ESL Extreme Masters III online mainround kicks off Thursday night with 4 matches all scheduled at 21:00 CET. Tonight, 2 French teams and 2 Spanish teams face off against some of Scandinavia's best. If you're tired of watching the same players battle at WCG, Global Challenge, and other LANs, then be sure to tune it for these meetings!

The first match sees Group C's Dimension4 playing against playzone.no, who recently upset Swedish fnatic with 2-0. The Norwegians look like they are in pretty good form; on top of beating f0rest's world class team, they also clutched a very exciting 2-1 match against WCG's 4th place and ex-MYM team, XpreZ. Meanwhile, on the other side of the matchup are the Frenchmen, who are currently 0-2 in the Intel Extreme Masters. It is hard to say that playzone will have an easy time. Dimension4 may not have won a single match yet, but they lost against mousesports, who flexed their muscles at Dubai, and Gameplay, who will likely win the "Most Improved Team" award. Losing to two teams in outstanding form is hardly something to be ashamed of. Playzone looks like they will still take this game with 2-0, seeing as they have the confidence and momentum carrying through from their recent match against fnatic.

3rd place Lanklan meets wtm in another Group C match. This situation is actually so incredibly similar to the Dimension4 and playzone game that the only difference seems to be the team names. Wtm has been losing a lot of matches recently, but also against mousesports and Gameplay. Lanklan, on the other hand, walked into a very difficult fight against fnatic yet still emerged victorious in 3 maps. The Swedes' last loss was against WCG's runner-up, SK Gaming. Wtm will have quite some trouble against GeT_RiGhT and if they want to have any chance at winning this game, they will need to grab momentum on the first map, de_tuscan.

Meanwhile, it's a battle of the low ranks of Group D as dakarma takes on Ledpc in a best-of-3. The 8th place and 6th place, respectively, will both be trying to move up from the bottom half of the rankings and neither team has had any recent victories nor even any close losses. Ledpc won a very tight 2-1 against Ukrainian eXplosive, but that W doesn't say too much since neither team has proven that they are in strong form. The outcome of this match is hard to predict, but it promises to be a close one!

Finally, fans get to see Snajdan and Blank taking on one of Counter-Strike's enigmas: emuLate. Where have the French been? They elected against attending several of the recent LANs, including all of the Global Challenges and the World Cyber Games. Their online track record hasn't been amazing as of late either. Though the French are on a three win streak, their reputation as the top team in France is slowly melting away. They were torn by fellow countrymen from Against All Authority and Ubiteam. Blank looks like they will take this one away; they have a mix of wins and losses from the past month but the important fact is that they are consistent and they beat teams that they should beat while putting up good stats against teams that were clearly stronger. Can emuLate bounce back from a huge slump and silence the haters in the Counter-Strike community? If they want to, it will be vital for them to stay completely focused and to hit important shots without trying anything risky.

Update: Blank v. emuLate - Wildcarded

Group C:

Group D:

Note: The de_cpl_mill banner will be placed where de_tuscan was actually played. The maps are identical except for models.

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