Seoul International E-sports Festival hit the news this morning. With much anticipation, not to mention the $150,000 in total prize money, it commences a full month packed with multiple full-scale tournaments to select the entrants. The city of Seoul, The Ministry of Culture & Tourism, and KeSPA will all be co-sponsoring the event, which will be held at the Olympic main and peripheral stadiums.

The main attraction that grasped our attention was the "E-stars World Tournament" featuring Warcraft III, Counterstrike, and of course Starcraft. Three of the games with the largest player bases in the world. In the Warcraft III division international professional gamers Manuel Schenkhuizen (Holland), Huang Xiang and Su Hao (China), and Frank Pierce (U.S.) are amongst the most promising candidates for the title. They have the usual throng of professional Korean hopefuls to contend with however.

The Counterstrike tournament will resemble the continental cup, where top ranked teams such as "Made in Brazil" (Brazil) the winner of the 2006 ESWC, The Fnatic team (Sweden), X7-Hacker (China), and eStro (Korea) will battle for the grand prize of $20,000.

Players all around the globe (well, mainly in Korea) are eager to take part in their share of the glory.