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The ESWC 2008 Grand Finals reach the second group stage, with 99% of the favorites advancing for their groups.

So far it’s been a hectic day for players, press and the people running ESWC. Starting with issues concerning the 24" TFT from DELL, the players did simply not find them as "Gaming Monitors". In the end there’s nothing to do, but it made the tournament start delayed with 1 hour.

There are also a few teams not showing up, being Latin American teams, Make It Happen, Mindless, N1 and Canadian team Motus. Yesterday we announced that wNv would play with a stand-in at ESWC 2008 Grand Finals. This made a huge impact on the team, as they failed to advance from their group with SK and MoB.

The second group stage will start at 15:30 local / 00:30 CET. Four groups with four teams in each, top 2 advance to the playoffs. No matter how you put it, there are some killers groups. Mousesports got Made in Brazil in their group, the two finalist teams from GameGune, along with fnatic and Frag eXecutors. SK got e-STRO who sent SK home at Extreme Masters II finals earlier this year; we also see LowLandLions and roccat in the group. Group C turns out to be very interesting, MYM and mTw, the two finalist from last year will once again have a arch rivalry going on as they face each other, finding their way into the group are the two American teams MoB and x3o, which of the two can mess with the Europeans?
The last group has WCG 2007 winners from emuLate, who haven’t been too impressive this year, joining them will be Virtus.pro, who just won versus MYM, also Alternate who beat fnatic has dropped into group D, along with Dignitas.

All demos from the first group stage have been added and we will continue with our on-site coverage as the day proceeds. Over at XLBet you can find all the bets for the second group stage. XLBet is offering you great odds on these very close games. So place you Pesetas, Dollars, Krones, Rubbles or whatever you use with value, to place your bets on the coming games of group stage two.