SaSe' Hammar earlier in the day. The German clenched his fists and shook them in both glorification and disbelief for what he had achieved. He is now second in his group but has yet to face Manuel 'Grubby' Schenkhuizen, one of the remaining matches of his impressive group stage

One of the favourites of the WCG event is definitely Christoph "Mondragon" Semke from Germany. He 3/0'd his group and he was one of the strongest players of the first day of the competition. We have interviewed the German legend. It is worth your while, even if you are not into SC.

The dark horse of the day is Marc 'yAwS' Förster who beat Kim 'SaSe' Hammar on stage. We have interviewed him:

The group situation is getting difficult for Meet Your Makers who lost their game to eSTRO without a big fight. The Poles have to beat Made in Brazil now in order to go through. Interestingly, this is the second WCG tournament in a row where the Korean team plays their most difficult opponents on dust2, their best map.

Alternate's loss against k23 from Kazakhstan has made some Finnish people happy...

Three more people have advanced to the play-off bracket. From group A - Andrey 'Logistic' Kukhianidze (Terran), Marius 'HoRRoR' Overhageboeck (Terran) and the Korean superstar Lee 'Jaedong' Jae Dong (Zerg) who will advance from group D.

The German CS scene is in shock as the k23 team from Kazakhstan defeated Team Alternate 16-14. If the underdogs do not mess up and mTw beats Alternate, then we will have the first major team going overboard.

First shock result of the groupstages, Marc 'yAwS' Förster defeated team-mate Kim 'SaSe' Hammar on the mainstage with a good comeback on Secret Valley.

SaSe's looked certain to win after his tp onto Yaws army and killed all but his hero but yaws regrouped and his piercing army slowly gained the edge over his Swedish opponent. Sase tried to go bears but too little too late and Yaws final push accompanied with towers closed the match

Group B for Starcraft has finished its matches and the first two players who have advanced to play-offs are now known. These two are none other than the German Christoph 'Mondragon' Semke (Zerg) and the Bulgarian Lyubomir 'Masscata' Zanev (Protoss).

Team Immunity, the Australian team that boot camped with SK Gaming at the SK office in Cologne, has beaten Team Dignitas in group B. This means that the Aussies could have a good chance of going through to the playoffs.

In Group A SK Gaming is doing very well so far with two victories in a row (and the top game vs. TeG from Romania ahead of them at 17:00). The most intense action will start in Group C soon - MIBR, MYM and eSTRO are in contention for the playoff spots.

In Group D it looks like there will not be any surprises and the only question is whether mTw or Alternate will be first.

Grubby wins his toughest group stage match versus infi, read more about it here.

Watch out! Allen said something on camera!!! SK Gaming has beaten their first opponent in the group quite easily. The Canadian team NoPression took 8 rounds off of the Swedes. Here's a short interview:

Just so you get a feel of the event, how it is set up and how everything works, we have made a special WCG walk through video. Noted that I should not eat the microphone next time, Enjoy:

The first of Warcraft's broadcasted matches will hit the main stage in approximately 10 minutes and the players are already warming up, Kim 'SaSe' Hammar will face team-mate Marc 'yAwS' Förster in the Group A match. A slip up from SaSe could cost him his place in the playoffs as Manuel 'Grubby' Schenkhuizen and Xuwen 'infi' Wang are also in his group.

The really hot matches for CS today will start at around 15:00 CET in Group C with MYM, eSTRO and Made in Brazil duking it out for the two spots in the playoffs. Another stage game (this means it will be broadcasted) is going to be mTw vs. Team Alternate. If you are following the event through the stream, then this is what you will see.

We have arrived at the venue of the WCG. It is Hall 8 of the Köln Messe. The setup is impressive (you can see in pigvomit's opening ceremony gallery) but right now there is lot of empty space around the sponsor booths and the main stage. It feels as empty as in Seattle but much prettier. The show on the stage starts with StarCraft.